Agenda item

To receive the Annual Performance report for the Civica ITO partnership for the year 2015-2016

The Chair welcomed Mr Deane Greenouff, Director of ITO, Civica, and Mr Glenn Morgan, Senior ITO, Civica, to the meeting.

Members were presented with the Gloucester Civica Partnership’s Annual Performance report on the ITO service for 2015-16.  Mr Greenouff and Mr Morgan gave Members a short presentation to complement the report before opening up the matter for debate.  Councillor Norman reminded Members of a forthcoming IT briefing for Councillors on 14 July 2016 and added that individual IT issues should be referred to that meeting.

Members discussed the following matters:-

1.       A Member referred to the need for ‘substantial work’ to be carried out before the next PSNA audit in September 2016 and asked if there was slippage on the work that needed to be done.  Mr Morgan advised the Member that this was an annual health check for the service and that he anticipated the September deadline would be met.

2.       A Member enquired whether Windows XP was still in use within the Council.  Mr Morgan replied that Civica was working on phasing out Windows XP in the outstations and at HKP Warehouses.  The Member questioned the security risk arising from the continued use of Windows XP.  Mr Morgan informed the Member that Civica had employed a tool released by Microsoft which removed vulnerability from the Windows XP operating system.

3.       A Member asked about business continuity and how quickly Civica could get the Council’s IT systems restored in the event of an emergency such as a fire.  Mr Morgan replied that Civica was working closely with the Council on this and exploring the use of off-site data centres, but that he was not in a position to share a strategy with Members at this time.  The Member asked when a report would be available.  Mr Morgan referred to workshops which would look at all business continuity issues and not just IT related ones.  Councillor Norman commented that the work would form part of a review of the Council’s existing Emergency Plan.  Councillor Norman referred to the standalone system operated by the Fire and Rescue Service which was independent of the Shire Hall infrastructure.  He added that a revised plan might be available in the next three to four months.  Another Member requested that the updated business continuity plan should be considered by Overview and Scrutiny.

4.       A Member referred to a recent cyber threat posed by a virus. Mr Morgan advised the Member that Civica had inherited an old core infrastructure and operating system which had made it difficult to maintain cyber threat defences.  However, firewalls had now been replaced with state-of-the-art technology and there were multiple screening operations should any rogue software infiltrate.

5.       A Member commented on the amount of ‘spam’ emails received.  Mr Morgan said it was difficult to balance the Council’s historic open policy on emails against the need to filter messages.  He added that this could be looked at, but would result in emails being managed more strictly.

6.       A Member referred to a recent outage at Aspire Sports and Cultural Trust and the effect it had had on the Trust’s viability.  Mr Morgan advised the Member that he had regular meetings with the management of the Trust and that there was close liaison with them.

RESOLVED – That the Annual Performance report for 2015-16 for the Civica ITO Partnership be noted.

SUSPENSION OF COUNCIL PROCEDURE RULE 6

On the motion of the Chair, and in accordance with the Constitution, the Committee resolved that the meeting be extended beyond two hours.