Verbal Report of the Senior Finance Manager, Internal Audit
Minutes:
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10.1 |
Linda Hunter, Senior Finance Manager, explained that the Outstanding Audit Recommendations had been reported to EMT twice. 27 recommendations were outstanding over nine reports. EMT had written to the relevant Directors. Six recommendations had now been implemented. EMT had looked at why the recommendations had been delayed and would now monitor the progress with the remaining recommendations.
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10.2 |
15 recommendations were now outstanding for IT areas. Some of these had been unavoidable due to other work pressures, for example the COVID pandemic. Significant effort had been made by the IT team implementing new systems to enable remote working and equipment rolled out to over 6000 staff. There was also the major insourcing of Capita which had an impact on the availability of resources.
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10.3 |
Four were outstanding on the fraud e-learning, but this package has now been designed and the next stage is for the Development Hub to check the format and layout prior to publication. Individual services were still looking and assessing their own fraud risks and mitigations, for example, the Enforcement Agent no longer collected cash.
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10.4 |
Councillor Angela Argenzio said that with regard to the insourcing of IT, the Committee had been reassured that resources were in place to manage this and felt that the department was using the pandemic as an excuse when things had not gone well.
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10.5 |
Eugene Walker, Executive Director – Resources, informed the Committee that the Capita transfer had gone very well and the Capita staff who had transferred in had integrated very well. During the pandemic 6000 laptops had been rolled out to staff across the Council, Contact Centre staff had been given equipment to work from home. There had been a need to quickly change processes which had been made difficult by Covid-19. Capita had made some moves difficult and some negotiations had stretched out over six months.
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10.6 |
The Chair said that staff had worked very hard and she was impressed by the staff response to the pandemic.
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10.7 |
Councillor Adam Hurst felt that there were issues with IT before the pandemic, but the department had done a good job. It was very difficult to bring resources back in house.
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10.8 |
Eugene Walker acknowledged that there were some longer term issues to be worked on. Gillian Duckworth reminded Members that an update report on the insourcing of IT was due at the next meeting of the Committee.
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10.9 |
RESOLVED: That the update be noted.
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