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Issue - meetings

Digital Strategy

Meeting: 25/04/2018 - Policy and Resources Committee (Item 205)

205 Digital Strategy pdf icon PDF 65 KB

Digital Stategy

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Mr Gary Hunter, the Transformation Manager, presented the Council’s Digital Strategy to the Committee.

 

Mr Hunter conveyed the following to the Committee:

 

·  The strategy outlined the Council’s approach to digiral technology up until 2021. The policy was a continuation of the Council’s Customer Services Improvement Strategy.

·  The Digital Strategy was split into two themes – Digital Council and Digital Community.

·  The theme of Digital Council focussed on how the Council used IT to achieve its objectives, and how the Council enabled its staff to provide an excellent service to residents and businesses in Maidstone.

·  The theme of Digital Community focussed on how the Council ensured that services were designed for customers to access in the most convenient way. However this did not exclude those who could not engage with the council digitally.

 

Mr Mark Green, the Director of Finance and Business Improvement, confirmed that there was provision in the capital programme for spend on IT projects. Any new initiatives identified through the Digital Strategy that met the Council’s objectives within the Capital Programme would be eligible for funding from the capital budget.

 

The Committee identified that there were areas of the borough that had poor mobile phone reception, and it was noted that the Digital Strategy did not mention this problem that some residents faced. The Committee requested that reference to this issue was made in the policy.

 

In response to a question from a member of the Committee Mrs Georgia Hawkes, the Head of Commissioning and Business Improvement, confirmed that further work was required once the strategy had been agreed and implemented to identify those that were digitally excluded. This work would also include identifying what support was available for those who were digitally excluded.

 

Mrs Hawkes confirmed that she would bring an update to the Committee next year on the progress of implementing the strategy which would include an update on the progress of work carried out on digital exclusion.

 

RESOLVED:

 

That, subject to the addition of ‘Work with mobile phone providers to ensure that mobile phone signal remains strong and improves in areas where coverage is poor’ to the bullet points under ‘We Will’ on page 20 of the Strategy, the Digital Strategy is adopted.

 

Voting: Unanimous