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WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE CHIEF MINISTER
BY DEPUTY G.P. SOUTHERN OF ST. HELIER ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 3rd NOVEMBER 2015
Question
Will the Chief Minister, as Chairman of the States Employment Board (SEB), outline the options under consideration by SEB to enable the implementation of eGovernment policies and, in particular, the potential outsourcing of over 50 jobs in Information Services? Will he further clarify the statement made by the Chief Executive of the States that: "Their jobs are not formally at risk yet – we are just market testing. We are just seeing what the market can offer us"?
What impact has the response of the SEB and its officers to a leaked document had upon public sector employees across all departments and has this resulted in increased anxiety among employees? In this regard, will the Chief Minister assure members that future plans for restructuring will be subject to open and transparent consultation with States employees and their representatives at the earliest opportunity in line with good employment practice?
Answer
Information Services is important in enabling reform across the public sector through eGov and other transformational work. The department needs to re-structure to focus on reform and e-government activities and to ensure it can deliver the IT services required to meet the demands of the business through this, and further periods of change.
It is not unusual for organisations to outsource their technical infrastructure services (servers, network, data centre, desktop, Service Desk etc.), as the technology and economies of scale allow commercial organisations to offer these services profitably.
As a result of an initial review of Information Services' core activities the technical infrastructure services have been selected for market testing. The team responsible for technical infrastructure has been informed of work underway to establish whether this approach is viable. Team members were briefed at an early stage in an open and transparent manner.
Unions have been made fully aware of this project, and will be consulted on a regular basis until the service review is completed.
At each stage team members have been informed of the reasoning and how the change may affect them. Understandably this communication may have caused concern for some. There is work underway to increase engagement during this period of change.