Transcript - Performance Management - Chief Operating Officer - 1st November 2021

Public Accounts Committee Performance Management / COVID response Witness: Chief Operating Officer

Monday, 1st November 2021

Panel:

Deputy I. Gardiner of St. Helier (Chair)

Connétable K. Shenton-Stone of St. Martin (Vice-Chair) Senator T.A. Vallois

Mr. A. Lane

Mr. G. Phipps

Mr. P. van Bodegom

Dr. H. Miles

Ms. L. Pamment, Comptroller and Auditor General

Witnesses:

Mr. J. Quinn, Chief Operating Officer

Mr. G. Bowles, Group Director, Modernisation and Digital

Mr. M. Grimley, Group Director, People and Corporate Services Ms. D. Drieu, Programme Director, Team Jersey

Ms. M. Benbow, Group Director, Commercial Services

Ms. J. Spybey, Head of Business Support, Chief Operating Office

[14:00]

Deputy I. Gardiner of St. Helier (Chair):

Good afternoon and welcome to the public hearing with the chief operating officer and the Team Jersey representatives. We will go around the table shortly to introduce ourselves but first, for the benefit of the public, I will set out the reasons for the public hearing today. As you know, we are

currently undertaking 2 reviews: performance management and the response for the COVID-19. The question will be in both areas and we are primarily concerned and would like to ensure that taxpayers' money is used efficiently for intended purposes. Also the C. and A.G. (Comptroller and Attorney General) currently produce a report on the installation of the new I.T. (information technology) system, integrated technology solution, and we would like to ask a few questions about this area as well. Let us go around the table and introduce ourselves for the benefit of the public. Deputy Inna Gardiner , St. Helier , chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

Connétable K. Shenton-Stone of St. Martin (Vice-Chair):

Constable Karen Shenton-Stone , assistant chair of the Public Accounts Committee

Mr. G. Phipps :

I am Graeme Phipps , an independent member of the Public Accounts Committee.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

Paul van Bodegom, independent member of the P.A.C. (Public Accounts Committee).

Senator T.A. Vallois:

Senator Tracey Vallois, member of the P.A.C.

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

I am Mark Grimley, group director for People and Corporate Services.

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

I am Denise Drieu, programme director, Team Jersey

Group Director, Commercial Services:

Maria Benbow, group director, Commercial Services.

Chief Operating Officer:

John Quinn, chief operating officer.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

Gary Bowles, group director of Modernisation and Digital.

Head of Business Support, Chief Operating Office:

I am Jo Spybey, head of business support for the Chief Operating Office.

Adrian Lane, independent member of the P.A.C.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

Lynn Pamment, Comptroller and Auditor General.

Dr. H. Miles :

Helen Miles , independent member of the P.A.C.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Mr. Quinn, the first question is to yourself. Would you please provide an overview of your department, roles and responsibilities?

Chief Operating Officer:

Happily. We will start in the order that we are sitting. People and Corporate Services is responsible for - on the people side - all of the policy and delivery of talent related to people. It includes resourcing. What it does not include is the operational delivery. The People Hub, which does the issuing of contracts, the running of payroll, the calculation of that, that sits within Customer and Local services. But all other people-related activity sits within People and Corporate Services. The Corporate Services part covers soft F.M. (facilities management), business continuity planning, and various other bits which we are developing. It is still an area of development. Team Jersey is responsible for the culture change programme and started back in 2019. It is separated out. It was started within People and Corporate Services. We took it out as a separate programme working with a delivery partner. That programme comes to an end March next year. Sorry, the programme as such we are working with a partner comes to an end in March next year, but the activities will continue and be part of People and Corporate Services because this is a long-term piece of work. Commercial Services covers procurement as one activity; commercial activity. Procurement is the buying of goods and services, it also covers the commercial part, which is our contracting and work with the funding of A.L.O.s (Arm's Length Organisations) and grants and things like that. It also covers the administration of things like supply chain management. Modernisation and Digital is the I.T. function within government. It covers all of the network, desktops, running the computer centres. So delivery of all the I.T. Over the last 18 months it has picked up the remainder parts of government that were not in the original M. and D. (Modernisation and Digital) model; so it covers schools, health, police. So it is I.T. for the whole of government. Those are the 3 key areas, plus the main programme. Then there is the I.T.S. (integrated technology solution) programme which sits within C.O.O. (Chief Operating Office). Although it is called the I.T.S. programme, and with hindsight we probably would have renamed it but it is too late now. It is much more of a business change programme than it is an I.T. programme. Delivering the I.T. is the easy bit. It sits across C.O.O.

because it involves people, it involves commercial, it involves the I.T. So it is a pan-C.O.O. programme rather than sitting within one of the individual directorates within C.O.O.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Thank you. I think it is a very interesting point we will pick up when we come to the I.T.S. because it will be interesting to understand where it would remain and how it would change the whole scope of the programme. We would like to start with some questions around Team Jersey, looking at how it integrates into the wider Government of Jersey work, to improve performance management. I would like to start with a simple question, also for the benefit of the public: what is Team Jersey? Could you please explain how it works for your department and across the government?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

Team Jersey is a cultural change programme and it looks to embed positive culture across the Government of Jersey. We do that using 4 cornerstones, which are kind of outlined in the standards of what a positive culture is. That is about ensuring staff feel valued, included, focused and inspired. The programme, although it is a central programme, works with all departments across government and does offer support also to non-executive areas if they choose to become involved. So it has several elements to the programme. The one that people are most familiar with, which is our workshops that we run for leaders and colleagues, which is a programme of workshops to support them in creating positive culture. We also have a cohort of champions who are individuals who volunteered and receive training to support the programme across the organisation. They are representatives across all departments and at all levels in departments. We also have consultancy support. This is support specifically in departments to help them to build plans around people and culture, and to identify actions that they need to take and then we support them in taking those actions forward, working with people in Corporate Services, to implement a lot of the products that people in Corporate Services have developed to create a positive culture. That could be anything. It could be around well-being, diversity and inclusion. It could be around talent. Because effectively positive culture is about investing in our people and making sure that they feel valued. So all of the foundation elements that are built within People and Corporate Services, effectively we support the embedding of those at a department level.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

I would like to check: would you please take me through the milestones and the process from 2018? I know it was the beginning of the conversation about Team jersey. To take from 2018, when it was still part of People and Corporate and after it became separate and now it is going back to Corporate. What happened? How many people were involved?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Or maybe somebody else can respond.

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

I can but I was not involved originally in the programme. The tender was undertaken by Jacquie McGeachie, who was the interim People and Corporate Services director at the time. Once tendered, and we procured TDP to act as our partner organisation, they undertook phase one, which was a piece of work basically where they spoke to as many stakeholders and people across government to understand what the culture looked like at that time. So they ran a series of workshops, they talked with external stakeholders as well as internal stakeholders. They produced a report - we just call it the phase one Team Jersey report - which outlined 9 recommendations of things that could be improved, to improve our culture as an organisation. Also as part of that contract they were then required to develop and design a programme to help us address and respond to those 9 recommendations. So a programme was built and that commenced in 2019.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

How long were they on phase one and how much did this phase cost?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

I would not be able to break down the cost by phases. I can tell you how much the contract is overall, which is £3.5 million. But I do not have the figures to break it down by phase.

