Agenda and minutes

An apology for absence was received by Debbie Barnes OBE, Chief Executive.

None were declared.

RESOLVED:

           That minutes of the meeting held on 24 March 2022 be approved as a       correct record and signed by the Vice-Chairman. 

The Chairman highlighted that he would be passing on the Board’s comments from the discussions on items 8 and 9 to the Executive on the 4^th May 2022.

The Chairman would also be presenting the Overview and Scrutiny Annual Report for 2021-22 to the Council’s annual meeting on the 20^th May, subject to the Board’s agreement at the meeting which would illustrate all of the great work that has gone on over the last twelve months.

Members of the Board welcomed the Chairman back to the Board and wished him well following a break due to illness.

None had been received.

None had been received.

(To receive a report from Sophie Reeve, Assistant Director – Commercial and Arnd Hobohm, Serco Contract Manager, which provides an update of Serco's performance against contractual Key Performance Indicators specified in the Corporate Support Services Contract during the review period January to March 2022)

Consideration was given to a report by the Assistant Director – Commercial which invited the Committee to consider a report on the Performance of the Corporate Support Services Contract during the review period January to March 2022.

The Board was advised that during the period, there had been no instances where KPI’s failed to meet the minimum service level or the target service level during the review period. The overall KPI Summary Performance and exceptions were set out at Tables 1 and 2 within the report.

IMT_KPI_12, IMT_KPI_18 and IMT_KPI_19 had all been temporarily suspended in order to redirect resource to the Modern Desktop Management (MDM) ticket resolution at the direction of the Council.

Overall, Serco’s performance against the KPI’s for the period was strong and were working on time and ahead of time in some areas.

The Board welcomed an update from the newly appointed Operations Director for Serco and noted the progress that had been within IMT including the successful roll-out of MDM; the embrace of hybrid working and also acknowledged challenges in retention of staff. The payroll team had faced challenges following the late pay award that had been granted in March 2022, but the team had worked hard to ensure that the changes were processed on time. The challenges that could be faced as a result of the Business World project were recognised, as well as the carers recommissioning, which would potentially see the introduction of a new telephony system to contribute to the Council’s plans for digital delivery.

Members welcomed the update and noted the performance of the Corporate Support Services Contract during the period.

RESOLVED:

That assurance be provided about the performance of the Corporate Support Services Contract.

(To receive a report from John Wickens, Assistant Director, IMT and Enterprise Architecture, which invites the Board to consider a report on the Options for the Future Delivery of IMT Services, which is due to be considered by the Executive on 4 May 2022. The views of the Board will be reported to the Executive as part of its consideration of this item)

Consideration was given to a report by the Assistant Director – IMT and Enterprise Architecture, which invited the Board to consider a report on the options for future delivery of IMT services prior to its consideration by the Executive on the 4 May 2022.

The Board received a presentation which provided details of the future delivery options and recommended model for procurement; the drivers for a change in the delivery of services; the approach to procurement; market engagement; information on trends in IMT design and sourcing strategies; details of the Service Integration and Management (SlaM); costs; risks and mitigation and an indicative outline plan for the future of IMT services.

The Board supported the recommendations to the Executive and as part of its consideration of the report, the following points were noted:

·       Good governance was important to ensure effective use of money and avoid duplicating the purchase of cloud services by different departments, to manage data under GDPR and other mandatory requirements that come with a gov.uk namespace, and for working in a technical environment. The Board acknowledged a potential risk in individual departments purchasing their own cloud services, which created wider IMT issues and therefore the Council aimed to centralise the service.   The Board requested that a report be brought back to a future meeting on this issue before SIaM service was fully developed.

·       A full options appraisal for the non IMT services currently being delivered by Serco, namely HR Admin, Payroll, Exchequer, Adult Social Care Finance and the Customer Service Centre, would be considered by the Board at its meeting on 26 May prior to consideration by the Executive on 7 June. The IMT options appraisal had been started before the other areas as it had been anticipated that this would involve more complex procurement

·       Cloud services were the only way forward for the Council to ensure it received the best security for its services and had so far proven to be resilient to cyber attacks. The large investments by bigger organisations in state of the art security meant that they would be quicker responses to any cyber attacks and the ability to detect and react to any problems more quickly than any individual organisation.

·       The MDM programme would see device management move to cloud services. A later phase of the MDM programme would see a would enable monitoring of the actions undertaken by each device and assess the risk, whilst reporting in real time to a security operations centre.

·       Market analysis had shown multiple examples of organisations who could deliver more than one specialism which combined into the needs for device management, support desk and device security, or build subcontracts into the big technical vendors. There was a homogenisation of the market into key technical organisations such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

·       The Council had now moved all its services into Microsoft Azure hosting, and these host environments were identical for millions of subscribers due to being global scale systems. The only uniqueness to these environments was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 143.

(To receive a report from Paul Elverstone, ICT Contracts and Licensing Officer and Andrew Webster, Commercial and Procurement Officer - IT Category which invites the Board to consider a report on the Award to reseller for provision of Microsoft Subscription Agreement and related services, which is due to be considered by the Executive on the 4^th May 2022. The views of the Board will be reported to the Executive as part of its consideration of this item)

Consideration was given to a report by the Lead IT Contract and Vendor Relationship Officer, which invited the Board to consider a report on the Award to reseller for provision of Microsoft Subscription Agreement and related services, which was due to be considered by the Executive on 4 May 2022.

