Report of the Corporate Issues Overview and Scrutiny.
Title: Meeting held on Monday 28 June 2010.
Recommendations:
None.
Action’s from today’s meeting in relation to the Attendance Management Sub
Group:
None.
___________________________________________________________
Executive Summary:
This report concerns the matters considered by Corporate Issues Scrutiny on Monday 28
June 2010.
Issues considered were:
o Customer profiling.
o Write offs.
o Freedom of Information requests.
o ICT – update on outcomes and goals.
BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS: These can be found on SOLAR.
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SOURCE OF FUNDING:
Not applicable
______________________________________________________________________
CONTACT OFFICER: Karen Lucas, Senior Scrutiny Support Officer
Tel: 793 3318 E-mail: karen.lucas@salford.gov.uk
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DETAILS
Members Attendance
Councillor
Cllr Turner
Cllr Balkind
Cllr Burgoyne
Cllr Tope
Cllr Dobbs
Cllr Houlton
Cllr B Lea
Cllr Cullen
Cllr Jolley
Vacancy
A – Apologies received.
May
N
o
m
e
e
t
i
n
g
June




A

July
R
e
c
e
s
s
Aug







A
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Invitees: John Tanner, Stephen Fryer, Ash Patel, David Hunter and David Sackfield.
1. Apologies for absence: Councillors Jolley and Dobbs.
2. No declarations of interest were made.
3. No questions from members of the public.
4. Customer Services – customer profiling.
John Tanner provided an overview of the customer profiling system – ‘striving for
customer excellence as one council’; which is in line with the development of the “Tell Us
Once” principle for customer service.
There are 3 principles:
 One council view of every customer.
 One council approach to record and share information.
 One council approach for storing, recording and retrieving documents and
correspondence.
The new system alleviates avoidable contacts, moves away from a silo approach,
improves recording of data, reduces the risk of error, avoids duplication and records the
reasons why people contact the council.
The system contains campaign prompts i.e. flu jabs, warm front, SNAP etc.
Information from the system can be released to the PCT, Helping Hands and Pensions
Service.
There are new protocols for the storage of information and the system maintains an audit
trail.
The system contains a mapping tool - ‘GEO mapping’. It provides transactional and
spatial data either by street or area on information to income support, incapacity benefit
etc.
Salford is making good progress and is ahead of other LA’s in having a single customer
account/profiling system.
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With regards to security of information; the system is password protected, foot printed
and audited.
John offered members the opportunity to view the profiling system in more detail.
5. Write off’s.
Stephen Fryer presented members with an overview of write offs; which are now
completed several times a year rather than annually.
The recovery process is an automated process; a reminder is issued if there is a default
on payment. Audit trails are maintained to demonstrate that the Council has tried to
recover an outstanding debt.
There has not been a huge increase in people becoming bankrupt. However, there has
been an increase in debt relief orders. (A debt relief order is an order you can apply for if
you can't afford to pay off your debts. It's granted by the Insolvency Service and is a
cheaper option than going bankrupt. (You must have debts of less than £15,000 and a
low income).
Members thanked John and Stephen for attending the meeting.
6. Freedom of Information requests.
Information was presented by David Hunter.
The Corporate Information Governance Team provides a centralised service to the
Council, one of their duties is to provide a more efficient response to Freedom of
Information requests (FOI).
The number of requests received year on year has increased; in 2005 we received 206
and in 2009 we received 589. There has been an increase in requests from journalists
and commercial businesses; it was noted there the Council also see an increase around
certain events i.e. election time.
Work is being progressed to see how we can support AGMA; there may be a single team
responding to regional demand.
If it is envisaged that responding to a FOI will take more than 18 hours, they are asked to
refine the request. There is no charge for an FOI, we are legally obliged to comply.
7. Report on the State of Information Security.
Information was presented by David Hunter and David Sackfield.
In response to the large volumes of information collected and utilised by the Council,
there are a number of standards and legislative requirements that the Council is required
to comply with. For example we have to comply with a standard that governs the way in
which credit/debit transactions are taken and an information security framework which
emerged from the high profile government body data losses.
Details provided by officers highlighted the key risks facing information security; these
include the increase in agile working, lack in user awareness of how it affects
them/organisation, organisational changes and the increase in guidance and standards
being issued from Central Government. In response; a number of policies & guidance
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have been developed, information security training via e-tutor, raising staff awareness
and the gathering of HR stats on the number of breaches of information security policies.
8. ICT – update on outcomes and goals.
Following the meeting in January; David Hunter provided members with an update on
ICT’s outcomes and goals.
There are four main areas that ICT are developing:
 Citizen - Salford City Council's corporate Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) and Customer Service fulfilment system, for example
area profiling which John Tanner discussed earlier, sharing of information
across the whole authority via Documentum which provides a wide range of
tools that will improve the way we store and manage information so that we
are able to work more efficiently and effectively.
 Document management system – Work is progressing to automate invoices
in July/August, permitting of more agile working and CRB tracking.
 Enterprise 2 – everyone will shortly become a ‘thin client’ with the
forthcoming roll out of Windows 7 and Office 10
 Employee self service – replaces manual systems for recording and
processing expenses, car mileage, purchase orders etc.
Other projects include an extensive training programme, instant messaging & video
conferencing.
ICT have full control over backup and recovery.
Members thanked David Hunter and David Sackfield for attending.
9. Report from last meeting.
Report agreed.
5 Work programme.
It was agreed to incorporate attendance management back into the main scrutiny
committee rather than having a separate sub group.
A review of the work programme is scheduled for the meeting in August.
6 Forward Plan.
No issues raised.
7 Any other business.
No issues raised.
8. Date of next meeting.
July – recess
The next meeting will be held on Monday 23 August 2010.
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