Agenda item

The Technical Services Manager, Worcestershire Regulatory Services provided Members with an on the Automation Project.

PROGRESS

Testing and evaluation of forms continued, and officers were now content that the TENs (Temporary Event Notice) form was ready to be rolled out. Officers had nearly fully exhausted second stage testing with just some planned stakeholder testing with some Board Members and the six Chairs of Licensing Committee arranged for the end of February/early March. Officers were confident that any changes recommended at this stage would be minor amendments that should not delay the roll out.

IT

There had unfortunately been another delay by IDOX in implementing the connector, but officers continued to use a workaround for testing. This implementation was now scheduled for the end of February 2024 and would be in place prior to testing with Members, so that end to end testing could be achieved.

FINANCE

The connector issue had not interfered with any of the financial testing and officers had a high level of confidence in the process, so Members can be confident that monies were transferring correctly and to the correct district codes. This had now been in checked in both the ‘test’ and ‘live’ system.

PHASE THREE

Officers had been checking the Licensing Act forms and Animal Licensing Forms with a view to put together similar guidance for applicants as the TENs form, due to the positive feedback received. These would also now move into testing. A task and finish group had been set up consisting of officers across the different teams in WRS to scope out the ‘Service Request’ form. This form would enable applicants to send in enquiries to the service without having to email or telephone the duty officers and wait on the telephone. It was probably one of our more difficult jobs to scope as it needed to address a very wide range of potential requests relating to the work of all three WRS sections.

In parallel to the wider automation project officers continued to assess the roll out of electronic ID Cards in the taxi trade for both safeguarding and enforcement measures. IT colleagues at Wyre Forest had progressed with work on the dashboard implementation and now awaited the implementation of the connector from IDOX to continue through to completion.

The Technical Services Manager, WRS commented that he was hoping to bring a far more comprehensive update on the project to the next meeting of the Board.

A brief discussion took place on future updates to the Board and if they were necessary at every meeting of the Board.  It was decided that updates would continue to be provided to future Board meetings.

The Technical Services Manager, WRS further responded to questions with regards to the IT system and in doing so explained that; the Victoria Forms product was an ‘off the shelf’ package to provide the template of forms used.  However, the system had to be unique to WRS, since WRS worked for 6 different partner authorities.  The IT system sat on the IT host authority’s IT system (Wyre Forest), but also needed to feed into the host authority (Bromsgrove District Council) payments system.  This and the fact that the shared serve wanted all of the relevant details, including the relevant individual local authority area matching the application to automatically feed into the back office, meant some tweaks were required to the product forms and changes to the connecting software that linked Victoria Forms to the Uniform back-office system.

RESOLVED that the Progress Report on the Automation Project be noted.