Report of the Interim Director of ICT attached

This report provides an update on the proposed reshaping of Council's Information and Data Strategy and includes an update on the resilience of the Council's IT service provision.

The Committee considered a report of the Interim Director of ICT, which informed members on the proposed reshaping of Council's Information and Data Strategy and included an update on the resilience of the Council's IT service provision.

The main points and themes within the report included:-

·                The Council had been deemed by the Cabinet Office to be PSN compliant in May 2019 and there was ongoing communication with the Cabinet Office to demonstrate current progress to date and against remediation activities;

·                An update on ICT resilience and key projects;

·                Progress that was being made with the Council’s Data Centre Programme, which aimed to replace the existing core infrastructure and single data centre to a new solution hosted across two data centres;

·                Work that was to being undertaken under the Network Refresh Programme, which was critical for the ongoing performance and resilience of the networks operating within the Council and would be the first total refresh of the entire infrastructure;

·                The requirement to replace the current core telephony and contact centre systems due to the manufacturer withdrawing support as of the end of March 2020;

·                The implementation of Liquid Logic, which had replaced the Council’s previous Children’s and Adults case management system;

·                The need to refresh the current IT Strategy, which would be focused on enabling Manchester’s ambitions and would set data and information standards and future innovation and ways of working; and

·                The ICT revenue and capital budget positions

Some of the key points that arose from the Committee’s discussions were:-

·                More information was sough on the repurposing of the Sharp Data Centre;

·                Will the new Data Centres be located on two separate sites to address any issues should one site stop working;

·                What was the overlap period between the Sharp Data Centre and the new Data Centres being used;

·                In terms of the partnership agreement with UK Fast, what was the level of hand off to the Council in so much as was the Council purely renting space in their facility, renting infrastructure from them or taking a complete platform from them;

·                What was the duration of the agreement with UK Fast and would the agreement scale up and down in size subject to technological advancements, such as cloud based storage;

·                Was the re-accreditation for PSN in April2020 on target to be met;

·                Were there specific risks identified in the re-accreditation for PSN associated to the under resourcing of staff;

·                Given that Liquid Logic had only been in operation since July, it was suggested that the Committee received a future report on its implementation how it was being utilised and the benefits that were being derived from its use;

·                Based on his experience, how did the Interim Director of ICT view Manchester’s ICT provision when compare to other local authorities;

·                How long was the Interim Director of ICT contracted to work with the Council and what progress was being made with filling the role on a permanent basis;

·                When was the Council’s telephony system last updated and when was noticed received from the current the provider that they would be withdrawing support;

·                Did the Council take into consideration ICT resilience of private sector organisations when it was required for the Council to work in partnership;

·                Was the Council able to attract the right type of candidates to the existing vacant posts;

·                How many vacant posts currently exist and how many apprentices were employed with the Council’s ICT department;

·                What was the gender profile and BAME split of staff within ICT; and

·                In the view of the Interim Director of ICT, what was not going as well as expected

The Interim Director of ICT advised that his service area had very little involvement with the repurposing of the Sharp Centre , with the only ask of his service being to vacate the building and decommission the current content and remove all of the racking.  The Deputy Chief Executive and City Treasurer commented that it was the Strategic Director (Development and Growth) that was leading on the future use of the premises.  It was reported that the Councils new Data Centre provider, UK Fast Ltd, had created two bespoke sites which were three miles apart and all of the technology stack that was in sharp had been duplicated across the two sites.  The investment that had been made in 2018 had created a technology infrastructure that was designed to be resilient and have multiple fail over points to ensure that it continued to keep operating if any part failed.  All applications would be mirrored across both sites and it was estimated should anything fail following the switch over, the maximum length of data loss that would occur would be 180 seconds, which compared favourably to the current 24 hour plus data loss risk.  The Committee was advised that at the end of October the Council would be testing the network design of the new Data Centres and then there would be a 12 week migration programme split across the end of 2019 and January 2020.  It was anticipated that disruption to Council business would be minimised to a couple of hours per migration and per move and the move would be undertaken by a specialist organisation to contribute to this mitigation.