Deputy I. Gardiner : I understand.

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

The programme commenced in 2019 and that does not just include the bits that people are more familiar in. We had phase one, which was the report. Then we had phase 2, which is the bit that everybody is familiar with, which is the workshops that we roll out across the organisation, and all employees are encouraged to attend. Then phase 3 was a piece ... it is called phase 3 but it runs alongside phase 2, and is mainly completed. That included capability building and supporting people in Corporate Services in building some of their foundation things that needed to be put into place to build a positive culture, because at that time people in Corporate Services had not undertaken their target operating model and did not have the resources in place to do some of that work. Effectively, the contract with TDP supplemented the delivery of a number of pieces of work. I can give you examples of that. We have reviewed the values and behaviours framework, working with people

across the organisation and re-establish the values and behaviours framework for the organisation. We did work on our resourcing and safeguarding. It is basic elements that you would expect to see within People and Corporate Services delivery. But at the time there was not the capacity to do that, so the programme supported that. Also part of phase 3 was the Jersey Employers' Group, which you may be aware of, which is something that is not talked about so much but it was the establishment of a group of representative employees across the Island to work together from all sectors and all service areas and bring them together to work together as a group to improve culture across the Island. Team Jersey continues to support from more of an admin phase, although John Quinn sits on that board as a representative of the Government of Jersey.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

How many people work now in Team Jersey?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

Now I have a team of 6, including me. TDP have a team of 3 but then we also have a number of individuals that come in to do specific work but are not directly part of ...

Deputy I. Gardiner :

So TDP have representation on the Island of 3 people that ...

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

They have 3 and they also have trainers that they bring in to help support us with the delivery. When we originally started the programme TDP delivered everything. We have, over the last year, really concentrated on building a Government of Jersey team so that when TDP step away in March next year we will be able to continue to deliver and embed the programme.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

The Government Plan 2022-2025 - the current Government Plan that we are going to debate - annexe includes a proposed recurring efficiency of £87,000 through reorganisation of Team Jersey and taken through the organisation of the development function. Has this been delivered, is it in train? What is the plan for this saving of £87,000?

Chief Operating Officer:

This will come from when we merge it back in. At the moment, for instance, part of Denise's team administers course bookings. Within the organisational development function in Mark's area we also have a team doing course bookings. When we merge the 2 together we will only have one team doing course bookings.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

So the question: if 6 people who now work for Team Jersey, does it mean we will have less people working for Team Jersey?

Chief Operating Officer: Yes.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Okay. TDP is the delivery partner. How is the work of TDP as a selected partner to deliver the Team Jersey programme monitored and measured to ensure value for money? What is the evaluation process that you are conducting?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

We have a programme board that meets monthly. As a programme director, I am required to report to that programme board on a monthly basis a progress report against all the deliverables agreed for the programme. I also have K.P.I.s (key performance indicators) which are both operational and strategic, and I am required to report on the operational K.P.I.s at that monthly programme board as well. That holds to account things such as attendance, quality of provision, whether we are meeting target dates for the delivery aspect. Obviously most of those will mirror the contract delivery requirements.

[14:15]

Deputy I. Gardiner :

How do you provide feedback to TDP development to refine their work? If anything that you provided to TDP changed their delivery?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

I have a 2-weekly operational meeting, which is joint Government of Jersey and TDP. Basically we go through the whole programme every 2 weeks. We discuss any issues or concerns or anything that has been highlighted. That is how we address it. It is an ongoing thing rather than ... but it is recorded as part of our programme records any actions or decisions made at those meetings.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

I understand, thank you. It was mentioned the TDP contract will expire in March 2022. Will TDP work with the Government of Jersey beyond 2022?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

We are not discussing that with them.

Chief Operating Officer:

We do not expect them to, no.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

So everything will be delivered within the house and if you will need extra training from external facilitators would you still use their services?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

No, so one of the pieces of work that I have done, and am currently concluding with Commercial Services colleagues, is to create a learning development approved supplier framework. That means that they are mainly on-Island providers who effectively can work alongside that if we need to bring in extra resources to help us deliver.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

Before I move on to that question, can I just ask: when you are measuring you refer to programme board, operational K.P.I.s. But how do you measure that change to positive culture? You mentioned the phase one report; we are now 2021. How are you measuring whatever that positive culture is?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

I must admit that strategic K.P.I.s continue to be a challenge for us because, as you know, culture change programmes do not affect change straightaway. They take, in general, about 5 years to effect change. What we do use is the Be Heard survey results but because we changed the questions on the Be Heard survey tool, because originally - I do not know if you recall - it was a one- voice survey and we had a different provider; the questions are slightly different. But we are able to assume, by looking at the overall results, that there has been a change. So engagement, for instance, improved overall and also there were positive responses in the areas of Team and also around some colleagues. At the moment, I would say that it has to be remembered that we are one of many things that is happening in the organisation. We can only assume that we are having an impact. We obviously do a much more detailed response for those people who attend our sessions. So we do survey them all, get regular feedback for them all, and also ask them if they are using what they have learnt on the sessions, and if that is having an impact in their areas. We are also out in departments. We are talking to departments all the time and one of things we are doing as part of the people and culture plan is that we are supporting to put in place in departments, making sure that they will have measures in place so they can also the measure the impact of the work that they are doing. That is an ongoing process that we are trying to improve.

It is anecdotal rather than quantitative but we have a cadre of Team Jersey leads across all the departments. We do get them together on a regular basis and we get their feedback on how the programme is landing in their area.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

The only reason I ask the question is because of course as an accounting officer value for money is extremely important under the Public Finances Law, so how do you measure and show that that £3.5 million with a contractor to create positive culture is value for money?

Chief Operating Officer:

I think it is very hard to do that in reality. As Denise says, we are but one thing, particularly in the last 2 years when there has been something much bigger going on in the organisation and the Island. Probably the biggest driver of change in the Island is not the C.E.O. (chief executive officer), it is not the C.I.O. (chief information officer) and it is not the C.O.O., it is COVID. I mean we can measure individuals, we can get anecdotal responses, but to say in a programme that ... although in time-wise it is now a 2 year-old programme we have to remember that we lost 9 months of it in 2020. Team Jersey main events, the value of them is face to face. Getting people together and deliberately. When we set the programme up it was non-hierarchal, so we did not say we would do it by tier, you will not get all of the D.G.s (director generals) into it, then we will do it with directors. We did it on a non-hierarchal basis so that if you are attending an event of 15, 18 candidates one could be the chief executive and one could be the office cleaner. That was a deliberately non- hierarchal programme. It was also not done at departmental level. The benefit is bringing people together to explore things like having difficult conversations in an environment where they are meeting with people they have probably met with before, and they are getting perspectives they have never heard before. That works really well in face to face. It works less well when you are doing it on Teams or anything else.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

We have experienced the Teams.

