Governance and Information Service
Service Plan 2016/17
V0.84th May 2016
Communities and Organisational Development Directorate
Content
  1. Introduction / Overview of the Service
  2. Purpose of the service plan
  3. Overall approach to how we will deliver
  4. Where do we want to be and why?
  5. Financial information and data
  6. Where are we now?
  7. What are we going to do?
  8. What might stop us?
  9. Links to Team Plans
  • Governance and Audit Team
  • Legal
  • ICT

1.Introduction / Overview of the Service

Welcome to the second service plan of the Governance and Information Service (G&I). We have had a very challenging first year and whilst I am extremely grateful for all the individual effort and sacrifice, Cornwall Council faces further significant change over the next three years. By the end of 2019 the Council has to save £196m, nearly one-third of the Council’s net budget which is why the Corporate Business Plan on which this Service Plan is based, runs from 2016 until 2019. Although this Plan specifically covers the next financial year, you will see that many of our priorities and objectives are aimed at delivering the “Outcomes” required in the Corporate Plan and therefore covers the same period. We need to do this to plan properly and to ensure we have the right resources in place in terms of people, finance and supporting infrastructure. You will see that in this plan there are a wide range of factors which will influence our business approach; we will need to play our part in the devolution of power, both from central government to Cornwall Council and from Cornwall Council to local communities.

We will change the way we deliver our services to deliver the corporate priorities successfully with reduced resources. A key part will be balancing capacity with the need to respond to emerging issues.

Our Service Plan is based on the Corporate Outcomes that were derived from extensive consultation across Cornwall and which focus on 8 strategic themes - see page 4. Our Values are the same as the Council’s; our Priorities are driven by the need to deliver significant change and our Objectives signpost the way to achieve them.

We are still a relatively new Service and this Service Plan represents a new approach to the way we deliver our services. We have endeavored to create a Plan which is an everyday manual for what we need to do. Unlike previous years, when the document has been unchanged at the end of the year from the day it was created, it is expected that this Plan will be well-thumbed and will have changed as new priorities emerge. We hope it will be valuable for everyone in the Service and will be critical in setting team and PDS objectives.

I consider it a real privilege to be the head of such a diverse, professional and consistently excellent Service and I look forward to working with you to deliver the significant challenges you will find within this Plan.

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2.Purpose of the service plan

This Service Plan seeks to explain the role of the Governance and Information Service in the delivery of Cornwall Council’s Corporate Business Plan 2015 – 2019. It sets out our service objectives and demonstrates how these are linked to the planned corporate outcomes.

This plan will be fluid and regularly reviewed in order to take account of emerging priorities and objectives as the year progresses. The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) will conduct reviews at least quarterly and provide feedback on performance and more importantly, any necessary changes to our plan.

Below are the Governance and Information Values. These are important as failure to get the culture of the Service right will result in us struggling to deliver our plan.

3.Overall approach to how we will deliver

a)Where do we want to be and why?

Governance and Information Vision

'First class Services provided by professional and valued officers who inspire confidence and embrace change to enable the Council to realise its vision for Cornwall'

Governance and Information is at the democratic heart of the Council, supporting Members, officers and the public. The Service delivers all the Council’s specialist legal advice and support and isresponsible for overseeing and implementing the democratic processes of the authority as well as providing IT support and Audit services. The Coroners Service is also a service provided by G&I.

There are a range of performance indicators developed by the services which will help to track our progress against the core functions set out in table 1 below. These will help to keep us on track and manage how we get to where we want to be. Achieving these will result in our success.

