The Borough has adopted an Information Systems Strategy that seeks to use information technology not only to enable staff to manage their work in the most efficient and effective way possible but as a means of delivering services to the public as effectively as possible. As a result the public will be encouraged in future to find out about the range of electronically available services  and apply for these services increasingly via the Council's website.

The ICT Section promotes these objectives by providing the framework for delivering services electronically and providing the infrastructure that will enable this to happen.

Personal computers are located on staff desks, each machine giving access to all systems required. The increasing move to remote and home working is also promoted and supported by the section.

This section carries out the following tasks: It

• provides a corporate strategy for the procurement and development of computer systems
• writes, maintains and polices standards for the operation of computer systems within the Council
• negotiates discounts with suppliers by centralising the purchase of computer hardware, software, consumables, IT training and consultancy
• designs and maintains the Local Area Network and virtual machine infrastructure
• provides front line support for all computer users through help desk support
• provides awareness and application training for all users
• carries out routine processes such as file transfer and printing that are best handled outside normal working hours.
• maintains the corporate e-mail facilities
• maintains and develops the corporate internet sites
• maintains and develops the Council' s intranet site
• ensures that the Council's sites and e-mail are safe and secure for all users (Government Code of Connect guidance)

To carry out these activities the Section is divided into four units reporting to the Head of ICT

These are:

Database and network:

The Database and network team support the local and wide area network, carry out database administration on the central databases and manage the telephony system.

Help Desk:

The Help Desk is staffed from 8am to 4pm each working day. All calls are logged on the Sostenuto call logging systems and allocated to the appropriate resource.

All hardware is supported by either warranty arrangements with the manufacturer of are part of a corporate maintenance contract with a third party and where appropriate, faults are referred to an appropriate supplier.

User support is also responsible for day to day liaison with users, progressing/chasing faults where these have been passed on to suppliers and specifying the needs of users both in resolving operational problems and defining increase functionality of systems to help match information requirements driven by business requirements

Web team

The web team are responsible for the design and the day to day operation of the corporate application portal that provides web provision of data held in the content management system. The Council wishes to devolve the responsibility for keeping the website up to date to front line user departments.

2nd line support, operations and training:

Where problems require detailed work in reconfiguring equipment or new facilities are required 2nd line support will undertake this work either directly on in conjunction with hardware and software suppliers to ensure that the users needs are best met.

The Head of ICT is responsible for the management of the whole section as well as having primary responsibility for all aspects of strategic planning.