Agenda item

Resolved:

That any draft IT strategy should come to the Committee before it goes to Mayor & Cabinet for decision.

Duncan Dewhurst (Interim Head of Service Change and Technology) introduced the presentation and outlined the following information:

·         Officers are developing a new IT strategy for Lewisham. Drivers for the IT strategy include linking IT provision to the business direction, addressing customer need and keeping pace with changes in technology. Officers have discovered that IT can be a blocker in the organisation when it should be an enabler and the new strategy will aim to make sure that IT does not hold the organisation back.

·         The Capita contract has a breakpoint in March/April 2016.

·         There is a need to address the ageing IT infrastructure and make sure it is Public Services Network compliant.

·         Corporate IT is currently made up of 3 teams and there is an overall spend of £10.6m per year, with £8.15m of that centralised spend and the rest spent directly by service areas. This is not expensive in comparison to other London Boroughs.

Officers have recognised the problems with IT facilities for councillors and to address some of these they will:

·         Enable Wi-Fi in the Civic Suite

·         Enable access to SharePoint and the intranet on tablets

·         Improve the support on offer from Capita, including named people in Capita to deal with Members.

In response to questions from the Committee, Kevin Sheehan (Executive Director for Customer Services), Duncan Dewhurst and Dave Borland (Change and Innovation Manager) provided the following information:

·         ‘Big data’ presents an opportunity to capture more information and use it to inform what we do. This is something that will be explored, including what data needs to be collected and how to use it.

·         Officers are considering ICT support options and arrangements. This includes how much it will cost, how to tie contracted IT into delivering the IT strategy, whether to operate a thin client or extended client approach, as well as the time taken to re-tender a contract should that be required.

·         IT provision ties into the Lewisham Future Programme as it is key to making efficiencies and supporting key services.

·         Officers are looking at reducing the number of applications that we use.

·         There have been teething issues with the introduction of Oracle, which is not unexpected. Lewisham is sharing Oracle with 6 other Councils and should save money in the long term.

·         Members IT support has been poor. Better access for tablets will be introduced, although there have been technical security issues around remote log-in.

·         There is a need to build up the infrastructure and capability if Lewisham is going to be able to deliver good services, which is the aim.

·         The issue of the digital divide and those not able to access digital services needs to be part of any digital strategy and approach.

·         Lewisham currently has a ‘flat network’ infrastructure, which is part of the reason why becoming PSN compliant has caused problems. Another factor has been interpretation of the guidelines, however Lewisham has to have PSN compliance sign-off from the Cabinet Office to be able to access vital information to deliver services.

Resolved:

That any draft IT strategy should come to the Committee before it goes to Mayor & Cabinet for decision.