Agenda item

Cabinet agreed the report and agree the:

 • Digital Strategy

 • People Strategy

 • Communications Strategy

As annexed to this report.

Decision

That Members note the report and agree the:

• Digital Strategy
• People Strategy
• Communications Strategy

As annexed to this report.

Corporate Priorities

A clean, safe and enjoyable environment

Building strong and vibrant communities

Ensuring economic growth and prosperity

Ensuring efficient, effective and modern service delivery

Climate and ecological emergency

Statutory Officer Comments:

Monitoring Officer:

There are no direct legal considerations arising from the three strategies presented for approval.

Deputy S151 Officer:

The delivery of these core Council strategies will require financial support that has been projected and accounted for as part of the Council’s approved MTFS, the specific annual budgets will be detailed and approved as part of the annual budget setting process.

Advice

Cllr Elliot introduced the report and thanked Aidan and his team for such a comprehensive report. He was happy to take questions.

Cllr Griffiths said that she was pleased to see this reports as it has been around for some time, she feels it was now getting to the “doing” bit as opposed to the research stage. She feels this would have a major impact, in a good way to residents and business.

Cllr Banks asked for a comment around future proofing, she understood the background work and how they were modernising and bringing in to the present, she was keen to know that they had built in some capacity to move with the future changes that were on the horizon or would they have to redo this from scratch.

AWilkie responded that as they had been developing this, particularly on the digital side they had been conscious that the changes were only getting faster. What they do not want to do is have the monolithic strategy that in five years would be completely out of date and not relative. They want to be constantly challenging themselves about what could be coming down the line. The new Head of digital was very much in the headspace of looking at what they could do to practically avoid that. The strategy talks about ensuring that they were not signing up to or wedding themselves to different technologies for a considerable amount of time. Tying themselves into long-term contracts would not be the way to go, nor tying themselves to a particular system or provider. The strategy talks about technical design authority which means that every technical decision that is made as an organisation is done so strategically by aboard who understands not only where the market is leading but also where technology is leading whilst understanding the breadth of their infrastructure. Different departments with the best will in the world would make decision around their own technology however when you look across the organisation it doesn’t make sense as different systems don’t tie in with each other and we misuse the technology and miss opportunities. With this strategy, it allows them to be agile with the mind-set to look into two or more years’ time when the world has moved on and they can revisit this.

Recommendations agreed