Issue - meetings

(Report of the Assistant Director, People)

The Chair welcomed the Portfolio Holder for Finance, Risk and Customer Services, Councillor M Bailey and the Assistant Director, People and the Head of Customer Experience for this item.

The Committee received the update which highlighted the current position of the My Tamworth Customer Portal, and provided a review of the project including the costs, difficulties encountered, outcomes to date and the future project plan.  It was noted that whilst the procurement for the customer relationship management system and self-service customer portal commenced in early 2018, with an expected completion date in September 2019, difficulties in acheiving the deliverables by the successful tenderer were encountered, leading to delays and leading to alternative solutions being sought.

The Committee received an overview from the Head of Customer Experience of the post project review, which included lessons learnt.

The Committee commented and sought clarifications in the following areas:

1.    The Committee welcomed the post implementation review undertaken to seek to understand fully the issues encountered and to learn from the process.

2.    The Committee felt that further focus on the tendering process, including the assessment of tenderer capabilities to deliver to the specification, could assist the delivery of future projects and that this could be an additional recommendation.

3.    Whether, and the extent to which, other councils were approached for their best practice in delivering a similar self-service portal, noting that as a council with housing stock this could require different considerations to those councils with no housing stock.

4.    The Committee noted that the end product did seem to work well, and noted the hard work of Officers to deliver the end product.

RESOLVED that this Committee recommend to Cabinet that the Audit & Governance Committee be requested to look at the tendering process used by the Council with a particular regard to the scoring mechanism process and that it report back to Cabinet on its findings.

(Moved by Councillor Dr S Peaple and seconded by Councillor J Harper)

RESOLVED that the Committee:

1.    Endorsed the contents of the Report

2.    Endorsed the recommendations included within the report, noting that this Committee would be updated regularly.

(Moved by Councillor Dr S Peaple and seconded by Councillor R Ford)