Issue - meetings

(a)       That the report be noted; and

(b)       That the five work streams (Assets, Customers, Finance, Procurement and Workforce) become the subject of separate reports to future meetings of the Committee.

The Head of ICT and Customer Services introduced a mid year progress report on Flintshire Futures, the corporate programme for modernisation and change.  He said that there was a Flintshire Futures Programme Board with Member representation which included the Leader, Deputy Leader, Cabinet Member for Corporate Management and the Chair of Corporate Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee.  The primary focus of the Programme was to deliver efficiencies through Corporate Change, Service Change, Regional Collaboration and Local County Collaboration. 

The Head of ICT and Customer Services said that the recent work had focussed mainly on Corporate Change projects in 5 workstreams, customer, procurement, assets, work force and finance and that there was a lead officer for each area.  He went on to explain that lead officers would attend subsequent meetings to report on the individual work programmes. The “customer” projects involved the Flintshire Connects service, the first of which was due to open at the end of October in Holywell.  He added that a report would be considered by Cabinet shortly on plans for future centres across Flintshire.  The Head of ICT and Customer Services said that the Streetscene contact centre service had been very popular and that he hoped it would be developed to cover other service areas.  The other priority was promotion of customer self service on the web. He cited the success of the “doggy do app” which had around 1000 downloads and that there were plans to extend the facility to cover other council services.  The Head of ICT and Customer Services then spoke about the £1 billion assets owned by the council, with office accommodation costing £1.75 million per annum to run.  He said that rationalisation was needed and that office space could be potentially reduced by 50% if we radically changed the way we worked.         

                        With regard to procurement about £150 million was spent on goods and services each year and that currently there were 44,000 suppliers.  There was a need to negotiate more effectively, on a regional and national level.  The electronic procurement system P2P would be in use by all departments by the end of March 2013.

                        The Head of ICT and Customer Service then spoke about maximisation of income and management of debt and modernisation of internal processes.  He said that some work would be linked to fees and charges and some linked to the budget process.  Progress on the workforce work stream had already delivered an excess of £4 million in savings from senior management restructure and service reviews. The programme would now look at reduction of management costs and organisational layers to reinvest into front line services as well as preparing staff for change.  The I-Trent system had allowed staff to manage their own personal details and expenses electronically.  The use of interim staff and consultants is currently under review.

                        The Leader of the Council thanked the Head of ICT and Customer Services and all the other officers involved in Flintshire Futures.  He said that the Programme was a first  ...  view the full minutes text for item 33