The Board was advised that the current contract for services was due to expire on the 30^th June 2022 and consisted of two licensing agreements, which were Microsoft Enterprise Subscription Agreement and the Microsoft Service and cloud enrolment.

Contracts with Microsoft generally are procured every three years. However, the Council agreed with Microsoft to accept the RAMP pricing for services in 2020 and consequently the three year term for the current contract extended beyond the current reseller agreement by one year. It was necessary to put in place a short term contract to cover the period prior to the procuring of the next three year cycle and therefore recommended that the Executive approved the direct award of a one year contract for the provision of Microsoft Subscription Agreement and related services.

The Board supported the recommendations to the Executive and during its consideration of the report, the following points were noted:

·       The 2022/23 Microsoft Subscription order could not be continued through the existing contract as the Microsoft 365 ‘E5’ Ramp offer had consumed the headroom in the original contract decision meaning the total value being spent under the existing contract awarded via the CCS RM3733 Technology Products 2 framework would be exceeded and the procurement would be non-compliant with the framework.

·       There Council had taken advantage of an opportunity to obtain a discount for three years at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic which was taken by the Council. The ‘E5’ Ramp offer had been procured quickly through the original award as part of the Council’s Covid-19 working from home response package.

·       The proposed one year contract would enable the Council to retain the benefit of the last year of the Ramp discount whilst allowing it to become coterminous with the greater bulk of the Council’s Microsoft contracts, enabling the Council to seek a better deal in 2023.

·       The Board acknowledged that ‘doing nothing’ was not an option and welcomed the savings of approximately £150,000 that had been made.

RESOLVED:

1. That the recommendations to the Executive, as set out in the report, be supported;

That a summary of the comments made be passed on to the Executive as part of its consideration of this item.

(To receive a report by Nigel West, Head of Democratic Services and Statutory Scrutiny Officer, which invites the Board to consider  the Overview and Scrutiny Annual Report for 2021-22)

Consideration was given to a report by the Head of Democratic Services and Statutory Scrutiny Officer, which invited the Board to comment on the Overview and Scrutiny Annual Report 2021-22, prior to its consideration by the Council at its meeting on Friday 20^th May 2022.

The Board welcomed the increase in non-executive Councillor engagement in scrutiny to 92%.  The Head of Democratic Services and Statutory Scrutiny Officer agreed to identify the reasons for the remaining 8% of non-executive councillors not being engaged in scrutiny.

It was suggested that the Board consider engaging with other external organisations.

RESOLVED:

              That the submission of the Overview and Scrutiny Annual Report for 2021-22 to               the annual meeting of the County Council on 20 May 2022, as set out    at Appendix A, be agreed.

(To receive a report which sets out the work programmes of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee and the Public Protection and Communities Scrutiny Committee, in accordance with the Board's agreed programme)

Consideration was given to a report by the Chairman of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee, which detailed the future work programme of the Committee, as well as recent work of the Committee. Further detail was provided at Appendix A to the report.

The Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner and a representative from NHS Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group had attended the last meeting of the Committee to represent the Police and Health Services, who, along with the Council, were the statutory partners of the Lincolnshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP).  After a lengthy debate with a lot of challenge provided to the LSCP’s Independent Chair and Business Manager, the Committee was assured of the work being undertaken by the LSCP.

The Chairman of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee was pleased to report that a letter received from Ofsted in relation to its focused visit to Children’s Services was extremely positive and highlighted that children were supported highly effectively to make good progress and that there was clear evidence of strong relationship-based social work practice throughout the service.

The Committee had supported the recommendations to the Executive and welcomed the commissioning arrangements for the holiday activities and food (HAF) programme in which the Council would receive grant funding to provide school meals to eligible children outside of term time. 

Consideration was then given to a report by the Chairman of the Public Protection and Communities Scrutiny Committee, which detailed the future work programme of the Committee, as well as recent work of the Committee. Further detail was provided at Appendix B to the report.

At its meeting in April, the Committee had received a report in relation to Volunteering in Lincolnshire and was updated on how Covid has affected the voluntary sector in the County; a report on the current picture about Avian Flu across the County and how cases were being tackled; a report on the outcomes of the Her Majesty's Inspectorate for Constabularies and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) review of Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue in which the Committee had agreed for a further report to be added on to the work programme in regards to actions taken to mitigate concerns and address recommendations; and lastly, the Committee was reassured around the arrangements established by Lincolnshire County Council, Lincolnshire’s district douncils, and multi-agency partners to deliver the government’s requirements in relation to the Ukraine humanitarian crisis and requested that a further update be submitted to the Committee in six months time.

Further to the dispatch of the agenda, the Board was advised of the following additions to the work programme of the Public Protection and Communities Scrutiny Committee:

·       The Trading Standards Annual Review and the Stay Safe Update Report in September 2022

·       Reducing Offending – The Work of the Safer Lincolnshire Partnership in December 2022

·       An update in the Food sector by Trading Standards and an Update from the Safer Lincolnshire Partnership in January 2023

·        The Annual PREVENT report and a report on Substance Misuse in March  ...  view the full minutes text for item 146.

(To receive a report which enables the Board to note the content of its work programme for the coming year)

The Board was informed that this item was for information only.