Issue - meetings

Annual ICT Update Report

Meeting: 27/02/2024 - Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Regulatory, Compliance and Corporate Services) (Item 48)

48 Annual ICT Update Report pdf icon PDF 268 KB

Report of the Executive Director of Corporate Resources and Customer Services

 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Committee considered the report of the Executive Director of Corporate Resources and Customer Services that provided a summary of the performance of the Managed Services ICT Contract over the last 12 months, currently outsourced to Agilisys.

 

The report provided specific information on the following areas:

 

1.

Agilisys Contract Performance against key performance indicators - during the contract period to date Agilisys had met key performance measures (KPI’s) except when exceptional agreed circumstances had prevailed; and customer satisfaction had remained high during the last 12 months, and any scores falling below expected standards were followed up on a case-by-case basis.  Performance over the last 12 months was detailed in Appendix A attached to the report;

 

2.

Project Delivery and Security – in respect of project delivery, Agilisys provided a significant volume of ad hoc projects to Sefton, in line with the provisions of the Contract; these ranged from system upgrades to major infrastructure programmes; and

 

In respect of cyber security, risk continued to be significant issue for local authorities across the Country, and the risk of an Information Security Breach due to a cyber-attack featured on the Corporate Risk Register and although Sefton had made significant investment in its security tools, polices, and licenses the threat to the Council network was still significant.   Over the last 12 months it was noted that local authorities had been targeted via distributed denial of service attacks.  This type of attack flooded the targeted website or online service with traffic (requests) and could overwhelm the service making it unavailable to legitimate users; and

 

3.

the wider work of the ICT Client team in relation to ICT and Digital - the ICT client team had also delivered services and support for ICT across the Council, including specialist ICT Procurement and Contract Management for approximately 250 ICT Contracts; and the team provided a dedicated System development support for both Children’s and Adults Social Care, as well as Education functions, supporting both the Children’s Improvement Programme, and the SEND improvement programme. 

 

The report concluded that the current contract with Agilisys performed well and had delivered significant savings for the authority compared to the previous contractual arrangement.

 

Members of the Committee asked questions/commented on the following issues:

 

·       The % increase in the number of Cyber-attacks per year on Sefton’s corporate network

·       The failure of Agilisys, in April 2023, to meet the key performance indicator in respect of answering telephone calls made to the Service Desk within an average of 60 seconds of the telephone call first being made

·       The office-based location of Agilisys staff

 

RESOLVED: That

 

(1)

the report detailing the performance of the Managed Services ICT Contract over the last 12 months, currently outsourced to Agilisys, be noted; and

 

(2)

the Senior Manager ICT & Digital be requested to produce statistics detailing the % increase in the number of Cyber-attacks year on year on Sefton’s corporate network.