The Chairperson on behalf of Members, welcomed Councillor James to her first meeting following her appointment to the Committee at yesterday’s Annual Meeting of Council.

To receive apologies for absence (to include reasons, where appropriate) from Members/Officers.

Apologies for absence were received from the following Members/Officers for the reasons so given:

To receive for approval, the minutes of the meeting of the Democratic Services Committee held on 13 March 2014.

RESOLVED:            That the minutes of the Democratic Services Committee meeting held on the 13 March 2014 were approved as a true and accurate record.

To receive declarations of personal and prejudicial interest (if any) from Members/Officers in accordance with the provisions of the Members’ Code of Conduct adopted by Council from 1September 2008.

None.

The Head of Democratic Services presented a report the purpose of which was to update the Democratic Services Committee of the performance and updates in relation to services provided to Elected Members. 

            The first section of the report referred to Member Referrals, and the table detailed in paragraph 4.12 of the report informed of the total number of referrals made to Directorates/Departments between 1 May 2013 and 30 April 2014.

            This showed that 2792 referrals had been completed in the above period.

            The Head of Democratic Services then referred Members to the table in 4.13 of the report, which showed the overall completion statistics for referrals between 1 May 2013 to 30 April 2014.  This confirmed that during this period, over 96% of the referrals had been completed.  He added that the uncompleted referrals related to the more complex matters that took significant investigation.  These were regularly monitored by staff with a view to them being completed and subsequently closed.

            The next section of the report included a further table the contents of which denoted the completion times of Member referrals raised between 1 May 2013 and 30 April 2014.

            This revealed that just over 41% of the referrals had been completed in ten days and just under 73% completed in 20 days.  The Head of Democratic Services pointed out that any future rationalisation of staff within the Authority or in the Democratic Services Team, was likely to affect performance in terms of how quickly referrals were processed and completed in the future.

            A Member asked if it would be feasible if the Democratic Services Section could facilitate referrals from representatives of Town and Community Councillors as well as County Borough Council Members.

            The Head of Democratic Services advised that this would not be feasible due to staffing restraints and on-going levels of work commitments, as well as savings that had to be made in Legal and Regulatory Services which amounted to £400k in the next financial year.

A Member felt that it was not necessary to receive as much information and other data in future meetings on the Members Referrals/System.

            The next part of the report identified a proposed Member Development Programme, and highlighted in the first instance the pre-Council briefings arranged, proposed and requested.

            In terms of the topics so listed, Members were in agreement with the topics scheduled as pre-Council briefings before the next three scheduled meetings of Council, and of the opinion that subsequent pre-Council presentations cover the following items on the dates so stated:-

            The Head of Democratic Services added that a further potential pre-Council briefing may be listed in the future on the subject of elective home education,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

The Head of Democratic Services submitted a report, the purpose of which was to provide the Committee with an update on the progress made in respect of the Moder.gov committee administration system and to demonstrate some of the functionality of the system.

            He gave some background information on this item, then confirmed that this new system was procured in March 2014 and the first training sessions have been undertaken with the Democratic Services Team.

            The Head of Democratic Services then explained that the initial implementation dates for the system had been revised due to the complexity of the process reviews that are needed to optimise the use of the system without adversely compromising the intentions of the current procedures.  This had been compounded by changes due to the development of the Digital Office he added.

            The Head of Democratic Services then explained that the training sessions had provided a greater understanding and knowledge of the System’s capabilities.  The following schedule was considered both appropriate and achievable in terms of the full development of Modern.gov and these would form targets for the Democratic Services team to deliver upon the system.

                                                                                                             Completed by

Phase 1            Installation and initial setup                                                     31 Mar 14

Phase 2            Committee functions and training                                           30 Jul 14

Phase 3            Report approval workflow                                                      01 Dec 14

Phase 4            Extended functionality implementation                                  31 Mar 15

The Head of Democratic Services then provided Committee with a short demonstration of the Members, Committee and web page functionality of the system including a recent ‘mock’ Committee electronic send-out that had been circulated via the new system.

The Head of Democratic Services concluded his report be advising that the system would be bi-lingual and suggested, that Modern.gov be subject of a future Round Robin Member training event when its functionality had been developed further.

RESOLVED:            That the Democratic Services Committee:

                        (1)     Received a short demonstration of the Members, Committee and web page functionality of the Modern.gov system.

                        (2)     Agreed with the suggested direction for the ongoing development of the Phase 2 state of implementation of the system.

The Assistant Chief Executive - Legal and Regulatory Services submitted a report the purpose of which was to inform the Democratic Services Committee of the proposed items that will be considered at its subsequent meetings, in the form of a Work Programme.

            The Head of Democratic Services advised that it was anticipated that the Committee would be presented with the following items for consideration at its meeting on 15 May 2014.

·         Proposed Changes to the Member Referrals System

·         Social Media Protocol

He explained however, that the Committee Proposals to make Changes to the Member Referral System had now been withdrawn as these could not be implemented due to technical issues and the impact knock on effect proposed changes would have upon other aspects to the system.

He further added that consideration of the Social Media Protocol had been deferred due to issues regarding the availability of funding to make changes to the ICT infrastructure.  These changes were required to facilitate effective messaging when using the social media sites.  It was hoped that these issues would be addressed before the next meeting of the Committee when the updated Social Media Protocol would be presented.

Committee and the Head of Democratic Services also agreed that there would need to be more interest shown by Members regarding them access to social media, if the training session was to go ahead on 7 July 2014 as was planned.  If further interest was not forthcoming, then it was agreed that consideration of this topic be delayed until further interaction takes place on the Social Media Protocol.

The Head of Democratic Services then referred Members to the proposed items for inclusion at the subsequent meeting of the Democratic Services Committee shown at Appendix 1 to the report.

In terms of other suggested topics for the Work Programme, it was agreed that should Members have any then they pass these onto the Chairperson, who will in turn feed these onto the Head of Democratic Services accordingly.

RESOLVED:  That the report and the proposed work programme be noted.

The meeting closed at 4.15pm