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WQ.165/2020
WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE CHIEF MINISTER BY DEPUTY K.F. MOREL OF ST. LAWRENCE ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 12th MAY 2020
Question
"Will the Chief Minister advise which elements of the Modernisation and Digital work programme are continuing throughout the Covid-19 crisis; how much is being spent on those elements; and which, if any, aspects of the programme have been rescheduled to a later date, providing the details of any rescheduling?"
Answer
The Government Plan 2020-23 set out four key elements for the Modernisation and Digital work programme for 2020. All of these are continuing, however, some changes to the schedules and priorities have had to be made to reflect the impact of Covid-19.
Integrated Technology Solution
The procurement and business readiness activities that were scheduled for 2020 are continuing. Fortunately, the requirements gathering activity was completed before the impact of Covid-19, so a full set of both functional and non-functional requirements have already been established. The pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) stage has also been successfully completed, however, Covid-19 has impacted the invitation to tender (ITT) stage which will is now scheduled to complete in early December instead of the pre-Covid-19 date of early September. Similarly, business readiness activities which were scheduled to be completed by the end of September are now being back ended and are anticipated to be completed by the end of the year. The full year budget for ITS is £7.4m and at this time it is expected that the majority of this will be spent in year albeit weighted more heavily towards the second half than originally anticipated.
Microsoft Foundations
As a result of the Covid-19 business continuity situation, MS Foundations has been re-focussed from resolving the lessons learnt following the 2019 Office 365 pilot as a pre-requisite to rollout to the rest of GoJ, to the rapid deployment of MS Teams to system users across GoJ to enable effective remote working. In parallel deployment of the full Office 365 suite has progressed tactically to users that require it to enable their business continuity plans. The project is also re-planning the work required to address the postponed pre-requisites in terms of the immediate priorities with an additional post-rollout remediation phase to be added. It is anticipated that full rollout of Office 365 will be achieved in 2020 but this will be confirmed when a revised plan is produced, currently anticipated to be by the end of May 2020. The Government Plan 2020-23 included £2.5m of revenue and £3.3m of capital in 2020 for this programme and it is currently anticipated that this funding will be required to support the revised schedule.
Cyber
Despite the ongoing Covid-19 situation, the Cyber Security Programme has been progressing well with mobilisation of the programme team in preparation to manage delivery. The phase 1 procurement is nearly complete with a number of suppliers already selected and all supplier selection expected to be completed by mid-May about a month later than originally planned but without impacting the critical path. The majority of implementation is able to commence remotely, so is not impacted by Covid-19 and those activities which do require a physical presence are being back ended to the later part of the year. Some activity originally planned for 2020 may have to move into 2021 and it is anticipated that these would run in parallel with phase 2 activity. Based on current Covid-19 assumptions, all activity is expected to be completed by the end of 2021 as planned. The Government Plan 2020-23 included £6.1m of capital in 2020 for this programme. Once all of the phase 1 procurement is completed and suppliers have confirmed their delivery profiles, the actual requirement will be confirmed but it is anticipated that the majority of this funding will be required in 2020.
Replacement Assets
Covid-19 has necessitated as re-prioritisation of asset replacement. The immediate focus has been on those assets which support remote working such as firewalls and direct access servers and on improving system reliability and stability within the data centres. Once the immediate response to Covid-19 has been completed, the replacement plan will be refreshed. It is anticipated that the full budget of £5m will be required in 2020.