Chief Operating Officer:

During 2020 bringing large numbers of staff together for face-to-face meetings was not the most advisable thing to do so we virtually lost from mid-March 2020 towards to probably December 2020 the programme in terms of that part of it. We were doing other things, we could talk about that.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

In 2020, in the annual report and accounts, it noted Team Jersey sessions were delivered to over 900 colleagues, and 247 sessions for our leaders in that year, over 130 active leads support a delivery of cultural change across the government. In terms of average attendance for Team Jersey sessions in 2020 what would that be?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

At the moment we have dropped below our K.P.I. So 75 per cent was our K.P.I. we set for attendance and during 2020 that dropped below because of the fact that just the amount of pressure in the organisation, ability for people to attend. It is currently rising and we are now nearly up to K.P.I. I was looking at the figures today. We are on 70 per cent now for leaders and we are on 68 per cent for colleagues. It is improving but we did drop below K.P.I. as a result of the impact of the pandemic. We went online, that also made it difficult for colleagues because a lot of our colleagues obviously do not have access to the same systems. What we found is for colleagues that was a disadvantage and that is why we went face to face as soon as we could. But what we have done as a result is ... at the time we had to reduce the number of people that we could allow to come, to allow social distancing. Whereas previously we might have had sessions with 20 on we were having to run with 10.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

That would necessarily increase the cost per session. Would you have a rough average cost per session in normal times compared to what it would have cost COVID-wise?

Programme Director, Team Jersey: I have not worked that out.

Chief Operating Officer: Inevitably, yes.

Programme Director, Team Jersey: It was more.

Chief Operating Officer:

We did not increase the delivery cost because we were putting less people through. The average cost per attendee would have gone up during that period.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

In terms of the spend for Team Jersey in 2020, it has only been 2 years and with COVID, but roughly do we have an annual breakdown for that?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

For the contract in 2020, so that is not including on-costs, it was £910,000 and the overall cost in 2020 of the programme was £1.4 million. It is to be remembered that we did continue to use the resources but we had to redirect them and use them to do pandemic response. For instance, one of our TDP resources we lent to people in Corporate Services. I went back to people in Corporate Services and also what we did with our resource as well, we had to move everything online, so we had to rebuild everything online for our session so we could run in the last quarter of the year and into the beginning of this year. The other thing we did is we put one-to-one coaching support in for leaders that were in the front line and obviously under a lot of pressure and stress. So we put one- to-one support in so we used those resources in a different way.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

How does that fit in regards to spend on, for example, well-being for staff? Well-being for recovery in terms of COVID. There were funds bidded for, as I understand, for COVID for some of those areas. How does that correlate with the money spent in terms of capacity by TDP?

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

There were 2 parts to this spend in terms of COVID well-being. One was directed solely at Health and Community Services. That was supported by the Bailiff 's Fund as well. They dealt with the decompression of people at the end of the shifts. They dealt with fatigue, tiredness and the stress. That was separate to the corporate programme that was supported by Team Jersey. During the pandemic Team Jersey led on the well-being sessions for us, gave well-being seminars, were able to do the "We are Team Jersey" hints and tips for people. They took on the corporate support while Health and Community Services had specific face-to-face support or more intensive support. What that allowed us to do is the majority of people in Corporate Services were seconded to response. So Team Jersey were able to pick up an additional requirement during COVID for people in Corporate Services while we were doing the business continuity work.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

I think it is really important for the public - their money, taxpayers' money - to understand what is the benefit that the public see from these programmes in the public sector?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

From a point of view of Team Jersey, for me the work that we have been doing has become even more crucial because of the pandemic, and why we have redirected our services in this year to work mainly in departments is because the amount of pressure the departments have been under, and also at a time when they were just forming as a department, because obviously target operating

models were at a stage when these teams were just coming together. Our response has been crucial to taking the teams out and giving them time to reflect and to concentrate on (1) how they develop it and start to work together and improve their performance as a team and (2) how they support their employees who work for them, and helping them to put plans in and supporting the delivery of those plans to do that. We also have redesigned a lot of our delivery as a response to things that people needed. For instance, we created new sessions around psychological safety in teams, how to deliver, as a leader, to balance challenging and supportive behaviours. That is because when you are responding to an emergency response, leadership comes much more directive. Then how do you step out of that and slow down and change your response? That was difficult for our leaders but it was also difficult for our colleagues who found themselves in the grip of the change that was happening. What we have been able to do is put a lot of support in departments to get back to business as usual and to help them to reflect and think how they operate. Ultimately that does have an impact on how we deliver our public services because it means that our employees are in a better position to be able to perform in their roles. They feel happier in their roles so they will give more. At a time when I think everybody, as an organisation, throughout the public service our people have stepped up, it gave them some time out to reflect and to understand what they have been through and how they move forward. It is difficult for me to say these are examples of things that the public would see but I think they would see that. It would have been different if we had not been there to support that kind of response.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

In terms of COVID, because you mentioned - I recognise it is at the front of everyone's forward thinking because of what has happened - but has that then resulted in the aims and the objectives of Team Jersey changing other than just putting in some of the programmes you mentioned and some of the things extra you had to do? Has it fundamentally changed the aims and objectives?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

The aims and objectives have not changed, it is just how we deliver it that has had to change. So we have spent more time in departments that originally was not part of the plan, working directly with leadership teams to help them put a plan in place so they can embed the change. We realise that that was needed. Unless we were able to give them time and facilitate that discussion to get them to focus it would be difficult for them to be able to concentrate on people issues with all the other things that are happening because of the pandemic. It also has meant that it has changed our focus a little bit in that our delivery is much more around well-being and things linked to, like I said, psychological. Linked to what is a leader's role in well-being? What are those things that are still connected to a positive workplace culture? I suppose the issues that we identified at the beginning had changed. So we had to respond to that.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

I just wanted to go back on something that Senator Vallois said, just to clarify for my own understanding. You said at the beginning that all the sessions were non-hierarchal and that leaders and colleagues attended together. What is your definition of a leader and what is your definition of a colleague?

[14:30]

Chief Operating Officer:

A simple definition of a leader is someone who manages people. So someone who on our structure has someone reporting to them.

Comptroller and Auditor General: It is as simple as that?

Chief Operating Officer:

It is as simple as that, yes. It could be any level of the organisation.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

It is just that you said you delivered to over 900 colleagues and 247 sessions for our leaders.

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

We have different programmes. We have a programme for leaders but it includes leaders, as John said, regardless of whether you are a director general or a supervisor or team leader, they would go together. Then we have colleagues, which is for anybody who does not line manage staff. We then also have some all-staff sessions, which is just for everybody.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

The other thing you said at the beginning as well that staff are encouraged to attend.

