Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Jayne Dethick, Karen Hanson and Councillor S Fritchley (BDC).

Members are requested to declare the existence and nature of any disclosable pecuniary interest and/or other interests, not already on their register of interests, in any item on the agenda and withdraw from the meeting at the appropriate time.

There were no interests declared at this meeting.

To approve as a correct record and the Chair to sign the attached Minutes of the Joint ICT Committee meeting held on 14 November 2022.

RESOLVED – That the notes of the Joint ICT Committee, held on Monday 14 November 2022 be approved as a true and accurate record.

Report of the Assistant Director of ICT.

Joint ICT Committee received the report for quarter three on the Joint ICT Service.

Members noted that the total number of outstanding calls had remained high over the past year and that additional resources may be required to manage this increased demand.

Committee heard that there had not been any priority one outages throughout the quarter and that there had been 18 priority two outages.

Members were informed that NEDDC telephony migration to ‘SIP’ (internet telephone) would provide savings on call costs but would incur some consultancy costs to migrate. Migration of PSN DNS services from three separate connections into one shared connection in February 2023 would save £2000 per authority per year.

Committee received the security report, as contained within the report, and heard that there had been a total of nine security incidents at NEDDC, six at DDDC and four at BDC. It was noted that more sophisticated attacks were being picked up but that this was impacting on resources.

Members gave thanks to the Joint ICT Service for their superb work on the new website for DDDC.

Members discussed the report at length and noted that at this time, Microsoft SharePoint would not be rolled out. Members of the Committee also enquired into what had caused the outages at DDDC and heard that it had been caused by the exchange database. It was also noted that extra staff had been recruited in order to assist with the extra workload as a result of the Microsoft 365 project.

Members discussed the role of the Committee and its function and focus. It was considered that further discussions on this should be held at the next annual meeting.

RESOLVED – That the service report be noted.

Update from the Assistant Director of ICT.

Members received an update on the progress of the Microsoft 365 update. They heard that major outages had minimised the available resources and caused delays on the progress for DDDC. The rollout for staff at NEDDC and BDC should be completed by the end of February.

Members heard that the new systems would be ready for Members after the main induction process following on from the elections in May.

Committee discussed the phased nature of the update to Microsoft 365, the importance of good audio quality for telephony and resilience in the face of cyber-attacks. Members were made aware that appropriate resilience policies were in place but that it would not always be possible to restore all data.

Committee also raised concerns over the reliance on large technology companies.

To consider any matter that the Chair of the Committee considers should be taken as Urgent Business.

It was agreed that the next meeting of the Joint ICT Committee would be held at the Offices at DDDC.