Agenda item
One Council Programme update
The committee will receive an update from Irene Bremang (Programme Management Office (PMO) Manager) on the status of the programme and the individual projects within it.
Minutes:
Sue Harper (Director of Environment and Neighbourhoods) informed members that there had been a change to the senior levels of the One Council Programme. A CMT/One Council Strategic Programme Board had been establish and was chaired by the Interim Chief Executive and its remit was to manage the strategic direction of the One Council Programme. A One Council Programme Delivery Board had also been developed to focus on One Council projects and Sue Harper was the Chair of the One Council Programme Delivery Board.
Irene Bremang (PMO Manager) introduced her update on the One Council Programme by informing Members that since the last update in December 2012 there had been an increase in the number of One Council projects from 36 to 41. Two of the new projects had already begun and were in delivery, these were the Customer and Visitor Management project and the Promoting Pupil Inclusion project. Three further projects were in the pre-delivery stage. It was added that six projects had now been completed which included the Future Customer Services project and the Website Enhancement project. The Members were then kept up to date with the two projects that had been rated as Red in December. The first project was within Procurement and there had been a delay in identifying additional savings; this had now been resolved. The Web Enhancement project was the second project had been Rated red because there had been an issue with using online forms. This has been addressed and the project has been completed. Both of these projects moved to an Amber status prior to their completion and closure.
It was added that there were two other projects currently rated Red as well. The first was the Brent One Oracle E-business suite, which was previously named Project Athena. It was a partnership project and the go live date had been pushed back from July until November 2013 due to some changes to the system requirements made by the partnership. Moving the go live date had meant that Brent had had to temporarily extend the current payroll contract and incur extra costs. The other project also rated Red was the Parking Enforcement Review. This was a large project with 6 interdependent work streams which needed more effective project management. Good progress had been made with project delivery and a new project manager had been put in place to help keep the project moving in the right direction. The project was expected to move from Red to Amber shortly when the revised Project Initiation Document was approved.
Members were further informed about the new governance arrangements for the One Council Programme. The interim Chief Executive had become the One Council Programme Sponsor and the CMT/OC Strategic Programme Board would start meeting on a 4-weekly basis from June 2013. The One Council Programme Delivery Board, chaired by Sue Harper would also begin meeting in June. Robust project and programme management and reporting would still continue to be maintained as part of the One Council Programme. It was added that there had been a drop in risks reported by One Council Projects from 183 to 155. This was largely due to several One Council projects having been completed and closed since the last report to members in December 2013.
In 2012/2013 the One Council Programme had delivered cumulative savings of £54 million, in 2013/2014 another £10 million was forecast to be saved and it was expected that there would be further savings of £14 million in 2014/15. It was added that there had also been a number of non-financial benefits being delivered through One Council projects as well, and the non-financial benefits from the Adult Social Care Learning Disability Transformation project was used as an example. There were no legal implication arising and no significant cumulative impacts on any one diversity strand across the One Council Programme as a whole. The update was concluded by members being told that the One Council Programme still had a lot to deliver. However, the remaining One Council projects were the harder and more complex projects to deliver in the One Council Programme.
During discussion it was queried whether Brent had any possible sanctions against its partners in the One Oracle project due to the costs that Brent had incurred. Members also asked whether it would have been advisable to ensure the Head of HR had been appointed before the restructure of HR had taken place, especially as the interim head of HR had been in place for over 13 months. Members also sought clarification as to when the new senior management structure would be put into place and how the recruitment of senior posts was progressing. Members also had a number of questions regarding the new parking scheme and therefore it was agreed that an update on the parking project should be on the agenda of the next meeting. Members agreed that they would also like an update on the Adult Social Care project as well.
Irene Bremang replied by stating that system changes agreed by the partnership had resulted in the Oracle go live date being pushed back. Brent had to take responsibility for the temporary payroll arrangements required before the payroll system went live in the Oracle system. Although partners were aware of critical timelines, Brent was unable to regain these costs from the other partners in the project. In regards to the Senior Management restructure, it was explained that the process had begun and the external recruitment of certain posts was imminent. It was projected that the new structures would be in place from the September and that any potential costs would be offset by the savings in this current year. Therefore the project was still expected to save £2.9 million per annum from 2014/15. It was noted that there could potentially be some gaps between the new structure being implemented and the appointments being made to certain roles. However until those gaps were identified, it could not be estimated what implications there may be. The Chair asked for these risks to be highlighted at the next meeting, as well as the lead member to attend, as the Committee were rather concerned at the potential of extra costs and service breakdown.
In conclusion Irene Bremang stated that there was confidence that the One Council Programme would be able to meet its financial targets as they still had a number of projects in delivery or pre delivery as well as projects that would continue to give savings for a number of years. It was recognised that more projects were needed for the future and new opportunities were being discussed in the council at various levels in order to achieve this. Once new potential future projects were identified it was agreed that the Committee would be informed of them.
Supporting documents:
- one_council_programme_report, item 6. PDF 395 KB
- one_council_programme_dashboard, item 6. PDF 200 KB