Programme Director, Team Jersey: Yes.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

How do you motivate and influence staff to attend?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

I have executive sponsors in each department who also come together on a regular basis and we regularly send out details about their attendance rates for their departments. We do not do it overly competitive but there is a slight competitive environment within that. We also encourage it for our Team Jersey leads. We also encourage it when people attend to go back and tell their colleagues what they got for it and therefore recommend it for others.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

Across departments then, what kind of range of percentage attendance have you got for Team Jersey?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

I must admit I do not have those figures with me. But the range is quite broad because if you think about our colleagues' programme we have not run that for very long. I know it sounds like we have but because we had to put it on hold during the pandemic and then reduce the amount that we delivered, we have only really been running that fully for about 5 months before pandemic and then this year, once we went back into face to face really. I cannot tell you the figures but I can tell you that the larger departments have much lower attendance and they would probably be around like 20 per cent or 30 per cent whereas more office space departments are probably around 70 per cent or 80 per cent.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

So you are looking between a range of 20 and 80 per cent?

Programme Director, Team Jersey: Yes, it is probably something like that.

Chief Operating Officer:

Inevitably because of the range of services government provides, getting people to attend the courses is challenging logistically sometimes. If you are a teacher when can you go, and we have had to work with schools to look at how we use inset days or other days when we might be able to get them to attend. Teachers just cannot come for an afternoon course because they have ... similarly if you are a nurse. If you are scheduled to work nightshifts we are not running the programme at night so we have to work around various working patterns. The large delivery departments find it harder and we have had to do more work. We are looking to deliver some courses directly into the department.

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

We are currently going direct to departments. We are currently delivering in the prison, in the fire service, where they cannot come to us, and recently Highlands College during their inset week. We have moved to more departments to try and capture those that have found it difficult to attend.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

You also mentioned that you were doing a lot of focus on psychological well-being and psychological safety. What role do your occupational health partners have in that?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

Our occupational health partners do not but our well-being representatives across government are encouraged and invited to attend our design. For instance, we have a new session coming out in the new year which is around well-being. Representatives from Health and I think J.H.A. (Justice and Home Affairs), as well as obviously People and Corporate Services team.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

Is there a disconnect there then in that AXA are paid to provide your occupational health service and yet they are not involved in the design of your psychological safety and well-being.

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

The AXA contract is being re-let and stripped back from that role. They had a role in terms of promoting good health. They do not have a presence on-Island and I do not think it is a territory where we would want them to. We have colleagues in Health and Community Services who can advise, who are experts in this, and the programme itself is looking at it in an organisational context.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

Who is providing occupational health support to States of Jersey at this moment?

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

AXA are about to get ... we have signed a contract again for a 2-year extension, which has been stripped back just purely to occupational health in terms of assessment of workplace.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

But before that they were responsible before the renegotiation of your contract?

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

Yes, they had a role in health promotion but not in the way that we are taking well-being now.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

I think a lot of the questions that I was going to ask have been answered but the one question that I really do want to ask. I do not want to put Denise on the spot, but you have obviously been around a long time, how is this Team Jersey programme different from the previous iterations of the culture change programmes that we have seen, say, over the last 5, 10 years?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

It is sustained, that is the big difference. You are right I have been here a long time and I have ... so previously when I have been involved in culture change programmes they have not been sustained. The difference is this has been sustained.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

But what has brought the difference in substance to this programme?

Programme Director, Team Jersey:

The difference is commitment from leadership to sustain it. We have worked hard, together with John Quinn, to make sure that as leadership might have changed that we have talked and made people understand what the programme does and tweak things if we have to, but making sure that it is still relevant and appropriate because for me that was one of my biggest issues in the past. If you do not sustain it then it is like: "Oh, here comes another new idea." So it is sustained and I worked hard this year to build an internal team so it will remain in place beyond the contract with TDP.

Chief Operating Officer:

The other thing I would highlight is that it has been flexible. We started off with a series of modules which addressed what was in the original phase one report. But as the world has evolved we have changed ... we have kept those modules and those modules are still delivered but we continue to evolve new modules. We make those modules relevant to what we want to do now. Because probably like you I have seen lots of culture change programmes, even if they are theoretically sustained, the material is ... you just keep putting out the same material. Therefore those that were involved at the early stages have gone through the material and then disengaged. The fact that we keep bringing new material in, new material is relevant to the situation that people find themselves in, is helping to get that sustainability so that people do not ... even if you went through the programme in 2019 you do not disengage because there are opportunities to engage constantly still.

Comptroller and Auditor General:

I am going to hand you over to Graeme now.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

And we will move to the performance management questions. Today we will ask several questions through our performance framework, it will be directed to yourself.

Mr. G. Phipps :

It is a bit of a shift to where the rubber hits the road. To start with, maybe even give us a little bit of clarity. I have come across some buzzwords like "the golden thread". Can you maybe explain to the public and to myself what is the golden thread and how that connects directly to performance of the government and the individuals in it?

Chief Operating Officer:

The idea of a golden thread is to take your high-level outcomes, which are set out, and trace them back through the various planning and performance documents we have. We have an Island Plan, we have a Government Plan, we have a departmental business plan. Then individuals have their performance plan. The idea of the golden thread is that you should be able to look at your personal performance plan and see how that helps deliver the overall corporate plan for C.O.O., the department operational business plan. You can look at the department operational business plan for C.O.O. and see those are the elements of the Government Plan that that delivers; the Government Plan delivers the outcomes for the Island. That is the concept of the golden thread.

Mr. G. Phipps :

Let us look a little deeper then. Let us try and understand, maybe you can clarify, the golden thread between the common strategic priorities, such as putting children first, through to the corporate objectives, department targets, and how these are reflected in a personal objectives of any individual working in the department, can you give us some specific examples of how this works?

Chief Operating Officer:

The C.S.P. (Common Strategic Policy) came with ... we called it the sixth C.S.P. on the ongoing initiatives. If you look at the original 5 corporate strategic priorities there was also a thing called ongoing initiatives that sat underneath it. C.O.O. is much more directly responsible within the ongoing initiative space. We are an enabling function. We do not deliver anything directly to the public. We enable departments to deliver things to the public. You will not see easily a golden thread from putting children first to what we do. What we do is we enable good I.T. for the schools, which enables C.Y.P.E.S. (Children, Young People, Education and Skills) to put children first in the way they teach at schools. We deliver teachers through our recruitment process that puts children first. But we do not directly have that. Where we do have a very direct role is in the modernising of government, and that was one of the ongoing initiatives as opposed to the common strategic priorities. You will see in the Government Plan around modernising government was around

modernising I.T. You will see in the departmental operational business plan clear set projects that modernise I.T. You will see in Gary's performance contract a commitment to deliver those projects. And you will see under Gary, his teams, where they are involved in those projects, what they have to do to deliver a project. So that provides that thread of modernising government to doing an I.T. project like cybersecurity, which is in Gary's performance plan. Head of cybersecurity will have a set of performance measures around delivering that programme. So that is how you get that common thread. Similar things apply to the people strategy, to the commercial work that Maria is doing.