Table 1: Core function performance measures

Category / Area / Measure / Measure / Target / Reporting frequency
People / Vacancy management / Establishment posts filled / % / >90% / Monthly
People / Vacancy management / Successful recruitments / % / 100% / Quarterly
People / Vacancy management / Posts covered by locum/agency staff / % / <5% / Monthly
People / Vacancy management / Locum/temp staff employed over 3 month contract / No FTE / <3 / Monthly
People / Vacancy management / Locum/temp staff employed over 12 months / No FTE / 0 / Monthly
People / Staff retention / Employment number turnover / % / <10% / Quarterly
People / Staff development / Management (T5 and above) posts with succession plan in place / % / 100% / Quarterly
People / Staff satisfaction / Action plan targets met on schedule / % / >90% / Monthly
Process / Service Delivery / Reports delivered by submission deadline cleared by G&I on time / % / 100% / Monthly
Process / Service Delivery / Democratic, professional and technical support for formal Member meetings / % / 100% / Monthly
Process / Service Delivery / Project requests prioritised and responded within 10 days / % / >80% / Monthly
Process / Service Delivery / Project resources demand for rolling 3 months within 80% of capacity / Yes/No / Yes / Monthly
Process / Service Delivery / Chargeable hours delivered against profiled target / % / 100% / Monthly
Core Audit Plan delivered to final report stage within year / % / >95% / Quarterly
Process / Service Delivery / Service Audit recommendations implemented within the agreed timelines / % / >90% / Monthly
Process / Service Delivery / Rate of incidents resolved during solution times agreed in SLA grouped into categories / % / >90% / Monthly
Process / Service Delivery / Percentage of incidents resolved at the Service Desk during the first call grouped into categories / % / >45% / Monthly
Customer / Service take up / Clients exceeding budgeted levels of service capacity for legal, print and post services / % / TBC / Quarterly
Customer / Customer Satisfaction / Number of received customer complaints which were accepted as justified / No / <2 / Quarterly
Customer / Customer Satisfaction / IS Customer Satisfaction score / % / >90% / Monthly
Finance / Capital Expenditure / Variance against profiled capital expenditure / % / <5% / Quarterly
Finance / Operational Expenditure / Value of expenditure on external support per month / £ / TBC / Monthly
Finance / Operational Expenditure / Income realised against profiled budget / % / >95% / Monthly
Finance / Strategic Finance Plan / Variance against profiled operational expenditure budget / % / <5% / Quarterly

b)Financial information and data

The total budget for G&I service is £20.929m. The allocation across teams that make up the service is shown below.

  • Legal Team Finance = £2.436M
  • Information Team Finance = £12,062M
  • Governance and Audit Team Finance = £5,205M
  • Corners = £1.276M

Below is how the budget is made up. Please note that these extracts change monthly depending on savings and income achieved.

c)Where are we now? – Governance and Information Workforce

Workforce

The Governance and Information Service (G&I) area has a diverse workforce supporting both internal and external clients through a number of professional functional areas including Legal, Information, Governance and Audit and Coroners services.

G&I employs a headcount of 349 employees (323 FTE), made up of 49% females and 51% males, with 80% of employees in full time employment and 20% in part-time employment.

The vision for the G&I workforce is to create “a leaner, more resourceful service, with a highly engaged, skilled and flexible workforce”. The Senior Leadership Team is trying to create a vibrant workplace which inspires everyone to reach their full potential and to make a positive difference to the lives of people living, working and wishing to develop a career in Cornwall.

We want to recognise and value our employee’s effort, initiative and creativity. We want a workplace where we all welcome change and diversity, accept personal responsibility, expect positive challenge and support in equal measure and, above all, be proud of what we do and where we work.

Our focus will be to develop and implement a number of workforce initiatives that improve the capability, capacity and diversity of the workforce whilst driving incremental increases in employee engagement and productivity.

A set of organisational development interventions have been established including:

  1. Attracting, developing and retaining a highly skilled and talented G&I workforce
  2. To ensure the Council's Vision, Values and Behaviours are reflected in the way we do business
  3. To improve Organisational Performance and Workforce Effectiveness
  4. To maintain a high focus on the health, safety and wellbeing of the G&I workforce

The work that the People and OD Business Partner commissions from the PMDW service will facilitate, support and enable the Senior Leadership Team to ensure the Governance and Information workforce is a lean, resourceful, talented and productive workforce delivering positive outcomes for Cornwall and its communities.

