Agenda, decisions and minutes

RESOLVED: that Councillor David Wilmshurst be elected as Chairman for the 2015/16 Council Year.

RESOLVED:  that Councillor Sandy Lovatt be elected as Vice-Chairman for the 2015/16 Council Year.

To approve the minutes of the meeting held on 22 April 2015 (AG3) and to receive information arising from them.

The Minutes of the Meeting held on 22 April 2015 were approved and signed.

Matters Arising from the Minutes

Minute 23/15 – Annual Governance Statement

Mr Dyson gave an undertaking to circulate a response from Greg Stacey to the Committee in relation to paragraph 3 of the Minutes ‘lessons learnt from the fire at the officers of South Oxford District Council’.

2:10

There are eleven ‘Corporate Leads’ that provide assurance on an issue for governance purposes. The Audit & Governance Committee has asked to be given presentations from each Corporate Lead during the year so that they can better understand each area, particularly focusing on the assurance process:

• How Corporate Leads assure themselves (and then directors) that things are well within their areas; and
• How Leads decide that issues need to be mentioned for ‘Action’; and
• How leads ensure that their area complies with regulations and the law.

The Committee will receive the remaining Corporate Leads presentations, as set out in the box below:

The Chairman has requested that the remaining Corporate Leads presentations, in the box below, go to this Committee meeting.

The Audit & Governance Committee had asked to be given presentations from each of the eleven Corporate Leads that provided assurance on an issue for governance purposes during the year so that they could better understand each area, particularly focusing of the assurance process of:

·         How Corporate Leads assure themselves (and then directors) that things are well within their areas; and

·         How Leads decide that issues need to be mentioned for ‘Action’; and

·         How leads ensure that their area complies with regulations and the law.

The Committee received presentations from Maggie Scott, Head of Policy on Performance Management, Graham Collins on Procurement and from Glenn Watson, Principal Governance Officer on Legislation (copies of which are attached to the minutes).

Mrs Scott outlined the Performance Management Framework that was in place to ensure the Council achieved progress towards it’s predetermined objectives, including the council’s corporate plans and strategies and performance reporting principals including: quarterly discussion; opportunities for deeper analysis and review; directorate ownership; exception reporting at a corporate level; emphasis on performance trends; relationship between performance and risk; focus on resolutions and mitigating actions and maintaining transparency and accountability.  She further went to outline the areas of performance scrutiny as outlined on page 5 of the presentation and future challenges and next steps including:

•          Developing need for more comprehensive reporting framework with a broader range of business information used to inform decision making

•          Articulating clearer links between the performance of service delivery activity and the achievement of strategic objectives

•          Refining measures used to ensure continued relevance in a changing local authority landscape

•          Setting and agreeing realistic targets based on limitations of available resources

In response to questions from members regarding what steps were in place to monitor the effects of cuts on performance and the ever decreasing workforce, Ms Scott explained that it was important for managers to identify the level of performance they wanted to achieve against the resources they had. 

Members further queried the ability of the Performance Scrutiny Committee of cover performance across the whole Authority.  In response, Ms Scott agreed that the Committee needed to focus on specific areas and then look across the board, with a need to give directorates the job of managing its own business.  Quarterly meetings were also held with the Chairman of Scrutiny Committees to ensure issues were being picked up, together with constant scrutiny to identify consistent trends in underperformance.

Mr Collins then went on to give a presentation on Commercial and Procurement Assurance process setting out the systems, mechanisms and responsibilities in place to ensure internal control, including providing an annual statement of opinion on the effectiveness of those systems and mechanisms; identifying any actions to address weaknesses based on those opinions, or improvements required based on the current organisational position and the monitoring and review of any actions identified. Assurance Mechanisms in place were as follows:

Commercial Services Board (CSB)

•      Oversight of commercial activity

•      Visibility of new projects

•      Scrutiny of business cases (service  ...  view the full minutes text for item 36/15

3:10

Hilary Cameron, Finance Lead Transforming OCS Project, and John McKenna, Oxfordshire Customer Services, will attend to give a brief presentation to the Committee.

The presentation will update the Committee on the On Boarding Project for the Partnership arrangement with Hampshire County Council for the provision of HR and Finance Services from 1 July 2015. The presentation will set out progress to date and advise on arrangements for ensuring the wider Council is ready for the forthcoming changes.

The Committee is RECOMMENDED to receive the presentation.

The Committee had identified the need to monitor the risk, control and governance arrangements in relation to the proposed partnership arrangements with Hampshire County Council. Accordingly Lorna Baxter, Chief Finance Officer for OCC and Carolyn Williamson, Section 151 Officer, Hampshire CC had been invited to attend and give a presentation to the Committee on this issue.

The presentation updated the Committee on progress on the ‘On Boarding’ Project for the partnership arrangements with Hampshire County Council for the provision of HR and Finance Services from 1 July 2015, including an overview of the governance arrangements of the Project, highlighting key changes in processes for HR and Finance and advice on arrangements for ensuring the wider Council is ready for the forthcoming changes. It also considered changes to internal controls and data security arrangements as well as updating the Committee on savings.

Mrs Baxter explained that the project governance was effected through an on-boarding project board which comprised senior officers from Hampshire, Deloitte and Oxfordshire. The board was responsible for making strategic and operational decisions, monitoring project progress and addressing identified risks, The project team was also drawn from the three organisations and they were responsible for delivery of eleven workstreams from the design phase, through build and test phases and finally the deploy phase.

