Friday 26 March 2010

First of all my apologies for not writing last week. My parents were down from Essex so I took a day off to spend some time with them. I remembered my blog sometime after lunch (and maybe a beer or two) in the middle of Bath. No excuse though!

It's been a week of big decisions in DOR. On Tuesday, Cabinet took the decision to in-source ICT back to the council from Steria. This is hugely important. The council is going through huge change at the moment and this is likely to continue for many years. Work Place Transformation, service transformation, our work on lean, development of Area Boards and accelerating our work with communities, developing closer relationships with our public sector partners (Unitary Plus) mean the requirements from ICT are changing rapidly. We are better placed to improve and develop the service if we have complete responsibility for it. Deborah Farrow is working on the transfer plan and we'll share this with you as soon as possible.

Cabinet also received the draft Corporate Plan and Medium Term Financial Plan. These documents, available on the intranet are well worth a detailed read. They explain what we will be focusing on as an organisation over the next four years, what our priorities will be and how we will fund these. They explain how we will meet the financial pressures in the public sector too, although this work will be continually developed as the national picture becomes clearer after the election. The Corporate Plan will be formally approved by Council in May. My Service Directors and I will now be developing the DOR Business Plan that we will have to put in place to deliver the corporate objectives. We'll share this with you as we develop it during the next few months. Do please have a read and feedback your comments to me.

I'm also pleased to announce that Neil Ward has been appointed Head of Service for Property. Property joined DOR on March 1st, and as John Shorto is due to retire next month we needed to ensure a seamless transition to his successor. As this position will report directly to me, Members made the appointment on Tuesday. I'm sure you will all join me in wishing Neil every success in his new role.

Thanks for reading and we'll catch up again next week.

Carlton