Attract, Develop and Retain

Workforce Planning and Talent Management

Service level

  • Identify our ‘as-is’ and ‘to-be’ workforce profile to inform our workforce development plan.
  • Identify a workforce development plan for Legal, Information and Governance and Audit services
  • Implement the workforce development plan
  • Increase service resilience in areas of greatest need
  • Ensure a succession plan is in place for identified posts across our G&I Workforce

Functional Level

G&A

  • Deficit of capacity at a higher level in governance
  • Deficit of Capacity at SLT/Legal
  • Deficit of Capacity at a lower level of corporate governance
  • Audit Capacity resilience plan
  • Democratic service – future leaders planning

IS

  • To be determined as part of the I.S service design

Legal

  • Draft workforce development plan completed but due to be prioritised

Leadership Development

  • Develop the Senior Leadership Team, including clarifying the purpose of SLT, enhancing our leadership capabilities, ensuring our leaders actively demonstrating or ‘role modelling’ the positive behaviours that we are seeking to encourage through our Performance Development System

Management Development

  • Design and implement a comprehensive management development programme for current and future managers.

Workforce Development

  • Identification of an overarching training plan for Governance and Information as identified through our workforce development plans

Workforce Health, Safety and Wellbeing

  • Continue to improve the Health Safety & Wellbeing of the G&I workforce by implementing a Health and Safety Action Plan to meet the needs of the service in 2016/17.
  • Identify and promote initiatives aimed at encouraging employee wellbeing

People Alignment of Behaviours with Values and Principals

Behaviour Management

  • Encourage leaders to actively demonstrate or ‘role model’ the positive behaviours that we are seeking to encourage through our Performance Development System

Performance Management and Workforce Effectiveness

Staff Engagement

  • Review the staff engagement forum
  • Implement a Staff Action plan developed on the results of the Staff Survey.
  • Ensure the Staff Voice Forum is representative of all the arms of the service

Performance Management

  • PDS and CRP implementation

Change Management

  • Facilitate, support and enable the implementation of re-designed Information Services function.
  • Electoral Services- 1 redundancy - ‘acting up’ /development opportunities possibly another vacancy
  • Reduction in the size of referral and admin team

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What are we going to do - Governance and Information

