Agenda item

Report of the Joint ICT Service Delivery Manager - To Follow

Joint ICT Committee considered the Quarterly Service Report for the period April to June 2021. Members were assisted in this by the Joint ICT Service Delivery Manager, who explained the performance information.

The total number of service requests and incidents had remained high throughout the quarter. The highest number was recorded in June due to an issue that required some officers to reset their two factor authentication.

Committee was informed that the total number of outstanding calls had remained consistently high over the quarter. The majority of outstanding calls were Service Requests rather than incidents. It would take some time to reduce the outstanding call list to pre-Covid levels and this was impacting the Service Level Agreement (SLA). As older calls are resolved, there would be a higher percentage of calls which fail the SLA.

Members heard that there had been no breaches to the SLA at BDC, DDDC or Rykneld but that it had been breached at NEDDC throughout the quarter. To address this, staff had been scheduled onto the NEDDC site to deal with hardware related incidents and service requests.

There had been one Priority One and 25 Priority Two incidents in the quarter. The Priority One incident was the issue in June that required some officers to reset their two factor authentication.

Members learned that Joint ICT Project time had remained high over the quarter and that percentage time spent on projects was on average above the 35% target during the quarter at 40.2%.

There was a £33,000 underspend due to a number of factors such as delays in recruitment and reduced travel cost as less people were working on and moving between sites. This included a £27,000 underspend in services due to a vacancy in an application and development post as well as from differences in invoice times.

Committee heard that the new joint internet connection would save £4000 per year from 2022/2023 as well as provide an increased bandwidth at reduced costs. NEDDC telephony migration to ‘SIP’ (internet telephony) would provide savings on call costs but would require some consultancy cost to migrate.

During the quarter there had been four security related incidents for BDC, five for DDDC, six for the NEDDC and 15 for Rykneld Homes Ltd (RHL). None of these qualified as a serious breach that required reporting.

The Joint ICT Service had conducted a survey for customer service, hardware performance and specific services questions.

The service had scored higher than the previous year for customer service. Some individuals had reported that they did have to chase the service desk for an update but this was to be expected due to the increased demand placed on the service.

There was only a minor difference between 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 in terms of hardware performance. Most of this work was related to virtual desktops and VPNs rather than physical hardware. There had been an increase to network links which improved how video conferencing worked at home. This would be reviewed when agile working arrangements had been established.

There was room for improvement in ICT security and awareness training and the Chamber equipment could require renewing. There had also been a decrease in the amount of printing.

Members heard that overall service satisfaction was high. The service had used the results to generate an action plan which was shared with senior management and would be used to continually improve the service. Any updates would be shared in future committee meetings.

Joint ICT Committee discussed the underspend and heard that the vacancy had not yet been filled but the underspend was also caused by other factors such as bills and payments spanning over two financial years. The underspend is likely to decrease but would continue to be monitored in the future.

Members questioned why BDC’s overall satisfaction was lower than the other partners. The Joint ICT Service Delivery Manager reported that significant improvements had been made to BDC and that satisfaction in almost all areas had increased from the previous year. She was therefore unsure why the overall satisfaction level was lower than the other partners.

All the tables in the report would be scrutinised with the user action plan following the meeting. The survey did not reveal anything that the service wasn’t previously aware of. They would scrutinise why the BDC overall satisfaction levels were lower than the other partners.

Committee praised the IT department for delivering the service during a difficult period due to the Covid Pandemic.

Joint ICT Committee enquired as to whether the target for project work should be increased due to the high volume of projects. Members heard that if the amount of time spent on projects increased, then the service would require extra resources in order to deliver projects and still provide the service.

Members requested that the quality of internet calls should not suffer in order to keep costs down.

RESOLVED – That the service report be noted.