Customer and Support Services

QUARTERLY REPORT

TO LEAD MEMBER BRIEFING

QUARTER 1

2005/6

PART 1-General Highlights

PART 2 - Major project work

PART 3-Performance

PART 1

GENERAL HIGHLIGHTS

OVERALL

Best Value Review Options/Final Challengetook place on 27th May with proposals positively received and agreed. Now moving ahead with 2005/6 improvement targets. Progress will be reported quarterly commencing with next quarter

Management structure agreed and implemented. Next steps involve reviewing team structures. A full report on proposals will be brought to Lead Member briefing

New programme/project Governance and Scrutiny arrangements introduced for improved performance and risk management

Intranet (ICT Services) editorial board established, revised Intranetstructure agreed and will be implemented shortly

BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION

BPR

Team working on a Salford bid to the ODPM for the IPR for the tools and methodologies created as part of the National CRM project

Engaged on national workshops in conjunction with ODPM / National CRM Programme involving running sessions on BPR at various venues throughout country with 6 events taken place and 3 site visits planned

National BPR user group has 25 councils on board and we have trained 184 delegates but also now 6 private partnership organisations are onboard with 14 delegates trained

Training & Support

Initial planning has started on the redevelopment of the computer centre as an ICT training centre of excellence.

New courses being developed/introduced:

­Performance Management Training (Golden Thread)

­Freedom of Information

­CISP (Council Information Security Protocol) – e-learning tool

­Crystal Reports

­How to use … Personal Digital Assistants / Scanners

­SIMS

­Broadband – Administrator training sessions

­IT Induction training – this forms part of a ‘Welcome Pack’ for staff / members

­Councillor.info – course to enable Members to create and maintain their individual web pages

E-Government

Successfully achieved 100% e-enablement of council services (9months ahead of Government deadline) now being verified by internal audit

Draft version of IEG4.5 in progress in readiness for the July 18th submission date

Work continues on the numerous projects that make up the ODPM priority outcomes programme

BUSINESS SUPPORT

Programme Assurance Team

New team structure established under newly appointed Programme Assurance Manager, which incorporates the Programme Support Office and the Project Manager pool

Programme & Project collaboration system (Hydra) has been implemented and the pilot is continuing – Went live selectively in April 2005, with ongoing configuration and rollout towards broader utilisation by the end of the summer

The Salford Prince2 methodology is to be revisited to ensure it remains fit for purpose and relevant to project management in Salford

Concluded the technical work to support Community & Social Services with their implementation of Carestore, which is a key part of them meeting their ESCR needs

Providing project management input to a programme of work with Children’s Services, in support of the Head of ICT Services, Head of Customer Services and staff from Community & Social Services and Education & Leisure

New project manager joined the team, to lead on ODPM Priority Outcomes

Support Services Team

Business Continuity Exercise held off site in June to test the ICT Business Continuity arrangements. Further work scheduled to bring together the ICT plans

Follow-up work with business managers from across the authority planned in July, to ensure ICT plans match need

  • Joint approach to disaster recovery still being investigated with various members of the NWEGG group
  • New risk management policy and strategy put in place to provide the backbone to risk management practices within ICT Services. This is seen as a key building block for ICT Services to improve service delivery and resilience
  • Working on new Change Control standard, which will be ITIL compliant

Information Resources Team

The Salford Corporate Information Security Policy has undergone a minor amendment and was republished in May 2005. A fuller policy change will take place to ensure compliance with the new ISO: 17799(2005) Information Security Standard

ISO: 17799 gap analysis work continues across the authority to build up an accurate picture of compliance

Work has commenced to develop Access Control and Password Policies in support of the Information Security Policy with key service users in ICT and the business

  • Scoping work being done to create an Information Management Strategy for Salford City Council, which will underpin the corporate approach to information management, sharing, exploitation and storage

DESKTOP & INFRASTRUCTURE

Network & infrastructure

Data Centre - Building work and main electrical contract are now almost complete with the standby generator being delivered week commencing 4th July. Cable Contractor to start work shortly with an estimated handover date of 31st July

Server consolidation exercise planned over the next few months in preparation for the move into the new Data Centre

SAN upgrade. Partial implementation has taken place with further upgrades planned following the relocation of the data centre

Additional SPAM filter system has been ordered following downtime in E-Mail service. This will eradicate a “single point of failure” that has previously existed

Desktop & Implementation

“Make a Difference Day”

An initiative day launched on Thursday 30th June, where all available resources concentrated on clearing as many faults as possible. The initiative was a huge success with 127 Calls closed by Desktop with 107 open at close of play. Breakdown as follows: -

Service / Number of
calls closed / Remaining
calls open
Schools Broadband / 10 / 19
Network / 32 / 9
PC support / 38 / 24
School Support / 34 / 47
Voice Comms / 13 / 8

Watch out for “Make a Difference Day” - Part 2!!

