Invitees:

Mark Shephard, Chief Executive

Martin Morgans, Head of Performance and Partnerships

Phil O’Brien, Group Manager - Transformation and Customer Services

Councillor Hywel Williams, Deputy Leader

The Head of Performance and Partnerships presented a report, the purpose of which, was to update the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee of progress on the corporate Digital Transformation programme.

The report gave some background information, following which it gave a summary of progress in respect of the My Account Platform, with paragraph 4.1 of the report detailing a timeline that demonstrated progress made in this area from 2016 to the present day.

He confirmed that since My Account had been launched in April 2018, the following services have been made available online via the My Account self-serve portal:

• Council Tax;
• Housing Benefits
• School Admissions
• Blue Badges, and
• Residential Parking Permissions

Subsequent sections of the report expanded upon these areas and the accessibility to them through the My Account service, together with other potential benefits that were being looked at where My Account on-line services would prove to be beneficial to the public/constituents of the County Borough, in terms of accessing services.

The report then elaborated upon Communications and Marketing and this section of the report covered the following areas:-

1.    Corporate website

2.    Microsite Transition

3.    Communications Strategy

4.    Welsh Translations

5.    i-Trent – internal HR Solution

6.    Digital Strategy

7.    Digital First – Channel Capacity

In terms of the report’s financial implications, the original Digital Transformation Programme funding of £2.5m was split into £1m for capital expenditure and £1.5m for revenue expenditure. The current position is that as of the 1 April 2019, there is £520k of capital funding and £899,722 of revenue funding remaining. The table in this part of the report, summarised the expenditure to date incurred on the Digital Transformation programme.

The Chairperson then invited questions from Members.

A Member referred to on-line Council Tax billing/ebilling and asked if any consideration had been given for discount to be given to customers for payments they make in respect of these through My Account as an incentive to sign-up to this.

The Head of Performance and Partnerships confirmed that this could not be given retrospectively to people who have already signed up to the scheme and therefore it would not be fair to do so for new customers. Also, if such discount was given, customers could take the discount and then opt out and resort back to paper based bills.

A Member commended the report and detail and informative accompanying presentation, adding that the area of Digital Transformation in the Authority including the My Account initiative, had come on leaps and bounds in the last 12 months since it was last considered by Overview and Scrutiny, when Members had raised some concerns in particular, to automation and possible future job losses of staff. He noted that there were concerns previously at that time regarding the introduction of automation and the effect this in turn may have, on staff job losses. He asked if this may take place, due to the advances made in Digital Transformation within the Authority.

The Head of Performance and Partnerships, advised that under the Council’s Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS), efficiency savings were required to be made moving forward across all areas of the Authority, so jobs were at risk in any Council Directorates and Departments due to this.

The Chief Executive added to this, by stating that advancing in the area of Digital Transformation was key to the Authority as it gave customers more avenues within which to engage with the Authority on a whole range of important issues, including business transactions. He added that it had also assisted the public/constituents engaging more effectively in the budget consultation process on-line and their feedback on the Council’s MTFS was considered very important. He reiterated the point that considerable savings were still needed to be made across all areas of the Council and this unfortunately would include the loss of some posts, otherwise the extent of savings that was required would not be made.

A Member asked how much it would cost the Authority over the next few years, in order to continue the development of Digital Transformation.

The Head of Performance and Partnerships confirmed that the Council had delivered on what it had paid for and was contracted to thus far in terms of its Digital Programme and there was a planned budget allocation in place to develop Digital Transformation further in other departments, service areas of Directorates that comprise BCBC.

A Member commended the progress made in this area of work which he felt was beneficial with regards to meeting the expectations of the public. He added that consideration should be given to monitor how we are progressing in future in respect of this area of work, through data collation such as the number of constituents who were communicating with the Council through the likes of Oggie, My Account, Facebook and the like etc, and possibly benchmarking with other authorities who were also making advances here. It was important he felt, that further strides and development continued going forward, particularly as this was being financially supported by the Council at a time when budget cuts were being made in other service areas.  

The Transformation, Performance and Customer Service Manager, advised that the Council had a numerous amount of telephone queries from the public and some of these disappeared in a ‘pothole’ or were not fully responded to/followed-up. Departments also mostly could not confirm to the customer how long an enquiry would take to be responded to or the business it related to concluded, however, timelines could be given for this through Oggie, the Council’s chatbot (Robot) communicator. He added that as the area of Digital Transformation developed further with time, systems would be configured through establishing digital channels that meet customer expectations and needs.

He further added, that there had been some IT glitches in respect of parents and guardians etc submitting School Admissions Appeals on-line via the My Account self-serve portal, which resulted in a large quantity of these not being received. The next submission round was in October coming and the issues that caused the above problem were in the process of being resolved in time for this, so hopefully the submission of the next batch electronically to the Council, would process more smoothly.

A Member referred to paragraph 4.8 of the report with regards to the ‘Love Clean Streets (BBITS) Environmental reporting – “Report it” initiative, and he asked if through this Members/Officers of the Authority were able to log into our internal mapping service.

The Head of Performance and Partnership Services responded by stating that he was looking at this with the GIS team with a view of improving processes with ‘Fix My Street’ to make this form of electronic contact more user friendly than is currently the case.

As this concluded debate on this particular item, the Chairperson thanked the Invitees for their attendance and they then duly left the meeting.

Conclusions:

The Committee thanked the Head of Performance and Partnership Services on his report and noted the positives advances made in the last 12 months.

Members acknowledged the positive contribution digital transformation had on the authority but were concerned about impact on jobs, particularly those in front-facing roles.

Members noted the increase in school admissions completed online during the last academic year and asked what changes are going to be made to resolve any IT issues going forward?

Members noted the financial overview in terms of the cost of digital transformation and further noted that it would be useful to receive details of how much had been saved in future reports.

Members suggested refinement on an analytical tool to identify contacts ringing the Council and the purpose of their call.