Agenda item

Members will receive a power point presentation that provides an overview of Leicester City Council’s digital transformation programme.   Members are invited to note and comment as they see fit.

Councillor Dawood arrived during the consideration of this item of business.

Members received a power point presentation that provided an overview of Leicester City Council’s Digital Transformation Programme (DTP), a copy of which had been included in the agenda. 

Councillor Myers, Assistant City Mayor for the Entrepreneurial Councils’ Agenda introduced the presentation and said that the Council’s public on-line spaces were key to delivering its core responsibilities and one approach towards improving this was through the Digital Transformation Programme.  Another approach was through ‘Smart Cities’ which provided a broader strategy for the whole city and he would be pleased to bring this other strategy to a future meeting of the Overview Select Committee.

The Assistant City Mayor explained that ‘Smart Cities’ referred to how data was used and how it transformed lives on a day to day basis, for example how people applied for jobs, interacted with each other and commerce etc and also how they moved about the city. The Digital Transformation Programme set out how the council enabled this, through access to its services on-line and how the back office was managed.  

The Assistant City Mayor stated that he wanted to tackle digital exclusion because people who were not comfortable ‘on-line’ could be excluded from a range of social and economic activities.  He also said that it was important to encourage interaction on-line, because it could free up capacity to enable officers to hold those important conversations with individuals where they were needed. The Assistant City Mayor referred to on-line channels such as ‘My Account’ and ‘Love Leicester’ and invited Members to contact him if they identified any areas which they felt needed to work better.

Members then considered the power point presentation which was presented by the Digital Transformation Lead officer. During the ensuing discussion, comments and queries raised included the following:

·      A Member expressed strong concerns about the aim to reduce the percentage of payments made face to face to a base line figure of 33%. She said that a council officer might be the only person that an individual might have an opportunity to speak to. Additionally, when she herself had been unwell, she was unable to carry out on her transactions online. Concerns were expressed about the effect that a reduction in face to face contact would have on individuals. Members heard that the programme would free up officers’ time to enable face to face contact with those people who needed it and may be more vulnerable.

·      A Member commented that she remembered that some of these issues had been discussed three years ago and it appeared that limited progress had been made. The Member added that she recalled at the time they were told that Leicester was about ten years behind other authorities and she questioned whether this was still the case. It was suggested that it had been a mistake in only having officers present and providing support for two weeks after the self- service machines were put in place. The machines she saw around the city were not being used and she said it would be interesting to see the figures for the numbers of people accessing council services through self-service machines. A doubt was expressed that the figures would be as good as hoped.

The City Mayor responded that the delivery of the programme was a significant piece of work, and while Leicester was not at the fore front of 21^st century technology, it was not at the back either. He invited Members to visit the Customer Service Centre on Granby Street and see the work that was taking place, as the level of support offered to people using self-service machines was excellent and officers were very proactive in helping people.

·      It was noted that there were some issues in delivering the digital transformation programme in Sports Services and the City Mayor acknowledged that there was a long way to go to make it truly digital. A Member commented that she recalled about three years ago, that Members at a Neighbourhood Services Scrutiny Commission were told that Sports Services were further ahead in the digital transformation programme than the other services.

·      A representative from the Youth Council asked whether consideration would be given to ‘mystery shoppers’ being given opportunities to test the quality of the digital offer.

The Digital Transformation Lead Officer confirmed that this is what they wanted to do and also for customers to continue to check that the digital offer was customer focussed. The meeting heard that there was an accessibility directive to ensure that the font, colour and background all met certain standards, and this directive was being applied to online forms and the website.

·      In response to a question raised about the security of people’s data, the Lead Officer explained that robust security checks were applied to the system and they were doing as much as they could to ensure that the system was as safe as possible.

·      A Member asked whether more P.C.s would be made available across the city and the Lead Officer responded that they had visited different libraries across the city and noted that some P.C.s were not used as well as they could be. The reason for this was unclear but while they were not looking to increase the number of PCs, they might re-distribute them or see how they could raise awareness or make them more accessible. 

·      A Member noted that 25% of contacts were on-line or self- service and asked whether applications for school admissions were included in this figure.  The Lead Officer responded that she believed the figure related to people requesting a council service and did not include school admissions, but she would check. Members heard that not all forms were yet on line. It could be seen that some users abandoned their on-line enquiry before the transaction was completed and they would be looking at the reasons for this.

·      A Member questioned whether the Digital Transformation Programme might create jobs or require fewer members of staff and the Digital Transformation Lead Officer responded that it was a mixture. A lot of councils were offering re-deployment or providing opportunities for people to re-skill if their job became redundant. As an example, someone whose work mostly involved data input could be offered the chance to re-skill as a data analyst.

·      In response to a query as to when officers anticipated the programme would end, Members heard that there was no end date because technology was always changing with new initiatives becoming available. Leicester had not modelled their programme on one single local authority but remained alert as to what other cities were doing.

·      Officers were asked about the risks involved in the programme and were told that there was a risk that it did not generate the anticipated savings, but the Digital Transformation Board met every 6 – 8 weeks to monitor progress and to provide strategic direction and focus.

·      In response to a question about the retention of data, Members heard that there were different statutory requirements as to how long data could be retained depending on the service area.

·      Members heard that where people were submitting an online form, there were plans to provide an escalation message, so that if there was a slippage in the stated timescale, a message would be sent to the enquirer and officers would also receive a message to highlight the issue.

·      A Member commented that there were many people in her ward who did not speak English and were not confident users of the internet. Officers were asked how these people could be helped. The Digital Transformation Officer replied that the Equalities Team were looking at ways to help people with different needs and they were also looking for volunteers and charities to provide support to people who experienced problems using I.T. There was also an option to use Google Translate for people who had little English. She added that they needed to make more people aware that this facility was available.

·      A Member said that she welcomed the term ‘Digital Transformation’ as opposed to ‘Channel Shift but asked that the reference to ‘Developing corporate customer-centric standards’ as detailed in the power point presentation under Citizen-focussed approach, be revised in more user-friendly language. The Lead Officer confirmed that she would do this.

·      A Member of the Youth Council suggested that the use of alternative technology such as augmented reality could result in savings in staffing costs.

·      In response to a question about the budget for the digital transformation programme, the City Mayor explained that there was not a dedicated budget, but it was about using existing budgets differently and that would result in savings in some areas.  The programme was on-going however as previously explained and there was therefore no definite figure for expenditure or savings. The Digital Transformation Lead Officer explained that the Government had said that every 10p invested in Digital Transformation would result in £15 return.

The Chair drew the discussion to a close and asked Members to note the update.

AGREED:

                   that the update on the Digital Transformation Programme be noted.