Issue - meetings

Strata IT Director's Report

Meeting: 05/01/2018 - Strata Joint Executive Committee (Item 4)

4 Strata IT Director's Report pdf icon PDF 1 MB

To consider the report of the Strata IT Director.

 

Additional documents:

Decision:

Agreed

 

 

that the report be noted.

Reason for Decision:

 

As set out in the report.

 

 

Minutes:

The Strata IT Director presented his report to update Members on the progress within Strata – presentation attached to minutes.

 

The Teignbridge Director commented that the Business Plan for 2018/19 was on target to make the predicated savings of £382,000 while a revised plan would be brought to the Executive Committee later in the year. Strata now had a better understanding of costs and customer expectations and there was a need to look at the convergence plan versus the three Council’s key proprieties. The out of hours support service had proved to be a success. It had been funded by Strata monies but, from the 6 February 2018, would be funded by the individual Councils on a percentage basis.

 

The Strata IT Director stated that there was a lot of new technology emerging in the market place and that this could have an impact on any future business plans. There is likely to be an increase of 16% in the cost of Microsoft licences, but it was anticipated that this increase could be off set against savings elsewhere. All increases in contracts were being challenged and all the budgets were being tightly managed by individual Managers.

 

Members welcomed the communication from Strata with regards to the recent publicity surrounding the IT Security threat and supported the continuation of the out of hour’s service. They felt this was important as any problems could be dealt with quickly and it helped to alleviate risk.

 

The Strata IT Director clarified that Strata was looking into understanding the issues of the slow start-up of the Global Desk top for some users.

 

Strata Joint Scrutiny Committee considered the report at its meeting on 30 November 2017 and its comments were reported.

 

RESOLVED that the report be noted.

 

 


Meeting: 07/12/2017 - Strata Joint Executive Committee (Item 7.)

7. Strata IT Director's Report pdf icon PDF 761 KB

To consider the report of the Strata IT Director.

 


Meeting: 30/11/2017 - Strata Joint Scrutiny Committee (Item 54)

54 Strata IT Director's Report pdf icon PDF 761 KB

To consider the report of the Strata IT Director.

 

Minutes:

The Strata IT Director presented the quarterly report on the functioning of the Strata organisation, the aim being to provide background to the core areas of specialisation within Strata and identifying key activities, successes and areas for improvement. The report gave examples of the progress Strata had made against the core objectives of cost reduction, risk reduction and increasing capability for change and included a SWOT analysis and updated key performance indiactors.

 

Strata had continued to make progress and was delivering a good service

to the three authorities again confirmed by the Devon Audit Partnership (DAP), the main challenge being the major systems outage on 13th September which had occurred in the Dell Storage Area Network (SAN). Strata had engaged with both ComputerWorld who had designed the SAN solution and Dell who manufactured it and advanced technical training for two of the Strata Infrastructure engineers was in place. It was explained that all critical systems were recovered via the Oakwood backup and that the outage had enabled Strata to review the capabilityof the Oakwood secondary data centre location, options for improving the Oakwood DC being investigated to be reported to this Committee and the Strata Joint Executive Committee in due course.

 

Members recognised that, apart from niche areas, where smaller suppliers could offer services, increasingly it was only possible to invite the larger companies to tender where leverage for negotiation was not as great, as was the case with the recent outlook crash where Microsoft had advised that the likely cost of a fix was prohibitively expensive and that the option to upgrade to Outlook 2016 was advisable.

 

He highlighted the following key areas:-

 

·         the Exmouth Town Hallrelocation project for East Devon District Council had been delivered on time and budget with work now on the move to Honiton. The IT Director praised Sue Langston in particular and Robin Barlow for their hard work on this project;

·         three new apprentices joined in September and Strata was engaging with Exeter University regarding offering a degree programme;

·         positive results from a Staff Engagement Survey;

·         ahigh level of project work with demands made upon the Business Analysts with interruptions to resolve Service incidents. Strata intended to introduce a new third line support function which would be cost neutral.;

·         effective recruitment with high calibre staff being recruited;

·         an Out of Hours service had been launched on 6 November;

·         successful roll out of new Multi Function Devices - printers;

·         the Strata Security and Compliance team had continued to make good progress in protecting the three authorities against cyber threats;

·         engaging with each authority to perform a review of all current projects with all asked to prioritise their projects as High, Medium and Low;

·         risk monitoring was in place and shared with DAP; and

·         financial monitoring had been increased with financial reporting across service teams.

 

The following responses were given to Members’ queries:-

 

·         the new Global Communication platform was proving effective with a view to having all three authorities migrated to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 54