Agenda item

(To receive a report from Sophie Reeve, Assistant Director – Commercial, and John Wickens, Interim Assistant Director - IMT , which provides an update of Serco's performance against contractual Key Performance Indicators specified in the Corporate Support Services Contract between April and June 2019, and provides an update on the progress made against key IMT-related transformation and transactional projects being undertaken by Serco and other third party suppliers)

Consideration was given to a report by the Serco Contract Manager, which provided an update of Serco's performance against contractual Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) specified in the Corporate Support Services Contract between April and July 2019. 

The Serco Contract Manager also highlighted the KPI's which had been granted mitigation during the reporting period.

Members were informed that the KPI performance across all service areas had remained strong, with no KPI failures within the reporting period.

Members were invited to ask questions on the Performance of the Corporate Support Services Contract, in which the following points were noted:

·       ACF_KPI_03 ('% of new, and change of circumstance, financial assessments for non-residential care completed within 15 Business Days of referral from the Council') has been in long-term mitigation. The Target Service Level for this KPI is 75%, and the achieved percentages from April – June ranged from 58.53% – 70.71%.

·       Officers confirmed that work was actively underway with Serco to improve the performance of financial assessments, which would tie in with the Council's current review of the financial assessment policy.

·       The consequence of not completing timely financial assessments for non-residential care could mean that an individual may begin receiving care with limited knowledge of what financial contribution they would eventually need to make.

·       The Head of Operations (Serco) clarified that financial assessments for residential care had a much higher performance rate for completion within the required timeframe compared to non-residential assessments.

Members were referred to Appendix A of the report, which set out the top 20 priority IMT projects for review by the Board.

The Interim Assistant Director - IMT provided the Board with a summary of each of the projects and how they were progressing. It was noted that the majority of projects were on track to complete by their set deadlines.

Officers were pleased to report that there had been good progress made since March 2019, which could be demonstrated through the number of completed projects.

Members were invited to ask questions, in which the following points were noted:

·       It was clarified that all technical and property work at the new South Park Fire and Rescue centre had now been completed. However, a drainage issue in the car park had meant that the Police could not occupy the building and therefore the move had been delayed by around three weeks.

·       Members were informed that the Windows 10 Corporate Refresh Phase 2 was progressing well, with over two thirds of employees already having received new devices. The project was on track to complete within the set deadline.

·       It was noted that the Executive Director – Commercial had been updating Members via email on the progress of the Council's new Corporate Website. Members would be invited to a viewing of the updated website following the Council meeting on the 13 September 2019.

·       The implementation of corporate capability to take card payments had now been completed. It was noted the project had been delayed as a result of business and commercial reasons rather than technical reasons. There had also been additional complications in that the card payments needed to be integrated into the systems that the registrars were using.

·       Officers reported that they had reduced the level of technical debt within IMT which had allowed the programme of works to progress into real time working and reduce the associated risks.

·       The lifecycle refresh was expected to be completed by March 2020.

·       It was explained that some old IT devices were set up on old servers which was described as 'unsupported technology' and not fit for purpose.

RESOLVED:

1.    That assurance was sought by the Board about the performance of the Corporate Support Services Contract;

2.    That the Board was satisfied with the performance of the 20 priority IMT projects.