Mr. G. Phipps :

You obviously see all the other departments that are a lot closer and directly with the public at large. Are you seeing this thread and this connection, and link of what you are doing and how it works through the other departments, connected right through to the people of Jersey? Are you comfortable with that?

Chief Operating Officer:

There is always room for improvement, but, yes, I think it has changed. I have only been here since the last quarter of 2018 and I have seen phenomenal change in that period of time in terms of there was not anything, to be honest, when I arrived that had that thread.

Mr. G. Phipps :

Can you give us some examples just to clarify what you are seeing directly with the public?

Chief Operating Officer:

If we take the work we do with C.Y.P.E.S. around supporting them, I can see very clear plans for what they are trying to do in terms of social workers, for instance, which feeds back then to the work that we are doing in terms of recruiting social workers and running campaigns to bring social workers on to Island. If you look at work in our environment team around sustainability, again we see very good examples of things, and often those fall back into the commercial space. We are just doing a pilot on changing the fuel we use in our vehicles. We are supporting a commercial initiative to change the fuel in the vehicles to reduce the pollution levels on the Island.

Mr. G. Phipps :

How do you monitor and work to improve individual's performance against departmental targets, specifically in the area of underperformance? So now focusing on performance appraisals.

We have rolled out the My Conversations My Goals so that people have an individual performance plan. They have a requirement to meet with their line manager on a quarterly basis to review performance in that performance plan. We would hope that they meet more regularly and would encourage them to meet more regularly. We record those conversations on our H.R. (human resources) system, and we have done a lot of work to improve that. It is not by any means perfect, and that is one of the reasons why we are investing in the I.T.S. solution. But that is the model we have. Just take my example, we have our departmental business plan, which we have all agreed between ourselves. That cascades into a set of objectives for each of my directors. I meet with them bi-weekly to review how we are going against those objectives and deal with issues on an informal basis. Then on a formal basis we have a quarterly discussion where we go through each of the objectives one by one and we review performance and, if necessary, decide what actions need to be done to improve performance.

[14:45]

Mr. G. Phipps :

Beyond termination, what are some of the actions you might need to take, and how effective are those, with things like coaching?

Chief Operating Officer:

Termination is always the last resort. The actions are sometimes around focus. I think we are all very busy and I think COVID and what has happened over the last 18 months has compounded that. Sometimes people need permission to let something drop to do other things and it can often help having those conversations around what to prioritise and what to put first. Inevitably in some cases there is an element of development, so sometimes it is pure training, sometimes it is coaching. We use mentoring, we use coaching, we use formal training as ways to improve performance. Termination is the last resort.

Mr. G. Phipps :

One last question. Given the potential morale issues identified in the last survey and given the COVID issues added to or connected to that, how would you assess the buy-in and the commitment in general to the kind of initiatives and the things you are doing? What is the success of these?

Chief Operating Officer:

I think the buy-in is pretty high. I think you are right that if you look at the timing of the survey it was right in the midst of a pandemic response and it was when we had 2 of the target operating models that had just been completed and one was still underway. It was a time of great uncertainty. I think what I took away from the survey, one of the big learning points, and we had already somewhat identified this, but it reinforced it, was what people are looking for is commitment and opportunity to progress and develop. People join the Government of Jersey not for a job but for a career and we have deliberately, with our target operating models, and you will notice in the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel report that the M. and D. target operating model was the one that was called out as best practice. What we have done is tiered our roles, so that rather than necessarily always going out and getting the finished article at a grade we can bring people in at a lower level as the unfinished article and put in place training and development to allow them to aspire to the role. That commitment to development is probably one of the most important things we have put in place in terms of boosting morale. Mark, do you want to add anything to that?

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

In terms of buy-in, I think there is a lot of potential in the organisation, and we talk about this with the people strategy, about realising people's potential, the potential of the new hospital, with the new H.Q. (headquarters). We are also putting in a lot of talent programmes and I think people can see that there are green shoots coming through. What they want to see is some certainty that we are going to see it through this time. Very much like the change programmes that we have just talked about, where things start and then stop and then the next best thing comes in, you are not building on any foundations. I think the word I would use at the moment is "potential". There is a lot of potential there; there is a lot of hope that we would do that, but I think there is quite a lot of reticence of saying: "We can do this." I have seen it in my own department. I think I am the fourth director in probably 5 or 6 years and the team have told me: "We have seen this before. Are we going to do it?" and I think some people need a bit more convincing because they have put a lot of energy into this work. So realising the potential and seeing through what we have started but also not being stubborn enough to carry on if we know it is not working. Team Jersey adapted and I think that is what we have to do as an organisation. The final thing I would say is that we are putting the employee voice at the heart of the people strategy, so the Be Heard survey and our employee strategy are absolutely linked because, quite frankly, if employees say it is a great place to work it is a great place to work. If they say otherwise, then we have got to listen to that.

Mr. G. Phipps :

That is very positive. I am glad to hear that and the word "commitment" is another one that is coming through. Maybe I will turn now to a different thrust.

Comptroller and Auditor General:  

Can I ask a quick question? Based on everything that you have said and again going back to John, at the beginning you said that your operational capacity within H.R. does not belong to you, so you are setting all the strategy and the policy. Would there be a move to bring the People Hub back to the Chief Operating Office, so that you have some control of the pipeline, maybe, is the word?

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

There are 2 things happening at the moment. One is we have got a programme where we are working with People Hub to look at demand, so we know that we get greater demand in August, when teachers and school staff come through and that impacts on People Hub's capacity. The other thing is the long-term view around the integrated technology solution. That is going to fundamentally change the role and operations of People Hub and people in Corporate Services, but also the line manager. Within the I.T.S. programme there is a specific workstream on change management to make sure that we do not just take what we have got now and move it into a different place, but we look at the opportunities of the new technology.

Chief Operating Officer:

In terms of the longer-term, one of the opportunities that comes out of the new headquarters building and the I.T.S. programme is to create a multifunction shared service centre. We looked at doing it at this stage and we decided that it was too disruptive because of the way we are dispersed as an organisation geographically as well as operationally. We were concerned that the noise of creating a multifunction shared service centre would just be a lot of noise on top of trying to implement the I.T.S. programme, but there is an opportunity when all of those functions - People Hub, finance shared services, help desk - are all in the same building that you could go down the multifunction shared service route.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

This is a question that I had before we move to technology and COVID. It is not under your remit, but most of the complaints anecdotally and non-anecdotally that we have heard about people getting employed, recruitment, onboarding, contracts, they are going towards the People Hub.

Comptroller and Auditor General:  

Yes, so another chief officer is responsible for the workforce that then you are responsible for developing the potential of, and I am just wondering how much of a problem that disconnect is.

Chief Operating Officer:

There is an issue, but the logic of it was that bringing in a larger operation in terms of more contingency, more ability to failover, if the People Hub

Comptroller and Auditor General:  To fall over?

