Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Nicola Callow (Head of Finance) and Elisabeth Jones (Director of Legal Services)

There were no declarations of interest.

Anna Daniel would draft a note of the Management Board discussion for the news page.

The minutes of 9 October meeting were agreed as a correct record.

Gareth Watts (Head of Internal Audit) was welcomed to the meeting to present the findings from the internal audit report on the HR/Payroll project. The review examined key aspects of the governance and project management of phase 1 of the project, and identified areas to be addressed before proceeding to phase 2. The project had delivered payroll and partial HR self-service functionality despite difficulties, such as slippage in delivery timescales. The report identified some factors that had contributed to the difficulties and Gareth invited the Board’s comments on the report’s recommendations.

The Board agreed that there was a need to understand why issues had occurred and shared their views on the lessons learned and how these could be applied to future projects. The following recommendations were made:

·      Investment and Resources Board to confirm the resources required, investment, staffing expertise and scope of all major new projects;

·      adopt the key challenge and scrutiny questions, compiled by Gareth Watts, as a tool to assess future projects, including phase 2 of the HR/Payroll project;

·      implement a mentor system for new project managers and develop a process of selection and training for staff, including SROs;

·      ensure key messages to staff are clear, setting out reasonable expectations; gain feedback through user testing; and

·      ensure those involved in dealing with contractors are experienced and equipped to properly challenge as necessary.

The Audit and Risk Assurance Committee would receive the report at their next meeting on 10 November.

Actions:

·      Gareth Watts and Virginia Hawkins to consider how to communicate the lessons learned to staff, including feeding into the community of practice for project managers, and preparation of a message for staff; and

·      Review guidance and formally adopt; include a job description and delegation letter from the Chief Executive to all new SROs outlining the responsibilities and expectations.

Dave Tosh and Bedwyr Jones presented the ICT Strategy to the Board to outline what had been achieved through the transition to in-house provision, the vision for forthcoming services and anticipated timelines for implementation.  The transition had been a major business change programme. The innovations and improvements would change the way staff and Members would work, providing a service that would fully support a mobile office, be more environmentally friendly and make data easier to find and use.

Dave Tosh particularly noted that trust and understanding had increased between the ICT service and the rest of the organisation over the course of the transition. To assist staff and Members in using new hardware and functionality a new IT Manager had been appointed to provide dedicated training. All training would be provided bilingually and would include visits to constituency offices.

The Board were reassured about the security of the Cloud, which the Assembly had begun to adopt, starting with the move of the website to Sharepoint.

The Board expressed their thanks to Dave Tosh and the ICT team.

Anna Daniel presented a draft update on the review of reporting of proceedings.  An holistic approach was being taken to the reporting of proceedings, taking into account the overall communications strategy, how people were using the current service and what the future of reporting may look like. Any method or product adopted would need to be cost effective but still meet the quality expectations of users.

The Board asked for further evidence to be included to support the claims around capacity, i.e. that changes would release resources, also providing more illustrations of the new things that could be done as a result.  Further emphasis should be placed on the increase of the speed of translation, and clearer data provided, for example, on time spent proofreading.

In relation to the conclusions on the Machine Translation project, Anna indicated that the test results were showing that there was continued improvement in the quality of the translation through Microsoft.  Commissioner agreement to further the relationship with Microsoft and to explore other ways of working with them, would be beneficial.

The Translation and Reporting Service had experienced a reduction in staff due to secondments and, although individual productivity had increased, this was against an increase in demand for translations. It was, therefore, necessary to calculate the expected demand and decide whether that could be met internally.

The update would be presented to Commissioners at their meeting on 17 November.

Actions:

·      Anna Daniel to capture key messages, to provide Commissioners with an update and conclusions in a shorter format and to provide a clear direction, highlighting the information and data relating to cost savings.

Claire Clancy provided an update on the Investment and Resourcing Board (IRB) meeting of 20 October, also outlining the current financial position and projected available budget for investment, being in the region of £8-900k. Both Dave Tosh and Mike Snook had been asked to review their ICT and Estates forward work programmes, to explore what might be brought into the current financial year to relieve pressure on budgets in future years. The IRB would review the financial position again in November and ascertain what projects or investment items could realistically be brought forward.

The next Management Board meeting would be held on 6 November.