Help Desk

An increasing number of calls are now able to be resolved at first line support from 50% in quarter 1 2004 to 62% quarter 1 2005/6 an increase of 24%. Future developments include the provision of technical staff on the Help Desk via a rota system

System Support

  • Year-end processes completed to schedule across all services. Revs & Bens in record time
  • Printing

-P60's 10,000 printed and sealed

-Carefirst - New remittance letter and environment - initial draft set up

  • SAP

-Transmission of e-filing to Inland Revenue on schedule

-Successful disaster recovery test undertaken

  • Finalised plans for common backup strategy – currently there are two different backup strategies that were performed by Technical Support and Desktop Services (Unix and windows respectively). These are being brought together under one umbrella utilising the same hardware and software.

PART 2

MAJOR PROJECT WORK

PROJECT / PROGRESS
CRM developments / Freedom of Information (FOI) - completed
Complaints – Scoping & planning completed now in development stage due live August
As part of the SX3 implementation, a project was undertaken to integrate Citizen CRM with the new SX3 system. The two major benefits of this work were to give front line staff access only to the functions within SX3 which they required to do their jobs through a simplified Citizen front end and also to ensure that every customer transaction involving council tax and benefits was recorded in the CRM system. This went live on 20th June.
Other work has been ongoing in preparation for a range of further projects including:
-specification of a new corporate complaints system using CITIZEN and work is now underway to build this
-analysis undertaken to move towards providing the customer with a single point of address change notification and this work has now been approved and will be shortly implemented
-further system improvements following the completed migration to Oracle 9i which allows web based client access thus making it easier for home workers and those using remote access to use the system
-input into a number of Think Customer and Priority Outcomes projects is being undertaken including ASB, Environmental Service Requests (R7), Priority Outcomes under "Making it Easier to for Citizens to do Business with the Council"
In order to achieve the outcomes from these projects, we have entered into a partnership with an external company to assist us with capacity building and a strategic development review
Web content -Online payments, application for service / All applications for services completed as part of the BVPI157 enablement programme.
City council web site continues to improve add additional features
Special mention should be made to the team on their excellent work on the ‘Oneshockingcity’ project
Further review and refinement continues on the online payments transactions in particular response to ODPM priority outcomes
SX3 Council tax / benefits replacement / The trail migration was completed successfully during March/April and the ‘Live’ migration commenced on the 8th May 2005. The Sx3 Council Tax and Benefit system went ‘Live’ on the 20th June 2005, Council tax billing, benefit postings and initial payment runs have been completed. Further testing is required on the Recovery and Debtors modules and less critical Interfaces
Councillor info web content mgmt system / Training to all members continues in this area, and a small number of councillor sites are now live
Community Information management system / The community information services which is jointly developed between the CVS and e-government is due to go live during July
SOLAR for the citizen / All ‘requests for change’ have been implemented and issues around system performance resolved
Hydra Programme & Project collaboration system / System is live in the PSO and in Implementation & Support, ICT Development for support & RFC work. Phase 2 will include ICT structure changes, bring online Project Managers, merge e-gov & development staff under 1 plan to cover all RFC work. Training continues to appropriate staff
Local Land and property gazetteer / The LLPG is now live and fully integrated with Uniform for planning.
Data Cleansing continuing. Integration with Flare under investigation. Integration with Engineers/Architects under investigation. Value Bill work requirements under investigation. Possible sample address data extract required forEducation
Safer Salford / ASB action zone: Single point of contact for reporting ASB issues via the Call Centre completed. Reporting function between Police, NPHL and Community safety due Dec
05. Stand up for Salford campaign (Police, SCC, MEN) completed
Enterprise XP / Pilot completed in NPHL with the Windows XP embedded operating system being deployed to over 60 users. Additional servers have now been incorporated for additional capacity and resilience. Development of the business case is in progress which will see a much wider roll out of the project which is the most effective way to make savings on licensing
Broadband in schools / Broadband for schools (Phase C) will be completed by 1/8/05 with the exception of any school that does not want to take part in the project. Video conferencing is also being implemented as part of Broadband (Phase D) and this should be completed by December 2005. This has been delayed due to the increasing number of schools who are taking up the PC Leasing option and has resulted in a higher demand than was originally estimated
Replacement licensing system / Licensing is now fully operational on Flare
Community health & Social Care / The initial project was to investigate OLM CareStore and Iclipse. This has been completed with CareStore module purchased & hardware purchased and Installed. The customer is now continuing the project
Corporate reporting tool / Further assessments of Business objects and Capella to take place once the reporting requirements of the PMF have been identified
MIS system for Salford Comm Leis / Implementation completed March, 2005
Centralised back up solution / Implementation progressing with hardware ordered and some already on-site. The provision of the new Data Centre will enable us to provide a single backup solution for the whole IT Infrastructure
Document imaging / Funding for new server agreed
BPR work plan /
  • Older Peoples services strategy - Phase 1 ongoing
  • Investigation into Land Registry - Phase 1 report completed. Waiting for National Registry office to appoint a project team.
  • Freedom of Information requirements - Completed
  • Continuing with scoping of Planning work to assess requirements to transfer to Call Centre & Development Control Processes - Phase 1 ongoing
  • Continuing to pursue Anti Social Behaviour the Think Customer theme - Phase 1 ongoing
  • Applications for Service - Completed
  • Think Efficiency is progressing with an initial project covering support services to review the range of support services to Chief Executives and Development Services (client)
  • The schools post project - Phase 1 report completed. Now waiting for Customer to proceed.
  • Client Affairs BPR - Phase 2 completed. Waiting for project resources from Community & Social Services.
  • LIFT- mapping of Libraries Rôle Activity Diagrams completed, metrics being collected
  • SAP Best Value Review - Final Sap report due end July 05. Ongoing BPR resource required for next 5 years.
  • Project to gather metrics on reception counters with a view to incorporating all into Customer Services - Phase 1 ongoing
  • Investigation into Choice Based Lettings - Phase 1 report completed. BPR SPRINT training completed for approx. 20 Housing & Planning staff. Functional system requirements spec now being done