Failover, not fall over. I meant failover, if I said fall over. Yes, so the advantage of C.L.S. (Customer and Local Services) is it is a large operational area. If there is a problem, if they need to resource up quickly to deal with something, they have got capacity. If it did sit in People Services then we do not have other operational capacity sitting alongside it, so that would be the disadvantage and that was the logic, prior to my arrival here, for it going into C.L.S.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

I think the logic needs to be reviewed, because their capacity I would say has a big question mark.

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

Yes, so capacity does need to be looked at. We are working with

Comptroller and Auditor General:  Capability as well.

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

Yes. We are working on streamlining our policies and procedures because that will reduce some of their capacity. We are also looking at how we can support them anticipate demand to allow them to plan for that move, and also I think the other thing that we have got with People Hub is that we meet with them regularly now to go through what the issues are so that we are learning from those. As part of our review, I am extremely conscious that if we take the recruitment side, recruitment is your first contact with your potential employer and then when you start that is your next, and that sets the tone for your relationship. We have got a lot of work to do there. There is opportunity coming but we are having to bide our time to wait for the I.T.S. because that will solve a lot, but there are other things upfront now that we know really matter to people, like their pay, their contracts and getting those out quicker.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

Is there not a risk to that, though? If you are waiting for the I.T.S. programme, I know it is coming in phases and I know we are going to come on to that, but does that not risk losing some really good potential employees going forward by saying: "Well, we know there is a bit of an issue, but we are just going to wait until we have got a new programme"?

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

There is, but almost everything needs doing now, and we have to prioritise.

Comptroller and Auditor General:  

There are some fundamentals that are needed, are there not?

Group Director, People and Corporate Services:

There are, and we are working on those. We are alive to those issues and we are talking with People Hub to make sure that we can support them. I do not think it would be very collegiate to say that it is their problem, because it is not. I advise the States Employment Board. It is the States Employment Board's relationship with the employee. We are working together on that. We are alive to those issues and we are trying desperately to simplify a lot for the People Hub to give them more capacity as well.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Yes, because we have to change the image of the States as a Government, as an employee, that nothing would happen in 3 or 4 months. This is the image that the public has currently and we will work towards this together. Thank you. We will go to the integrated technology solution to discuss cost tracking, benefits and improve the management of the delivery, or for the performance. I will hand to Mr. Lane.

Mr. A. Lane:

I would like to start with stepping away from the I.T.S. programme and understanding how it now fits into your wider I.T. strategy for government. Can you explain to us in outline terms how you are thinking now about an integrated I.T. strategy?

Chief Operating Officer:

We set out in 2019 our plan and that has not largely changed. That plan was around 10 initiatives. If I can take you back, in building that plan the process we went through was that we went out to every department and asked: "What are the I.T. things you would like to do?" and we ended up with just over 500 requests of things that they would like.

Mr. A. Lane:

I am sorry, what I meant is the broader I.T.-enabled digital strategy.

Chief Operating Officer:

Yes, so we went out to all the departments to ask them what were all the things they wanted to do I.T. and digitally and we came up with 500. We then went through a prioritisation exercise and we had 100 priority ones, so we invented priority nought. We came up with a strategy around 10 key programmes, which were around building on what was already there, so we had an eGov programme that had put in place a platform that allowed us to identify the citizen through the Yoti I.D. (identification). It also had a payments platform through the ICAR (Income Collection And Reconcilliation) initiative, so we had 2 very firm things to deliver by the eGov programme that we

wanted to build on. We wanted to focus on activities where we had a long ongoing relationship with the citizen, and the four things we identified was tax, social security/pensions, and health as being our 3 big things where the citizen is dealing with us on an ongoing basis, as opposed to a transaction. If I want to get a scallop licence that is a transactional thing. I do it once, I get my licence, I go off. My Tax, My Health, My Social Security, are ongoing activities. So those were the 3 areas where we wanted to focus that. Then the last parts of the strategy were around securing all of that through a cyber programme, enabling the workforce to operate efficiently and that was the I.T.S. programme around enabling internal operations to be efficient and rolling out the Microsoft foundations program which initially focused on rolling out Office 365 and moving us into the cloud, so the cloud was key. I think the bit that has probably changed most fundamentally is the cloud part. We are still cloud- first, in terms of anything new we do will be cloud wherever possible. What we probably will not do is a mass migration of what is currently on premise to the cloud. If you go back to 2019 that was part of our strategy. What we have looked at over the last 2 years to improve the reliability of our I.T., we have made substantial investment in our data centres, and we have now got our data centres to a point, touch wood, where they are pretty good and pretty efficient and the business case for picking all of that up and throwing it into the cloud does not stack up. We are cloud-first for new but we will not do a mass migration to the cloud of our data centres currently operating.

[15:00]

Mr. A. Lane:

Okay, so that was not the original plan? Does that mean that you had to divert funds into the remediation of data centres?

Chief Operating Officer:

Yes. When we closed down Cyril Le Marquand House, which is one of the data centres, and we moved so when we were still in Cyril Le Marquand House we had 2 data centres, one on the roof and one at Rue des Prés, which is a J.T. (Jersey Telecom) centre. When we closed down Cyril Le Marquand House and moved into Broad Street there was no obvious reason to move the data centre to Broad Street, so we moved our second data centre out of Cyril into Five Oaks. What we discovered during that process was that it was not as robust as we would have liked it to have been, and some of the things that I had understood I may have misunderstood as to how they worked. So very simple things. We were paying for dual routing for our network, only to discover that in some cases the routing was both in the same conduit, so that had to be changed. I think I described at the time when we presented to the Assembly on the I.T. strategy, we had machines that were so old we could not get new parts for them. If we needed parts we had to get second-hand parts to keep our machines alive. We have gone away from that; we have taken all that old kit out.

Mr. A. Lane:

How are you confident now that the remediation of those kinds of issues has been effective?

Chief Operating Officer:

I think we are more confident than we were. Unfortunately, there is always a risk that you turn over a stone and find something else.

Mr. A. Lane:

You obviously got to a point where it was not just a hardware issue like you just described. You had the JD Edwards and other things all running at the same time.

Chief Operating Officer:

Yes, we have some old systems. JD Edwards was the most critical one because it is out of support. It is 2005 vintage, out of support, running on a Windows platform, which itself is out of formal support, although we are paying for extended support for the platform. There are some obvious bits of kit that we want to replace. In terms of the overall operation in I.T., the thing that I would say that proves we have come a long way is up until this year we had never done a failover between our 2 data centres, ever. We did our first failover, managed failover. We shut down one data centre and we ran on the other data centre.

Mr. A. Lane:

Was that based on a risk assessment saying that you have got a risk of not being able to

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital: We could not failover.

Chief Operating Officer:

That only became apparent when we moved out of Cyril, because being naïve when we were talking about the move I said: "Well, that is very simple. We just shut down Cyril, failover to Rue des Prés, move all the kit to Five Oaks and fail back to Five Oaks" and then we could not failover to Rue des Prés.