The existing Hampshire partnership was legally underpinned by an unincorporated public to public partnership. This enabled each public body to jointly deliver and share the benefits of shared services between themselves. As a partnership rather than a commercial outsourcing, the expectation was that all partners (including Oxfordshire County Council) would collaborate and work together for the good of the partnership. Oxfordshire would join the partnership through a joint working agreement, retaining influence on the partnership through an operational forum which provided a basis for consultation and the exercise of influence in the management of the overall joint working arrangements.

The joint working agreement included: governance arrangements; service standards and performance measures; role and responsibilities of each partner in the process steps for each service area and apportionment of costs, benefits and liabilities.

A number of reserved matters were also being agreed which would ensure Oxfordshire was able to influence any proposals in relation to the partnership which might affect Oxfordshire’s fundamental interests. These were currently being negotiated and would form part of the joint working agreement.

Oxfordshire was working closely with Hampshire to develop a performance management framework, based on financial and non-financial measures being collected as part of the governance arrangements above.

Mrs Baxter further outlined 100% user acceptance testing (details in the presentation) and the OCC business readiness events plan.

With regard to Risk Management, Mrs Baxter went on to explain that the partnership worked on a cost share basis. The mechanism for controlling cost increases was now covered in the proposed Deed of Accession which aimed to protect Operational Partners from ‘disproportionate impact’. In addition all matters relating to changes to levels of financial contribution would be approved in the setting of the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 37/15

3.30

Kate Terroni, Deputy Director Joint Commissioning and Martyn Ward, Service Manager ICT Business Deliverywill attend to give a brief presentation to the Committee.

The presentation will update the Committee on the progress of two interlinking projects:

·                     The Adult Social Care IT Project which will deliver replacement computer systems for Adult Social Care (Swift) and Client Finance (Abacus); and;

·                     The Adult Services Improvement Programme which is delivering significantly more effective and efficient business processes using LEAN methodologies.

The Committee is RECOMMENDED toreceive the presentation.

Kate Terroni, Deputy Director Joint Commissioning, and Martyn Ward, Service Manager ICT Business Delivery, gave a presentation to update the Committee on two interlinking projects:

·                     the Adult Social Care IT Project which will deliver replacement computer systems for Adult Social Care (Swift) and Client Finance (Abacus); and;

·                     the Adult Services Improvement Programme which is delivering significantly more effective and efficient business processes using LEAN methodologies.

The Committee heard that, following the update given to the Committee in April the project go-live had, with the agreement of CCMT had been rescheduled to November 2015.  This would allow the project team to achieve the 99% data quality objective, give sufficient time for the required staff training and enable the production of a permanent interface into the Hampshire IBC for Finance Services.

Mr Ward went on to explain that the revised date would also allow for an upgrade of the IT software to the latest version (v6.1) which would avoid further work and upgrade costs in 2016.  It would also deliver improvement to functions such as online financial assessments, safeguarding, reporting, financial services and system configuration.

Mr Ward told the Committee that 98% of financial assessments had now been imported into ContrOCC of which 94% had passed testing and that 97% of care packages had now been imported into ContrOCC of which 95% had passed testing.  Three more rounds of data migration were planned.  He further confirmed that that new go-live date mitigated most of the risks that could have occurred with the earlier go-live date.

Ms Terroni reiterated the importance of data migration being 99% accurate and outlined the next steps in the project including:

Work with the supplier, Liquidlogic to upgrade the current system (from v5 to v6.1);

Updating and completing a comprehensive plan to test and deploy the new v6.1 system;

Updating the Training Plan and producing the necessary training & support materials for all staff & partners;

Continuing the work to achieve the 99% Data Quality objective;

Configuring and deploying the necessary interface between Liquidlogic and the Hampshire IBC System for Finance purposes.

The Committee reiterated the importance of accurate data, particularly in relation to the reputation of the County Council and questioned whether officers knew what impact the 1% inaccuracy would have.

Mr Ward responded that once all the data had been migrated they would be able to access the impact of the 1%.

A Councillor raised a concern around members of staff not being able to use the system and the possibility of staff subverting the system in these cases.  Mr Ward assured the Committee that there were tight processes to go through which would not allow staff to subvert the system and that such things would be flagged up within the system.

In response to questions around whether the system would be able to record how many hours care the client had actually received, Ms Terroni confirmed that it was an aspiration to buy an additional package in the future to tie in contract provision, but that it  ...  view the full minutes text for item 38/15

3:50

Report by the Monitoring Officer (AG9).

This report provides a commentary on the effectiveness of Internal Audit in 2014/15, and will be used as a source of evidence for the Annual Governance Statement.

The Committee is RECOMMENDED to:

(a)          note the report;

(b)          commission the Monitoring Officer to undertake an annual survey at the end of 2015/16;

(c)          determine whether to:

(i)           cease undertaking an annual review; or

(ii)          continue with an annual review; and/or

(iii)         continue with an annual survey of senior officers.

The Audit & Governance Committee had requested that the Monitoring Officer undertake a review of the effectiveness of Internal Audit.  The Annual Review was also a requirement under the Accounts and Audit (England) Regulations.  The Committee considered a report (AG8) that provided a commentary on the effectiveness of Internal Audit in 2013/14, and which would be used as a source of evidence for the Annual Governance Statement.

RESOLVED: to note the report and to continue with an annual survey of senior officers with a report back to the Audit & Governance Committee.