Issue - meetings

This report provides an update on the performance of the Shared ICT Service.

Fabio Negro (Managing Director Shared Technology Services) introduced the report to the Joint Committee providing an update on key performance areas in relation to the Shared Technology Service (STS).

Members noted the summary of key performance management indicators for the service across all three Council’s, which had been included within the report and in terms of detailed service performance, the Joint Committee were advised of the following:

·            In this reporting period (November 2024 to January 2025), SLA performance for priority 3 (P3) operational incident issues had improved by around 5% and priority 4 (P4) operational request calls SLA had been maintained within the SLAs in the main.

·            STS had achieved the second lowest number of open issues and requests for staff since the inception of the shared service, despite having the largest user base on record.  A slight increase in tickets was seen in February 2025.

·            STS had introduced a new Customer Experience survey to gain improved feedback on customer interactions.

·               Recent Audit reviews had been positive, with the lowest amount of outstanding audit actions remaining.

·               The Laptop project for Brent was now underway with the Southwark Business Case approved.

·            Since April of last year, the STS had seen a growing demand on services with the number of tickets logged into STS queues increasing with it noted that the number of supported users had grown from 10,500 users in 2020 to 12,500 in 2024.

·            Savings had been agreed for 2025/26 with discussions ongoing in relation to further savings requirements for 2026/27.

·            The Shared Service was receiving less P1 issues and P1 incidents continued to reduce.

The Chair thanked Fabio Negro for the service performance update provided and noted that a reduction in P1 incidents was positive.  The Chair enquired whether the additional investment, albeit being a one-off investment, was sustainable given the number of on-site engineers.  Fabio Negro highlighted that the service was undergoing significant change alongside the laptop refresh and this would inevitably cause issues.  In 2020, there were 11,000 users being supported by the Shared Service and currently there were approximately 13,000 users.  However, the Service had seen an increase of staff by 15-20%.  The Service Improvement Team dealt with management and change control with the team working to reduce P1 and P2 incidents resulting in less calls.

The Chair councillor then invited comments from Members with the following issue(s) raised:

·            In regard to the P3 incidents, further details were sought on what measures were being taken to improve these and in regard to the 170 open tickets from 2023-24.  In regard to customer satisfaction, clarification was sought as to what lessons were learnt and what improvements would be made.  In response, Fabio Negro confirmed that P4 incidents were meeting the SLA’s but were an ongoing challenge and there were many projects ongoing that affected the statistics.

·            Members asked for a breakdown on the projects affecting the tickets and what mitigations were being placed.  It was noted that it was difficult to compare call numbers across all 3  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6

This report provides an update on the performance of the Shared ICT Service.

Fabio Negro (Managing Director Shared Technology Services) introduced the report to the Joint Committee providing an update on key performance areas in relation to the Shared Technology Service (STS).

Members noted the summary of key performance management indicators for the service across all three Council’s, which had been included within the report and in terms of detailed service performance, the Joint Committee were advised of the following:

·            Whilst progress continued to be made in the overall reduction of open STS operational calls, there had been an increase in the current reporting period (July – October 2024).

·            In the current reporting period (July – October 24) there had been eight Priority 1 incidents related to STS infrastructure, six of which had been resolved within SLA, with six application/supplier related P1 incidents.

·            P3 incidents remained the most common type of incident, as these were related to issues experienced by individual users. The target SLA was to resolve 90% of P3 incidents within two working days.  13,667 P3 incidents had been logged into STS operational queues by partner councils during this reporting period, with an overall SLA performance of 82% (compared with 87% in the previous reporting period) and the top eight categories for P3 calls detailed in section 4.8.4 of the report.  This had coincided with an overall increase in demand during the reporting period, with the STS having seen around 850 calls more per month logged than in the previous reporting period and the majority of these being classified as P3 incidents.

·            Priority 4 incidents were defined as requests for standard service or catalogue item.  The standard SLA was to resolve 80% within 5 working days.  In the current reporting period, there had been 10,137 P4 requests logged into STS operational queues, with an overall SLA performance of 90% compared with the previous reporting period figure of 93%. Whilst noting that SLA performance had dropped slightly, members recognised this has been impacted by the increased number of P3 incidents with the top call logging categories for STS operational P4 requests detailed in section 4.9.3 of the report.

·            The impact of the higher level of demand on operational services, such as the upgrading of servers (Windows 2012), the rollout of Office 365 applications across the councils, emergency planning, and resilience exercises, high-level of infrastructure change and ageing laptop fleet as further context in relation to the overall level of P3 & P4 performance.

·            The detailed provided within section 4.3 of the report on the number of open calls currently in STS operational queues. Whilst progress continued to be made in the overall reduction of open STS operational calls, it was noted there had been an increase during the current reporting period (July – October 2024) which reflected the demand in terms of tickets raised in STS operational queues arising from the high level of change across all three councils and change-related issues.

·            The ongoing focus on the customer experience including the development of on-site and telephone support with the overall number of calls  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6