Mr. A. Lane:

Okay. There were a couple of things you said in there where you had been told something that is not true. Just now you said you assumed you would be able to failover, but you could not, because you had never done it. You said earlier when you moved out of Cyril there were some other things that you had been told, where you understood that it was true. How did you get in that position, where you had been told the wrong thing?

Chief Operating Officer:

Good question. I think when you come into an organisation for the first time you have to, particularly in my role taking on the responsibility I had, do your due diligence, but your due diligence can only be based on asking people things. It is only then when you get into the real things, and Gary might want to talk a bit more on that.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

One of the things that has been missing for as long as I can see is an understanding of what our technology assets are and what they were. There were a lot of assumptions made a few years ago when we were looking to develop things like the cyber programme, and one very good example of that is that in structured interviews the consultancy we were using worked with people who had knowledge in their heads but could not prove it, because it was not contained anywhere. The result of that was that there was an assumption, particularly around cyber, for example, that we were looking at around about 400 applications. I am not sure what the number is today but going through the discovery I think we are up to 900-odd at the moment, so the assumption was significantly wrong.

Mr. A. Lane:

Is this specifically around the cyber programme or is this

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

It is the cyber programme that has been doing the discovery, so the cyber programme has been going through looking at what applications there are and, as John said, the reliance was on people's knowledge, but there was nothing there that could provide evidence that that knowledge was correct, and now we are creating that.

Mr. A. Lane:

So you went from 400 to 900. Do you know when you finish looking, not necessarily what number you get to, but how long is it going to take you to get that complete landscape picture?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

If I said it is 90 per cent complete, that last 10 per cent may be a killer. We really believe that we are there, but I am very reluctant to guarantee it. If we look at when we have moved into Health, and Health has become part of M. and D. we found there are over 400 applications in Health alone.

Mr. A. Lane:  Within the 900?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

Within the 900 yes, so as we get hold of these areas we are going through them systematically to determine what is there. The reality is that when John joined, and that was before I joined, there were a lot of assumptions being made.

Mr. A. Lane:

Does the systematic review that you are now doing then deal with things like understanding when those applications come to end-of-life or what the security flaws in them might be? Are they meeting the needs of the departments that have got them? Are you going back systematically?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

We are, so we have started. We have done a level one analysis, so we have done the end-of-life analysis on all of it. We are now going through and doing more. We have introduced new processes to effectively assure every application, with something we call the M.E.R.s (minimum enterprise requirements) process. It is a very big issue for us to get our hands around the assets and understand the risk profiles, and we are spending a lot of time doing that.

Mr. A. Lane:

Time equates to money or resources. What area of the budget is that coming from?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

Various places. We have a programme called Replacement Assets, which fortunately is designed for exactly this issue.

Mr. A. Lane:

Is that funded sufficiently to keep pulling that thread?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

We have spent it all this year, so at the moment we believe it is, but if we do not believe it is we will create a business case. Where we are at the moment we have got it planned, we know what we are doing and we are within budget.

Mr. A. Lane:

Okay. Let us turn to I.T.S. specifically.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Before I.T.S. if possible is picked up, you have done some of end-of-life analysis. Can you specify is it 80 per cent, 90 per cent, 20 per cent? Approximately what is left to analyse?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

The end-of-life is now complete. We have done an end-of-life analysis for all of the assets but, as you mentioned, there are other types of security issues that we have to check, so we are going to go through that systematically to look at those.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

How much of our technical assets audit has been done and what percentage remains, approximately?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

Can I split this into 2 answers? There is one which is to understand what the assets are, and then the other one is to understand the risk profile of those assets. In terms of understanding what the risk assets are, the only remaining parts of that at the moment is the integration of Health, Education and the police. We are going through that part and as part of taking them on board we do this analysis and we put that information into our database. You could say it is 80 per cent, but only because we are taking on those new areas. In terms of what is in that database, at the moment 100 per cent of it has been analysed for end-of-life but of course we have not done the police and Education. Hopefully that helps explain where we are. Then what we will do is we will get more and more sophisticated about our risk profiling, and that is an ongoing thing. That will happen. Every year I will expect us to improve our risk profiling of those assets.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

One more follow-up: is there a clear overarching digital strategy in one place that sets out the vision for digital engagement with citizens for the delivery of digital services for the benefit of our public? Is there an overarching strategy in one place that sets out the vision for our digital transformation?

Chief Operating Officer:

No, there is not, and the focus has been much more on I.T. transformation than on digital transformation, because of the legacy. The problem in my analysis

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Let us call it I.T. transformation. Do we have the overarching strategy for I.T. transformation, that all the dots will be connected eventually?

Chief Operating Officer:

No, as I said we go back to the core things we wanted to do, which were around tax, health, so there is a plan. The new tax system has already been done. We are currently working on a new electronic patient record which will be the cornerstone of starting that road to digital engagement with citizens on health. We will start in the next couple of years a replacement for N.E.S.S.I.E. (New Employment Social Security Information Exchange), the Social Security system, again 2005 vintage, homebuilt, which means that it does not have the support issues because we built it ourselves so we know how to support it, but it has provided us with some issues, particularly when we went to home working. Do we have a strategy that encompasses the 900 applications and what we are going to do with them? No, we do not.

Mr. A. Lane:

Will you be developing one?

Chief Operating Officer:

We will be developing some principles. I think a strategy that covers something as broad as the whole of government in terms of those 900 applications would require a vast amount of work and effort, and I am not sure it is valuable. What we have are some principles around simplifying the estate. One of the things we have is multiple use of the same application and different applications doing the same thing, so a simplification of the estate as opportunities arise to reduce those 900 applications down. I suppose you could ask what is our strategic principle? Well, our strategic principle is on reuse, so as we develop we are developing capability for reusability, so rather than building point solutions, and a very good example is the booking and testing system, so you have all been through the airport, you have all had your Q.R. (quick response) codes and the various messages you have had. That booking and testing system was built by us working with Microsoft. It is components put together; it is not bespoke code and it was built as a booking and testing system. When it went live it was for booking people coming through the airport. It then evolved into also because if you are booking and testing you can book and jab as well, so it became the booking system for vaccinations. Would we go live with vehicle testing, M.O.T. (Ministry of Transport) style testing on the Island? It would become the booking and testing system for M.O.T.s.

Mr. A. Lane:

So if there is a set of principles that you are starting to articulate when do they come forward and where do they go to?

Chief Operating Officer:

We will publish something by the end of the year.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Very practical, and it is right that you have the airport testing, you put your Social Security I.D. and it recognises your vaccination status through the Social Security I.D., which is brilliant. Would Social Security I.D. be used as an I.D. across all of the systems that you are putting together, that will get rid of revenue, tax revenue, and the hospital, or will it be a new I.D. introduced?

Chief Operating Officer:

I am not sure. I think the issue we have got, and I have not done any analysis and I do not know the answer to the question, is you have got to find an I.D. that works for everyone. I do not know, is it possible to have a health record without a social security number? I suspect it probably is, because I suspect you could probably be a non-resident and end up in hospital and not have a social security number, so that will not work.

