To be accompanied by a presentation from the Head of Performance and Partnership Services.

The Head of Performance and Partnerships submitted a report, advising that the Wales Audit Office carried out a fieldwork exercise from May to June 2018, to identify and understand the key digital risks facing Bridgend County Borough Council. The exercise was for planning purposes and the Wales Audit Office shared the key findings with Committee Members on 13 December 2018 (see Appendix 1 to the report). The report before Members detailed a response to such key findings and recommendations.

By way of background information, the Wales Audit Office discussion document presented to the Committee previously covered 7 key areas, as follows:-

1. Digital Strategy and Transformation
2. Website Development – ‘being better connected’
3. Resilience of the ICT infrastructure and platforms
4. IT skills, capacity, capability and resources
5. ICT Disaster Recovery (DR) planning
6. Cyber security and resilience
7. Data protection arrangements and GDPR

The Head of Performance and Partnerships then referred to the report’s current situation, and confirmed that in September 2016, BCBC commenced a project with the digital provider Agilisys, to introduce a single “Digital Platform” (My Account) for customers to interact on-line for key services. He explained that alongside the development of the digital platform, BCBC took the decision to develop and implement a new responsive website in September 2017.

He then went onto explain that the delivery of the Digital Platform was being implemented over two phases, with Phase 1 being the implementation of the Digital Platform running to April 2018. The services delivered were Council Tax and Housing Benefits, as well as the new responsive website.

Phase 2 focused on making available through the Digital Platform, the following services by end of March 2019:-

·       Council Tax (Single Person Discount and Vacant Property Discount)

·       School Admissions

·       Registrars

·       Report IT (Fly Tipping, Highways, Dog Fouling, Street Lighting)

The Platform has provided the opportunity to transform and offer the citizen the choice of consuming a digital channel. Transactions and queries could now be undertaken on a 24/7 basis, negating the need for phone calls and face to face communications.

The Head of Partnerships and Performance then gave a similar resume as that exampled above on the governance of Digital Strategy and Transformation, Website Transactional and Channel Shift Capabilities, GDPR Compliance and Readiness Plans, Council’s IT infrastructure and Network Support, ICT Disaster Recovery (DR) planning and Cyber security and resilience (Public Services Network Code of Connection) and Security Vulnerabilities and/or Risks and relevant time lines for these.

In terms of the report’s financial implications, he finally confirmed that the original Digital Transformation Programme funding of £2.5m was split into £1m for capital expenditure and £1.5m revenue expenditure. This section of the report also included details of spend to date.

In addition to the report, the Head of Partnerships and Performance gave a power point Presentation to explain some of the work undertaken so far and various aims, outcomes and objectives that had either taken place or were being worked upon.

He then responded to a number of questions raised by Members.

A Member raised a query in relation to the Internal Audit section twice previously having raised the same concern around who has access to data security breaches information.  An update in a previous report considered by Committee, indicated that no action has been taken in respect of this point, as the Officers believed that it was already appropriately access restricted.  If no changes have been made since these previous concerns were so raised, then Internal Audit would possibly be raising this for a third time, which could give cause to a continued concern being still in place.

Officers in the Internal Audit section due to the nature of their role, rarely cut corners, so the Member wondered if there had been a breakdown in communication during the period the two audits took place.

The Head of Partnerships and Performance assured the Member that he would speak further with her outside of the meeting with the view of responding to this concern.

RESOLVED:                        That Committee noted both the report and accompanying Presentation.