Agenda and minutes

To confirm the appointment of the Chair for the meeting.

In accordance with Section 10 of the Joint Committee Terms of Reference the chair should rotate between the appointed members from each Council at each meeting. As this meeting is being hosted by the London Borough of Southwark, the practice is for the chair of the meeting to be appointed from the membership of that authority.

RESOLVED that in accordance with Section 10 of the Joint Committee’s Terms of Reference, Councillor Bonavia (as representative of the hosting Authority – London Borough of Lewisham) be appointed as Chair for the duration of the meeting.

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor De Ryk (London Borough of Lewisham) and Councillor Lury (London Borough of Southwark) along with Peter Gadsdon (London Borough of Brent – Strategic Director Customer & Digital Services).

Members are invited to declare at this stage of the meeting, the nature and existence of any relevant disclosable pecuniary, personal or prejudicial interests in the items on this agenda and to specify the item(s) to which they relate.

There were no declarations of interest declared by Members.

To approve the minutes of the previous meeting as a correct record.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the previous meeting of the Joint Borough IT Committee of Brent, Lewisham and Southwark held on Tuesday 2 March 2021 be approved as a correct record.

No deputations or request to speak were submitted by members of the public.

Due to the loss of the webcasting connection, the meeting was paused at 6:05pm and reconvened at 6:20pm.

Fabio Negro (Managing Director of Shared Service) introduced the report to the Joint Committee updating members on key performance areas in relation to the Shared ICT Service.

Members noted the summary of key performance management indicators for the service across all three Councils, which had been included within Appendix A of the update report. In terms of detailed service performance, the Joint Committee were advised that since the last meeting in March 2021:

·                     The Target Operating Model structure had largely been implemented with the completed restructure now having gone live.  This had led to a number of appointments in previously hard to fill roles and a number of roles being filled on a permanent rather than agency basis.  Work was now underway to embed the new structure, roles and ways of working building on the additional capabilities available as a means of addressing the performance targets for the service with greater capacity to manage ticket volumes and reduce the causes of incidents.  Details of the new structure and capabilities available within the news teams were provided in section 3.55 and 3.56 of the report.

·                During the four month period between April and July, call volumes had been evenly distributed with around 7,000 calls per month in the Shared Technology Service (STS) queues. The biggest change noted, however, had been the increase of open calls (including untriaged), which had risen to over 3,500.  It was reported that the increased number of calls was partly due to the restructure of STS affecting capacity as well as some of the large transition projects currently being progressed and the nature of calls being logged with the move from the old thin-client/remote desktop server environment to one that now encompassed approximately 10,000 laptops generating more complex problems.

·                Members of the Board noted that between the period of 01 February 2021 and 31 May 2021, the shared service logged 41,502 tickets, which was an average of 10,375 tickets per month against 45,407 in the last period (October 2020 - January 2021 with an average of 11,350 tickets per month).  These tickets consisted of both issues and service requests. A breakdown of tickets logged was detailed within section 3.10 of the report.

·                Of the eight priority 1 incidents within STS queues, all were resolved within the service level agreement, which was a reduction compared to the overall number of priority 1 incidents (14) reported within the previous reporting period. Four of the P1 calls related to physical infrastructure beyond STS control including a power cut and physical fibre-cable damage. There were also five non-STS related P1s that were resolved by local applications teams within each Borough.

·                Priority 2 and 3 issues within STS queues had seen an average of 57% and 67% compliance with the service level agreements (against 72% and 71% reported for the previous period). While STS had placed considerable emphasis on improved call management,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

None.

Members were advised that meetings, which did not require the Committee to make any formal decisions, could still be held virtually and on this basis it was noted that future meetings had been scheduled as follows:

·                Tuesday 12 October 21 at 6pm to be hosted by London Borough of Brent

·                Tuesday 15 March 22 at 6pm to be hosted by London Borough of Southwark

At this stage in proceedings the Chair advised that he intended to move into closed session for the remainder of the meeting in order to consider an additional update (following on from the STS performance report) on the progress being made with the decommissioning arrangements across the STS in relation to Windows 2008 server platform.

Given the commercially sensitive nature of these arrangements the Joint Committee were advised they would need to pass a formal resolution excluding the press and public in order to receive a more detailed update.

It was therefore AGREED that that under Section 100A (4) of the Government Act 1972 the press and public be excluded from the remainder of the meeting for consideration of the update in relation to the Windows 2008 decommissioning programme on the grounds that it would involve the disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 3 (information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person, including the authority holding that information) of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Act (as amended).

The live webcast was ended at this stage of the meeting to enable the Joint Committee to move into private session.

Fabio Negro then provided members with a further update on the current progress being made with the decommissioning programme for the Windows 2008 legacy server platform across the STS being undertaken as part of the Technology Roadmap for the Service.

Members noted the progress made in terms of the applications within Brent and Lewisham and ongoing timescales for completion of the programme along with the different model adopted within Southwark based on their cloud migration programme.

The importance of the programme was recognised by members in terms of wider system support arrangements and resilience issues given the work being undertaken to harden the infrastructure and provide necessary back-up and recovery solutions.

Having noted the update provided it was agreed that further background details (in the form of a detailed Excel spreadsheet) would be provided for members of the Joint Committee on the decommissioning programme.