The Interim Director of ICT advised that the Council was renting the space and the management of the space from UK Fast.  In essence this meant that it would be Council owned infrastructure which would be installed by UK Fast and then they would be responsible for all necessary communications with other providers such as BT.  He also explained that as the Council was renting a number of racks, it was at the Council’s gift as to whether these were filled or not and the duration of the agreement was five years.  The current IT Strategy required consideration of cloud based storage first which in the last two years had moved to a position of cloud based storage only, however, this presented a risk to the Council in terms of revenue spend.  The new IT Strategy would also require consideration of cloud based storage first, but only where appropriate.

The Committee was advised that in previous years, PSN accreditation had been treated as a once a year activity.  The Council had now adopted a “throughout the year” approach to PSN and had already run the penetration and security tests and identified a number of high risk issues to address before next years submission.  He advised that PSN compliancy was not based on the Council’s assessment of high or low level risks, but rather it was based on PSN networks assessment, so anything identified as high or critical the Council was required to address this and by spreading this review across the year, as opposed to a once a year activity had, the aim was to minimise this risk.

The Interim Director of ICT advised that in relation to Liquid Logic, it was intended that all lessons learnt from the implementation of this software would be captured and reported back. He advised that if Committee was minded to receive a report on this then this would be possible, he suggested that this would possibly be available in the next three to four months but not provide a precise date without consulting with the Strategic Director (Children and Educational Services) first.  He added that there was still a large piece of work that was ongoing in terms of business change and new way of working to ensure that Liquid Logic was fully embedded in the workforce.

The Chair suggested that, if possible, a report on “work in progress” around Liquid Logic could be considered at the Committee’s meeting in December 2019

The Interim Director of ICT reported that he had been a professional Interim Director for ICT for 10 years and having worked with a number of local authorities, Manchester’s ICT appetite was greater than any other Council he had worked with and its ambition was remarkable for a local authority.  He added that Officers had been set a number of challenges to match this ambition.  He added that his initial contract was until the end of November 2019 but had been extended to the end of March 2020.  The Deputy Chief Executive and City Treasurer reported that the role profile was being finalised before going to advert.

In terms of the telephony system, The Interim Director of ICT was unable to give a precise answer, but in terms of the technology being used, it was at least 20 years old and the support had been withdrawn as the manufacturer had stopped producing new spare parts.  The telephony project had been in existence for at least two years.  In terms of the Contact Centre System, this too was coming to its end of life.  He agreed to provide the Committee with a more detailed briefing note on this issue.

When selecting partners to work alongside with, the Council was required to undertake an amount of due diligence to ensure they were themselves protected in terms of viability and had measures in place to ensure they had business continuity.   

In terms of attracting the right calibre of people, it was reported that any public organisation struggled to attract high end resources due to the associated high costs.  Recent appointments had required the payment of market rate supplements, the downside of this had been that these supplements were only temporary.  Therefore there was need to improve the promotion of the non-financial benefits that working for the Council had.  The Interim Director of ICT added that there was currently 14 vacant posts within the service, the majority were being recruited to and a number of these had been vacant prior to his commencement of employment with the Council in May 2019.  He added that he was challenging his management team in terms of the existing vacancies as to whether they still required appointing to.  In terms of apprenticeships, it was reported that there were two apprentices in post and one current vacancy that was being appointed to.  In terms of the gender profile and BAME split of staff within ICT it was reported that this information would need to be provided to Members outside of the meeting

Finally, in terms of what was not going as well as expected, the Interim Director of ICT stated that in an organisation the size of the Council, there would be a lot of challenges in its ICT service in delivering what was required.  There was nothing of any major significance to report however it was noted that there was a possible risk of the telephony project being stalled if progress did not continue at an appropriate pace. 

Decision

The Committee:-

(1)       Notes the report; and

(2)          Requests a report to a future meeting on the implementation of Liquid Logic including how it was being utilised and the benefits that were being derived from its use.