Ref: / G&I01 – Delivery of an ICT Investment Plan
Outcome: / Following the transfer of ICT services back from the strategic partnership to the G&I Service, a crucial outcome for financial year 2016/17 will be the delivery of a digital transformation investment plan which clearly supports the organisation. The plan will align to the themes of the newly published IT strategy and will be categorised into 3 key areas;
  1. The delivery of corporate wide technology capability which has the potential to improve the effectiveness of all services. As well as supporting the delivery of core capabilities, this will bolster partnership working with other public service providers, primarily within Cornwall.
  2. The delivery of internally focused (ICT) initiatives to improve the quality and efficiency of service delivery to our customers
  3. The digital transformation agenda is supported to enable the deliveryof the customer access strategy.
The outcome of the investments will be aimed at enabling digital transformation for greater integration of services and providing efficiencies to the organisation as a whole and the IS Team.
What does success look like? /
  • A community and business-focused 4 year investment plan which is delivered and tracked to ensure it delivers capability, efficiencies and savings.
  • An enhanced ability to deliver the business portfolio of works alongside the corporate investment.
  • Real business and wider community benefits in terms of customer experience and flexibility.
/ Council Strategy theme / Partners working together; Being efficient, effective and innovative
Organisational Framework Theme / Business Improvement Strategy, Commercial Strategy, Finance Strategy, Information Strategy
Cross service activity? / The plan will deliver enhanced capability across the organisation and services will work with, support and indeed drive the change elements which will be critical to realising their objectives and wider benefits from the technical investment.
Measure(s)of success / Current position / 2020 proposed / Benchmark / Frequency (M / Q / A) / Currently avail (Y/N)
G&I_PI_01a Profiled and prioritised ICT investment portfolio up and running and progress tracked by the Service and the Investment and Commercial Board / N/A / 4 year plan delivered / None / Quarterly / N
Ref: / G&I02 – ICT and Document Management Service Redesign
Outcome: / In order to deliver the digital and information transformation required a full review will be undertaken of the Information Teamin consultation with not only the business areas we support but also ourstaff who deliver ICTservices.
The design will have an objective of delivering a new culture of business ownership and engagement with IT enablement, allowing the organisation to recognise the value ICT brings and understand the associated costs while trusting the service to deliver change in collaboration with clients and customers.
The service will enable changes of a Digital nature that will bring about to bring about positive changesto the way in which the council delivers its services, these changes will result in a positive disruption in the way services are delivered (Digital Disruption) rather than a sense of failing Digital services holding the business back (Broken Digital)
What does success look like? /
  • Redefined and agreed ICT service offer and core SLA
  • Agreement on whether there should be a centralised, decentralised or federated model for business application management and provision of other ICT services
  • A single ICT service management ethos with appropriate structures and processes to progress digital transformation in the most effective way.
  • Enhanced self-serve and self-fix capabilities to the organisation
  • Embedded system automation and preventative and proactive monitoring into core service areas
/ Council Strategy theme / Partners working together; Being efficient, effective and innovative
Organisational Framework Theme / Business Improvement, People Strategy, Information Strategy
Cross service activity? / Agreement on the overarching model of ICT delivery, principles and service definitions will require input from all areas of the organisation
Measure(s)of success / Current position / 2020 proposed / Benchmark / Frequency (M / Q / A) / Currently avail (Y/N)
IS_KPI_01 % of all Incidents resolved within target as defined in the IS Service Level Agreement / Green / >90% / >90% / Monthly / Y
IS_KPI_02 % of all Severity 1 & 2 resolved within target as defined in the IS Service Level Agreement / Green / >90% / >90% / Monthly / Y
IS_KPI_03 % of Business requests for ICT Change projects ‘User Stories’ which have full proposals returned to the business within 30 working days of receipt / Green / >75% / >75% / Quarterly / Y
IS_KPI_04 % of business requested ICT projects with a completion date which matches the original or re-baselined* project plan. / Green / >75% / >75% / Quarterly / Y
Ref: / G&I03 Document Management Strategy Development, Review and Enactment
Outcome: / Document Management which is driving a culture of ‘paperless business’ savings and operational efficiencies and a culture change programme launched.The organisation will have a balanced choice of capabilities that can be delivered in order to provide a modern Document Management service which changes the way we work and transact with the public.
What does success look like? /
  • A transformed document management facility for the Council (Central Service)
  • A replacement for EDRMS for the Council.
  • Effectively managed Council post-rooms and day-forward scanning.
  • Business case on implementing a holistic and documented supply-chain service
/ Council Strategy theme / Partners working together; Being efficient, effective and innovative
Organisational Framework Theme / Business Improvement, Information Strategy
Cross service activity? / All services will agree to sign up to the initiatives on the acceptance of valid business cases to drive efficiencies and savings
Measure(s)of success / Current position / 2020 proposed / Benchmark / Frequency (M / Q / A) / Currently avail (Y/N)
G&I_PI_03a % inbound post digitised centrally / TBC / >90% / TBC / Monthly / Y
G&I_PI_03b % outbound post through hybrid mail system / TBC / >90% / TBC / Monthly / Y
Ref: / G&I04 Delivery of anEnterprise Architecture capability and outcome
Outcome: / In order to ensure that current, new or required technology solutions are ‘assured and affordable’, we will have understood how it contributes to delivering our organisation’s strategic business needs, examined how it fits within the overall technology estate, both today and in the future, and verified that selected solutions deliver a better return on investment, than other affordable solutions might offer us.