Issue - meetings

An officer presentation will be given at the meeting.

The Chair invited Jeff Wring (Service Director – Commercial & Governance) to give a presentation to the Panel (attached as Appendix 3 to these minutes).

Jeff Wring highlighted the following points in his presentation:

• Strategy Context
• Strategy – Vision
• Strategy – Principles
• Strategy – Priorities
• DD&T 21/22 Roadmap for Delivery of Strategy
• Next steps

Following questions and comments from the Panel, these points were highlighted:

• A lot of Council’s staff were working from home and a lot of them were working from their own computers and their own telephones. It appears that there was going to be a huge investment in hardware to provide the staff with the equipment they need before starting all the other aspects of this plan.  The Council has started the process of investing in a brand-new kit for its staff, and the first 300 high quality laptops have already been issued. This process for the remainder of staffwould be rolling out through the remainder of this financial year.

• Members of the Panel queried if the Strategy outcomes could be quantified with KPIs to outline when certain themes were achieved.  Jeff Wring replied that each one of the outcomes from the Strategy created a number of commitments or performance targets. During the next year a dashboard will be developed to be able to report on delivery of these targets which would be included in the Council’s performance management framework.

• The Panel suggested that Councillors should have 24/7 support from the IT in instances when their iPads crash or if there were any connection/performance issues with Councillors’ devices.

• The Panel acknowledged that the presentation mentioned agility on a couple of occasion. The Panel commented that the agility was very important but it's extremely difficult to achieve without understanding which of the systems could be agile and which can't.

• Members of the Panel queried about technology used in the Council building (i.e. microphones in the Council Chamber, hybrid meetings, etc) in order to engage more residents in democratic process.  Jeff Wring responded that there was an ongoing work with other departments on a number of issues in terms of the technology in the Council, in accordance with the list of priorities.  Some of those ideas, such as hybrid meetings of the Council, were restricted due to current government legislations on holding meetings in the public. 

The Chair thanked Jeff Wring for presentation.

It was RESOLVED to note the presentation and to receive an update report on the Digital Data and Technology Strategy at one of the future meetings next year.