Agenda item

Consider report by Director Strategic Commissioning and Partnerships.  (Copy attached.)

3.1     There had been circulated a report by Jen Holland, Director Strategic Commissioning & Partnerships.  This report presented key information with respect to the CGI contract for the full year 2022 and key updates on performance to date. It provides Elected Members with key information on the governance of the contract, updated information on the transformation programme being delivered with CGI including the recently approved Social Work Pathfinder transformation programme, key performance information with respect to the service delivery of the contract and a note of key issues associated with contract management, including change requests signed in the quarter and Impact Assessment status. This report was designed to be read in conjunction with the appended slide presentation, which provided further detailed information on each of the aforementioned areas.  Meetings of the various groups that oversee the contract including this quarterly meeting of the ESPMG were highlighted. These were all “green” during Q1 Q2 Q3 and Q4 to end December 2022. 

3.2       Mr John Wordsworth-Goodram presented the slides which highlighted key information from the report.  With reference to the paragraph 3.3 of the Minute of 29 November 2022, a Transformation Status update on the Social Work Pathfinder Programme was summarised.  Project Teams were in place across the workforce and full progress updates were to be provided to this committee. The Digital Transformation Board met fortnightly to monitor progress.  The plan was in the delivery phase and was due to be completed by August 2023, with a complete timeline of the Pathfinder programme provided in the slide deck.  An overview of the Transformation Roadmap was provided and work had been carried out by the Council Management Team to prioritise all current proposals for transformation works based on a detailed list of principles and outcomes. All future digital proposals were be considered through this process to ensure strategic alignment and allocation of resources. 

3.3       A summary of key projects concerned with ‘Applications’ and ‘Infrastructure’ and their current status was provided.  Each of the projects has been RAG assessed and commentary had been provided against each status.  With regards Applications, two projects had been completed since the last report. Two projects were on hold - Tech Forge Cloud and Legal EDMS - with two projects currently Amber both delayed, one due to connectivity issues with CGI currently working to progress and one due to HLD delays.  In relation to Infrastructure, of the eleven projects detailed, three had completed since the last report, two were RAG assessed as green, four projects were amber and two projects were RED. The two red project were projects impacted by third party supplier pressures with Paton Street near completion with works prioritised between SBC and CGI. Of the four projects with an amber status the Mac Book deployment was delayed due to the firewall works and was now progressing, of the Primary WAN 36 of the 43 sites were now surveyed by BT with the remaining seven sites pending, the Lync decommissioning had four of eight changes implemented with the next changes scheduled 9th March 2023 and Family WIFI rewrite was concluded in all but one site and a potential solution was being reviewed. 

3.4       A summary of Key Performance Information was given with key successes as follows: a reviewed change management process was being trialled; work was being undertaken to streamline further along with a service desk improvement plan; and the Pulsant firewall issue had now been identified and the third party provider were working on a fix.  Challenges had included the service desk which had seen significant amounts of incidents and work orders over August and September where the resultant backlog had led to two severe incidents, one serious and two minor SLA failures. The backlog had been cleared by the end of 2022 and a rectification plan was submitted to SBC.  User Satisfaction had scored low throughout the reporting period and the percentage of Users’ responses had increased significantly.  A Get To Green plan had been proposed based on User feedback and necessary action was being taken.  A visit to the Cardiff based Service Desk had been scheduled for next week, with Jen Holland and Nick Byers in attendance, to ascertain how the service could be further improved.  Information was provided with respect to the key deliverables of the contract across 71 performance measures.  There was one red KPI target over Quarter 4 which related directly to failure rectify incidents within the agreed timeline.  There were four red KPI key performance failures and eight amber KPI failures from October to December.  Service delivery was reported as being below the 99.9% target at 98.99% for both P1 and P2 application availability during January 2023, with Northgate Revenue and Benefits system and the Scottish Welfare Fund access system being affected.  A summary of Change requests with outstanding Complex Impact Assessments was provided and additional resource and skill sets had been allocated to ensure their timely progression; lessons were being taken forward and all IAs were now imminent. A timeline was to be provided to members. 

3.5       Community benefits were highlighted and included sponsorship across Borders Key events, CGI river clean and the CGI Cyber escape experience which had returned to the Borders in February and was attended by local businesses and education institutions.  The CGI South team had raised £1000 for Prostate Cancer Scotland and £320 had been raised for Mission Christmas. A number of teams and clubs had also been sponsored and CGI were seeking to increase this with a further 5 nominations received. 

3.6       On the matter of recruitment, it was reported that the Tweedbank office was now fully operational with a recently appointed recruitment manager who resided locally.  CGI currently employed 69 members in the Borders region and had 103 members working on Borders activity.  There had been an additional six roles recruited since the last update in Commercial, Contracts, Project Management and Training.  Planned recruitment involving Codeclan (who were focused on retraining) included 2 software developers, 3 graduate apprentices, 4 project delivery roles, 23 service desk members and 10 test automaton engineers with the two latter roles to be based in Tweedbank. 

3.7       With regards to ticket backlogs around the Christmas period it was confirmed that future forecasting had been completed to ensure that adequate resource was in place.  In response to a question on how tickets were prioritised, Mr Wordsworth-Goodram agreed to share the procedure with members. Mr Wordsworth-Goodram also undertook to circulate the Service Catalogue to members to provide information on what was available to purchase.  In response to a question about lower user satisfaction, it was agreed that a detailed update on planned improvement was to be brought to the next meeting.  Additionally it was agreed that the number of user satisfactions surveys sent out and those completed be provided ahead of the next meeting.  Work around creating more omni channel support was to be considered, specifically ‘Amelia’, a chat bot function to help with the simpler enquiries such as password reset which would allow more complex issues to be dealt with by the service desk.

DECISION

NOTED:

(a)       the report and the associated slide deck; and,

(b)       the information provided within the report and the associated slide deck detailing the performance of the CGI over the full year 2022.

The meeting was adjourned at 14:40pm.