Agenda item

To consider the report of the head of partnership and insight (attached).

The committee considered the report of the head of partnership and insight which gave an update on progress to date and next steps with regards to completing and implementing planned changes to the Five Councils Capita contract and establishing an action plan for the Council that would support its business direction and priorities for the next five years.

Councillor Ed Blagrove, Cabinet member for corporate services, introduced the report.  Also present to answer questions were Mark Stone, chief executive, Andrew Down, head of partnership and insight, David Wilde, IT consultant and Paul Abraham, Capita.

The committee was informed that the Council had worked closely with Capita to develop and take forward the following five contract changes:

a)    Establishment of an IT end user computing environment for South and Vale Councils only, meeting our compliance needs for General Data Protection Regulations and enabling a range of new technology opportunities for secure mobile, flexible and multi-agency working;

b)    Return of the Fraud Service in the Revenues and Benefits function as an in-house service so we can continue to grow our success in this field;

c)    Bringing finance business service partner roles and a number of other key responsibilities back in-house and better defining the roles and responsibilities between the supplier and customer across the finance function;

d)    Bringing ownership of strategic Human Resources (HR) back in house and better defining the roles and responsibilities between the supplier and customer across the HR function;

e)    Upgrading our finance system to a fully supported and up to date version of Unit 4 Business World (formerly called Agresso).

The scope of the changes for b), c) and d) were virtually agreed, with the changes intended from the end of October 2018, subject to any time limitations set by TUPE and subject to completion of the revised inter-authority agreement between the five councils. The scope of the changes for a) and e) were also near completion. The proposed changes would be submitted to Cabinet in October.

These changes were part of a wider action plan, attached as an appendix to the report, to achieve stability.

The chief executive informed the committee that Capita’s commitment to improving performance and renegotiating the contract had contributed significantly to the progress made to date.

In response to members’ questions about the action plan, it was reported that:

·         Some of the IT issues were caused by the Council’s legacy pre-contract IT being integrated with the Capita provisioned IT which had not been consolidated into a single environment.It was anticipated that the IT infrastructure would be brought up to a suitable standard by January 2019.

·         Since the publication of the action plan, some of the projects RAG rated as amber (in negotiation) had been reclassified as green (under way and on track).

·         The IT Enterprise Architecture road maps would be circulated to committee members.

·         The upgrade of the Agresso finance system was scheduled for April-June 2019.

The committee congratulated the Cabinet member, officers and Capita representatives on the progress made to date and requested a further update to its January 2019 meeting.

RESOLVED: to:

1.     Note the progress made on implementing changes to the Five Councils Capita Contract;

2.     Note the action plan attached at Annex A for the short term (1 year) to resolve other outstanding issues across our technology platforms and the Five Councils contract and to establish a medium-term technology strategy; and

3.     Request that a further progress report be submitted to the committee in January 2019.