PART 3

PERFORMANCE

We will be reporting our performance on a quarterly basis, however at the moment we are reviewing our management performance indicators for 2005/06 and looking to raise targets. The table below shows our performance for 2004/05.

Performance Indicator

/ Target for 2004/05 / 2004/5 Performance
% of interactions with the public, by type, which are capable of electronic delivery and which are being delivered using internet protocols or other paperless methods / 100% / 100%
Information technology training
- customer satisfaction rating / 90% / 93%
Major Council wide fault
-Network down
-Corporate system unavailable / 90%
of faults fixed within 4 hours / 97.67%
(43 calls received reporting faults)
Major local fault
-Directorate system down
-Single site down
-Part of corporate system unavailable / 85%
of faults fixed within 8 hours / 83.06%
(196 calls received reporting faults)
Single item major fault
-PC / printer down / 90%
of faults fixed within 2 working days / 80.26%
(1,560 faults reported)
Minor fault
-PC application not working
-Faulty printer / 95% of faults fixed within 4 working days / 92.27%
(12,534 faults reported)
Inconvenience fault / 95% of faults fixed within 10 working days / 93.64%
(1,117 faults reported)
% of online applications services available throughout the year based on a standard working day / 97% / 99.74%
% downtime of network service
Planned availability (8am to 6pm Mon-Fri) for any single location per annum / Will not exceed
2% / 0.34%
Software development % adherence to project delivery dates / 75% / 79%
Customer satisfaction rating via the help desk / 85% / 89.40%
(1940 responses)
% of calls to the help desk answered immediately / 75% / 84.5%
(47,825 calls received)

2005/6 Service Plan – Part 1 targets

ICT Head of Service is responsible for 3 of the targets within this years’ Directorate Service Plan. Progress against these targets for the first quarter is as follows:

Pledge / Target / Progress
Improving health in Salford / Contribute to the Children’s and Older persons strategies including new service, process and systems issues / H of S attended various planning sessions in May & June with Service Directorates management teams as part of development of Children’s Services strategy preparations and design of Older persons strategy
Encouraging learning, leisure & creativity in Salford / Increase take up of e-enabled services / Initial contact made with Asst Director for neighbourhood management with view to presenting to neighbourhood committees in quarter 2
Creating prosperity in Salford / Develop “Think Business” strategy which will contribute to economic re-generation within the city / “Think Business” discussion paper now devised and discussions in hand with Chief Execs office to incorporate with the newly updated Economic development strategy to be put to cabinet

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