Agenda item

Report of the Corporate Director for Strategy & Resources

Simon Salmon, Head of IT presented a report on the Computer refresh programme. He highlighted that if the organisation shrinks in terms of headcount then not all of the money allocated to this programme will be spent. Approval for spend will be put before the Director of Strategy and Resources annually to ensure that the organisations financial position is relative to the decision to commit to expenditure;

RESOLVED to:

(1)  To delegate authority to the Head of Service (IT) to enter into contracts up to the value of £983,000 per annum using an established government framework to purchase PCs, Laptops, Tablets, Monitors and other peripheral devices required to meet operational needs and the requirements of the IT Computer Refresh Programme to March 2021;

(2)  To approve allocation of funding from the IT Efficiency Fund for the three year period to March 2021 in the sum of £ 222,000 p/a to cover salary costs relating to the IT Computer Refresh Programme and other projects undertaken by the Release and Deployment team with the remaining £ 75,000 being funded from income from projects;

(3)  To amend the Capital Programme for the next 3 years by an initial value of £ 785,000 per annum and, thereafter, by the value of additional departmental purchases of up to £ 420,000 per annum but excluding the value of items procured to support schemes already in the Capital Programme;

(4)  To authorise recovery and repayment to the IT Efficiency fund of varying amounts from departmental budgets to cover requests for new equipment made outside of the Computer Replacement Policy; and

(5)  To note that prior to the annual purchase, approval will be undertaken from the Corporate Director of Strategy & Resources to ensure the spend is appropriate in conjunction with the in-year financial position and the budget setting process;

Reasons for decision

(1)  IT systems are essential to the day to day running of the Council. They are needed for delivering services to citizens and to support joint work with partners. The refresh programme ensures that computers are fit for purpose and will allow colleagues to continue day to day operation;

(2)  Bulk purchasing equipment from the government framework will ensure cost effective procurement. It will also mean that NCC become skilled in maintaining the IT estate as equipment will be standardised, and that IT services can react quickly  to requests preventing downtime which may impact on service provision;

(3)  Maintaining up to date IT systems limits the risk associated with computer viruses and other malicious software which can have a significant impact on service and may compromise sensitive data;

(4)  Purchasing the IT equipment in a rolling programme reduces large budgetary pressure within any one year. It allows for management of time and resources within the department;

(5)  A structured refresh plan will allow the IT service to better plan and manage procurement of equipment and management of human resources.

Other options considered

Replacement of computer on an ad hoc basis when they failed was rejected. This option has been used historically and failed to deliver efficiency in savings and caused disruption to service delivery.

Consideration was given to using a third party to configure and deliver replacement computers but this was rejected. Set of this type of contract would be prolonged and would require significant resource. Maintaining a contract like this would be complex and labour intensive. The number of different software used within the City Council means that in-house resource would be necessary and would the contract would soon become inefficient from a cost perspective.

The other option considered was to do nothing. This was rejected as IT equipment is needed to deliver services and by doing nothing it would interrupt service delivery when computers failed impacting on citizens.