Issue - meetings

To enable the Cabinet to consider the comment made by the Resources and Services Overview & Scrutiny Committee following that Committee’s scrutiny of the Council’s transformation of Digital services.

RESOLVED that the comment of the Resources and Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee be noted and the comments of the Corporate Finance and Governance Portfolio Holder, in response thereto, be endorsed.

Cabinet was aware that, at the meeting of the Resources and Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee held on 3 December 2020 (Minute 108 referred) that Committee had been provided with an overview of the Council’s Digital Services Transformation.

It had been reported to the Committee that with Councillors having varying degrees of IT expertise the Council had identified an emerging picture whereby:

·           Some councillors were increasingly becoming disengaged - losing the ability to fully/ effectively engage with the range of digital information and services that the council operated.

·           Some councillors were struggling with their IT and asking Council Officers to fix their personal equipment – potentially creating an insurance liability issue.

·           The diversity of different Councillor Applications, all at different versions, was causing Councillors to experience different IT problems causing unnecessary stress and pressures for all concerned.

The emerging digital picture had been therefore perceived as an opportunity to assist councillors in their community leadership role. Through providing each councillor with a standard, managed device backed up by IT training and supported via the Council’s IT service desk intended benefits and improvements were, and remained, as follows:

·           To assist Councillors to improve their efficiency and access to stored digital information.

·           Strengthen cybersecurity (and cybersecurity awareness) and further reduce any possibility of a data breach and Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) data loss.

·           Enhance Councillors’ digital engagement.

·           Enhance mobile working and flexible working capabilities and thereby work/ life balance

·           Further reduce reliance (and the costs) of printed information.

·           Councillor IT equipment standardisation would in turn enable officers council-wide to standardise the range services that they provide which would achieve efficiency savings for both Councillors and Officers. 

Members of the Committee had heard how the strategy had been to purchase high quality Microsoft Surface Go tablets during 2019 and at the beginning of 2020 for Councillors to undertake their council-related duties. With some Councillors struggling with the tablet screen size Officers had additionally offered Councillors connection hubs, full size keyboards, 24” screens, cabled mouse. This gave Councillors a blend of home-based digital access with the ability to go mobile with their tablets when required.

As a result of COVID-19 and an emerging understanding as to its longevity, Officers had become conversant with the new face-to-face restrictive working arrangements and the use of virtual Microsoft Skype meetings had become a key ‘new working norm’. Likewise, virtual meeting MS Skype capabilities had needed to be extended to Councillors to enable them to perform their duties, which was not an intended original use of the previously purchased tablets.

The Committee had also been informed that the Council now had a pressing financial, technological and support need to migrate fully from Microsoft Skype to Microsoft Teams. MS Teams offered a range of additional meeting business functionality benefits over Skype but it was far more demanding in terms of computing processing power. As such, it was close to the limit and was very likely to become beyond the processing capabilities of councillor tablets as Microsoft invested in further  ...  view the full minutes text for item 116