Agenda and minutes

To receive apologies for absence from Committee members.

These were received from Councillors Haines, Leadbetter and Prowse.

To sign the minutes of the meeting held on 6 September 2017.

The minutes of the meeting held on 6 September 2017 were taken as read and signed by the Chair as correct.

Councillors are reminded of the need to declare any disclosable pecuniary interests that relate to business on the agenda and which have not already been included in the register of interests, before any discussion takes place on the item. Unless the interest is sensitive, you must also disclose the nature of the interest. In accordance with the Council's Code of Conduct, you must then leave the room and must not participate in any further discussion of the item.  Councillors requiring clarification should seek the advice of the Monitoring Officer prior to the day of the meeting.

No declarations of pecuniary interest were made.

A period of up to 15 minutes will be set aside to deal with questions to the Committee from members of the public.

Each individual will be restricted to speaking for a total of 3 minutes.

Where a question does not relate to an agenda item details of questions should be notified to the Proper Officer of the Relevant Council at least two working days prior to the meeting.

None.

To receive questions from Members of the Councils.

Where a question does not relate to an agenda item details of questions should be notified to the Proper Officer of the Relevant Council at least two working days prior to the meeting.

None.

To consider the report of the Strata IT Director.

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.

To consider the report of the Support and Infrastructure Manager.

The Infrastructure and Support Manager presented the report setting out the proposed roll out schedule for the new Global Comms platform, made up by two key products, Skype for Business as the telephone system and Anywhere365 as the new contact centre.

It was proposed to roll out East Devon over March to May 2018, Exeter August to October, Teignbridge February to April 2019 and satellite sites May to November 2019 with the reasons for the prioritisation set out in the report.

Strata Joint Scrutiny Committee noted and supported the report.

To consider the report of the Alternate Director with lead responsibility for Human Resources.

The Strata IT Director presented the report setting out the results of the staff engagement survey for 2017. An action plan would be drawn up by the Strata management team and human resources to be discussed with Unison. The survey was being sent out annually to facilitate year on comparisons.

In summary, 73% of the workforce had responded and there had been an improvement in every area compared with 2016. 88% of the 49 respondents to this particular question would recommend Strata as a place to work, compared with 87% in 2015 and 68% in 2016.

RESOLVED that, under Section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the press and public be excluded from the meeting during consideration of item 10 on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraphs 3 of Part I, Schedule 12A of the Act. 

RESOLVED that, under Section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the press and public be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following item on the grounds that it involved the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 3 of Part I, Schedule 12A of the Act.

To consider the report of the Director responsible for Finance.

The Director responsible for Finance reported that Strata had been given a total of £6,104,000 to run the IT Services in 2017/18 along with funding for various capital projects. The 2017/18 Business Plan had revised the savings profile set out in the original Business Cases over the initial ten year period of the Company.

The Strata budget was on track to deliver around £260,000 of revenue savings for the Councils in 2017/18 with the key variations set out in the report.

At the six month stage the Board was projecting a savings of £259,777 against the total original target of £252,836.

The report set out variations in the capital budget and it was noted that there had been some additional expenditure on the data centre.

The report set out a suggested change to the original method of funding agreed at the inception of the company and the pros and cons of this new system compared with the existing were set out. At this stage, the Strata Board wished to focus on improving service further rather than implementing a new charging system and the Scrutiny Committee supported this proposal

Strata Joint Scrutiny Committee noted and supported the report, requesting the Strata Joint Executive Committee to also support the Strata Board’s suggestion of not introducing a new charging policy at this stage.

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