Agenda and draft minutes

The Committee is asked to elect a Chairman for 2024-25 from the committee members listed below: -

Cllr Baldwin, Cllr Boram, Cllr Bradbury, Cllr Britton, Cllr Burrett,
Cllr Elkins, Cllr Gibson, Cllr N Jupp, Cllr Linehan, Cllr Lord, Cllr McDonald, Cllr McKnight, Cllr Milne, Cllr Turley, Cllr Wall.

If the election is contested, a secret ballot will be held in accordance with Standing Order 2.17.

1.1      Cllr Bradbury was proposed for the position of Chairman for one year by Cllr Burrett. The proposal was seconded by Cllr Boram. There were no other nominations.

1.2      Resolved – that Cllr Bradbury is duly elected as Chairman of the Committee for a period of one year.

The Committee is asked to elect a Vice Chairman for 2024-25 from the committee members listed below: -

Cllr Baldwin, Cllr Boram, Cllr Bradbury, Cllr Britton, Cllr Burrett,

Cllr Elkins, Cllr Gibson, Cllr N Jupp, Cllr Linehan, Cllr Lord, Cllr McDonald, Cllr McKnight, Cllr Milne, Cllr Turley, Cllr Wall.

If the election is contested, a secret ballot will be held in accordance with Standing Order 2.17.

2.1        Cllr Burrett was proposed for the position of Vice-Chairman for one year by Cllr Bradbury. The proposal was seconded by Cllr Wall. There were no other nominations.

2.2        Resolved – that Cllr Burrett is duly elected as Vice-Chairman of the Committee for a period of one year.

The Committee is asked to review the membership of the Business Planning Group in view of the Chairman and Vice-Chairman appointments.

The Group should have five members including the Committee’s Chairman, Vice-Chairman, and two minority group members.

3.1        Resolved – that the Committee appoints the following members to its Business Planning Group: Cllr Bradbury (Chairman), Cllr Burrett (Vice Chairman), Cllr Elkins, Cllr Lord and Cllr Turley.

Members and officers must declare any pecuniary or personal interest in any business on the agenda.  They should also make declarations at any stage such an interest becomes apparent during the meeting.  Consideration should be given to leaving the meeting if the nature of the interest warrants it.  If in doubt please contact Democratic Services before the meeting.

4.1       No declarations were made.

The Committee is asked to agree the minutes of the meeting held on 8 March 2024 (cream paper).

5.1      Resolved – That the minutes of the meeting held on 8 March 2024 be approved as a correct record and that they be signed by the Chairman.

Report by the Director of Finance and Support Services and Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development.

The report makes recommendations to continue with the implementation of the Oracle Fusion Cloud solution.

The Committee is asked to scrutinise the proposal set out in the report attached at Appendix 1 and provide any comments for the Cabinet Member for consideration as part of the decision-making process. 

6.1      The Committee considered a report by the Director of Finance and Support Services and Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development (copy appended to the signed minutes).

6.2      Summary of responses to committee members’ questions and comments:

·             The £2.6m cost of the programme mentioned in the 2019 decision report was based on buying an off the shelf enterprise resource planning system (ERPS), but it became clear during the implementation period that this option would not work for the Council

·             In 2022, East Sussex County Council budgeted £13.1m for a similar system due to go live in April 2023 - it is believed this budget has been exceeded and the system has yet to go live

·             The cost of implementing this type of system can vary between £4m and over £100m. The overall cost depends on the size of the organisation, the compatibility of the existing and new systems and the level of adaptation that has taken place on the current ERPS.

·             The Council’s SAP system has been modified almost continuously for the last 20 years, meaning extracting information from it is extremely difficult

·             The advantage of adopting a system instead of adapting one is that it preserves the new system for longer and keeps it at the highest level of efficiency as it will be regularly upgraded

·             It is believed that up to 30% - 40% of the money spent so far would have been spent anyway on functional specifications (technical, migration and development)

·             The pandemic and an underestimation of the complexity of the programme are contributory factors to the increase in costs

·             The business case includes 24 different milestones so it will be easy to monitor whether the programme meets timescales or not – there is also a six-month time contingency built in across the two year programme

·             A robust governance system has been designed that allows for regular reporting of progress to senior officers and to the Committee

·             Updates on progress and expenditure will be provided on a monthly basis to a steering group

·             Authorities which have implemented similar systems have made some savings although these have not started to be realised until approximately three years post implementation

·             The revised business case is underpinned by a detailed resource plan

·             To implement the programme, the Council will use a mix of internal staff and external providers with relevant expertise

·             The £4m contingency built into the programme budget is based on known risks which are detailed in the business case

·             A lot of work has taken place over the last few months on soft market testing with interest from an encouraging number of suppliers

·             A Procurement working group is currently developing tender documents to secure both a business and system implementation partner which will be key to the success of the programme

·             Oracle Fusion meets 96% of the Council’s requirements and solutions can be found for the other 4%

·             The Council is engaging with staff around changes that will be necessary with the new system and £500k has been  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

The next meeting of the Committee will be at 10.30am on 21 June 2024 at County Hall, Chichester. Probable agenda items include: -

·         Performance and Resources Report (PRR) Quarter 4 - End of March 2024

·         Digitisation and IT Strategy

Any member wishing to place an item on the agenda for the meeting must notify the Director of Law and Assurance by 6 June 2024.

7.1        The Committee thanked Taryn Eves, Director of Finance and Support Services, for her support of the Committee during her time at the Council and notes its next meeting will take place on 21 June 2024, commencing at 10.30am.