Agenda item

Consider report by Director Finance and Corporate Governance.  (Copy attached.)

1.1         The Chair welcomed Alan Dickie, Kevin Hislop, Grant Newman, Jonathan Scully, and Craig O’Sullivan from CGI to the meeting.  There had been circulated copies of a report that outlined key information of the third quarter performance of the CGI contract.  This included information on contract governance, information on the transformation programme that was being delivered by CGI and key service delivery performance information.  The contract between CGI and Scottish Borders Council was signed in 2016 and was subsequently amended and extended in 2020 which included a programme of IT transformation work.

1.2         With regards to Governance, meetings of the Executive Review Board and the Supplier Management Board did not occur during the third quarter period due to pressures of work.  It was assured that these meetings would be rescheduled for quarter 4.  Transformation projects had been ‘RAG’ assessed with three Transformation Projects being identified as ‘red’; these projects were Bulk Print, Lync Telephony Upgrade and End User Device for curricular settings.  Due to global shortages of available equipment, the project to refresh IT equipment in the Council Chamber and Committee Rooms had been placed at ‘amber’.  With regards to the project to increase bandwidth in the Council’s wide area network, five schools were noted as complete and the four remaining schools were noted as progressing.  100% of priority 1, 2 and 3 applications of the 77 key applications that CGI managed on behalf of the Council had met their performance targets during September.  With regards to Risks and Escalations, two risks identified as ‘amber’ which were carried forward from previous periods associated with Windows 2008 server support being withdrawn and the end of support for a number of end-of-life Windows 7 devices still operated by the Council had risk remediation plans identified.  CGI employed 68 staff at the end of September 2021 and planning was underway for the recruitment of the 2022 graduate recruitment process following the successful employment of nine Borders Graduates in 2021.

1.3         Office 365 and Bulk Print projects may be merged into a subsequent document centre project as a number of synergies had been identified.  Corporate SIP Implementation Project had been moved to a ‘red’ status.  Members discussed that the project had proven to be problematic and had been dependent on BT undertaking infrastructure work.  Nick Byers, IT Manager, had been in regular contact with BT whom had on a number of occasions moved back the deadline.  Members enquired whether the status of the project could be escalated at a higher level and stated that obtaining a full understanding of costs once estimates and a date for project completion is received would be a worthwhile undertaking.  Members insisted on a high-level discussion with BT/Openreach with the option of inviting key people to the Group if possible.  Members enquired why the MacBook’s; Corporate Comms & Planning project was ‘on hold’ at the request of Scottish Borders Council.  The Director Finance and Corporate Governance advised he would follow-up to ascertain why.

1.4         CGI confirmed that Service Delivery Performance had been rated ‘green’ across all performance indicators.  With regards to service improvement, a happy signal tool had been introduced to obtain users view of satisfaction which has produced successful results.  Facebook response rates had moved from 2-3% to 9% in October 2021.  Members discussed the change in metric to calculate user satisfaction which had reported that satisfied user metric was slightly underperforming.  The nature of the feedback toolset had captured higher user feedback highlighting lower satisfaction ratings.  The pilot for collecting user satisfaction had been extended to a 12-month period.  Responding to questions from members regarding costs of upgrades, Mr Scully advised that continual development was necessary to counter vulnerabilities.  Mr O’Sullivan further advised that when new hardware is purchased, there is a guarantee that they would be compatible with latest Microsoft operating systems.  Mr Robertson advised that Scottish Borders Council paid Microsoft approximately £700,000 for Windows 10 software which was regarded as essential for day-to-day operations and that there was an element of protection for additional software costs as well as costs associated for new hardware.  Councillor Thornton-Nicol enquired how Badge-Making and Door Entry was reported within 100% service operation after a note had been circulated that Scottish Borders Council staff badge-making had not been functional.  CGI had committed clarifying badge-making for members.   In response to a question from Councillor Anderson, Mr Scully advised that access to Mosaic comes from Pulsant.  There were challenges on tests performed on firewalls and some remedial action had been taken.  Mosaic was working at 100% since firewall work had been completed.  Councillor Rowley enquired how priorities had been set, how they were reviewed and if information on upgrading and downgrading priorities could be included in the next presentation.  Mr Robertson enquired why the impact of SIP delivery was amber and impact of risk assessed as ‘to be confirmed’ rather than ‘high’.  Mr Scully advised that could be reassessed.  The CGI Tweedbank Office was due to be completed in December 2021 with the fit-out and completed and office in use by March 2022.  It was advised that the building would allow CGI to have a foundation to capture school-leavers in recruitment before leaving the region.  Mr Dickie advised that the office would have a blended working approach between home and office-working, noting that if all employees attended the office then the office would fail on its net zero target.  It was noted that the timing of the formal opening of the CGI offices would inform whether Councillors would be able to attend as it may be within the “pre-election period”.  However, Councillors would welcome the opportunity to visit.

DECISION

AGREED:

(a)          that the report and associated slide deck had been reviewed and clarification was sought from Officers or CGI Representatives on any identified issues; and,

(b)          that the information provided that detailed the performance of the CGI over Quarter 3 2021 was satisfactory subject to the inclusion of the additional information requested.