[15:15]

Deputy I. Gardiner :

But if you are a resident of the Island you would have and we could find you through your social security.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital: Not if you are a child.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Not if you are a child? Children are registered. My daughter was registered with Social Security when she was born. I do not know. I am just raising that how are we on an Island of 100,000 population, because it worked perfectly with testing and vaccinations so we will not create another new system that is not connected.

Chief Operating Officer:

The point is, you could well be right, but you have got to look at if you are going to have, say, a health record, if the only identifier on the health record is social security, then everyone who goes into the hospital has got to have a social security number. If you are a non-resident and you fall over in the street and break your leg do we issue you with a social security number in order that you can go to the hospital? I do not know, is the answer.

Deputy I. Gardiner : Or a passport. Okay.

Chief Operating Officer:

The desire is to have a single I.D. but you do not necessarily have to do it through a single I.D. because you can do it through matching I.D.s and it is something I have done in a previous place, whereby you have got your health number, you have got your tax number. Providing we can join all 3 together then you can use one or other.

Mr. G. Phipps :

Does that not speak then to what you are talking about when you are saying what are the overall guiding principles, what is the vision for our I.T. system, so maybe it is 95 per cent correct but the intention, the vision, so we would really encourage you to get that done in the context of

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Okay, let us go back to I.T.S. and Mr. Lane.

Mr. A. Lane:

Before we go there is a question I have got about other programmes at this point, and then I will go back to I.T.S. in a second. You mentioned patient records, so if I understand correctly there is £9.2 million that is now going to be spent on enabling digitisation of patient records, the first port of call. The software that you are going to buy for that, is that going to talk to I.T.S. and other systems when you buy it, or are you going to do it as a standalone?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

I am sure you are aware but I will state it anyway, we have to be very careful about health records. So when you say "talk to" the health records stay within the E.P.R. (electronic patient record) system. Will there be integration with that system so it can work on the basis of invoicing and so on? That is definitely the plan. It will in that way sit, to the extent it can without compromising health records.

Mr. A. Lane:

So will you place that lens across that piece of procurement to say: "Where else does it need to be ?"

Chief Operating Officer:

So we have a design authority. Do you want to talk about the design authority?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

Essentially one of the things that we have implemented in the last couple of years is very much an architectural approach to solutions. So we talk about reuse. That means you need an architectural approach to solutions. The design authority is the one that will define the principles that you would like to see us publish, which we will do and they are also involved in every procurement. So a design authority has to sign off that this particular procurement will fulfil the requirements of integrating into the government network. That means it uses the correct underlying technology, it has the ability to integrate and so on. There is that authority in place to ensure what you are asking about.

Mr. A. Lane:

If we step back and look across the estate, what is the total capital spend that is required? If you have got £9 million for patient records, if you have got £63 million for I.T.S. - and we will come to whether it is still £63 million or not - what is the total number going to be to roll out across the estate?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital: Are you asking for the portfolio cost for all of this?

Mr. A. Lane: Yes.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital: No idea.

Mr. A. Lane:

How do you get to that? I think we asked you the same question 6 months ago and you gave a very similar answer.

Chief Operating Officer:

I would have given you an answer 6 months ago based on 400 applications.

Deputy I. Gardiner : Now we have 900.

Mr. A. Lane:

You will be glad you did not give an answer 6 months ago.

Chief Operating Officer:

We will get a view when we have completed the end-of-life work, then we will start a programme of when these assets need replacing.

Mr. A. Lane:

Is that a 2023-2026 Government Plan?

Chief Operating Officer:

Yes, at least. I mean, it is much easier to look at the big stuff and I think N.E.S.S.I.E. is probably the other big one, but if you look at the speed at which, and Health is a good example, Health I.T. you could give me a blank cheque and it probably would not be enough, and the same with cyber.

Mr. A. Lane:

Well, we will ask the same question the next time we see you.

Chief Operating Officer:

All I can tell you is however much we are spending on cyber the bad guys are spending more.

Mr. A. Lane:

Let us turn to I.T.S. because I think that is present and real in terms of a delivery in March or April.

Chief Operating Officer:

Yes, the beginning of next year. For release one.

Mr. A. Lane:

The programme you described last time is 4 phases, JD Edwards' replacement, H.R. systems, asset management and commercial management activities. Is it still broadly in those terms?

Chief Operating Officer: Yes.

Mr. A. Lane:

Are those phases still more or less as they were in terms of timing?

Chief Operating Officer:

We are going through a replanning exercise but yes. We brought the start of release 2 forward slightly. After the discovery phase for release one we did a lessons learned exercise, and we probably should have foreseen it but did not, we spent quite a lot of time at the start of release one discovery bringing our own teams up to speed with what the technology looks like. The system they currently use, the 2005 vintage, is very different to what we want them to use in the future. We probably lost a week or 2 of just people getting their heads around what the technology is, so we brought forward the start of release 2, the discovery work, and we are going to do an initial piece upfront, which is a show and tell, effectively, of what the resultant technology looks like for people resources.

Mr. A. Lane:

Okay, and so phase one, the JD Edwards' replacement, is that still on track for March or April?

Chief Operating Officer:

It is still currently on track for April, but we are looking at possibly pushing it back a couple of months.

Mr. A. Lane:

Does that eat into your programme of contingencies?

Chief Operating Officer:

Not hugely, because the bit of S.A.P. (system applications and products) that release one is working on is called S/4HANA and S/4HANA is not needed on release 2 but is needed on release 3, so providing release one does not hit release 3 we do not have a problem. The reason why we may push it back is because our finance colleagues are significantly under pressure to get everything done. To go with an April release, and we have looked at the testing cycles, it means inevitably if we were going with that release we are going to have to test it in Q1, year-end. So freeing up testing resource, there is some logic for pushing it back a couple of months and allowing the bulk of the testing work to be done during the purdah period, when there will be less demand on the finance teams.

Mr. A. Lane:

So if you push it back without incurring additional cost, what are the key go, no-go activities that you are going to go through ahead of launching release one?

Chief Operating Officer:

We will go through the usual set of unit tests. Although given it is cloud, unit testing will be largely focused on the extensions that we have built, rather than on the core functionality. We will do a series of systems integration testing and then full user acceptance testing. Again, the user acceptance testing will focus on the end-to-end process outcome far more than on the functionality of the system, because can you post a journal in S.A.P.? Yes, you can. Have we configured it correctly so that when you think you have posted a journal to decide to achieve that outcome? That we need to test.

Mr. A. Lane:

Who holds the key to those decisions? Is it you or the chief executive?

Chief Operating Officer:

It sits with myself and the treasurer as chair. I am chair and the treasurer is the vice-chair of the partnership board.

How are things going on spend to date?

Chief Operating Officer:

To date we have spent as at the end of September £11.8 million, which is below expectations. Our forecast for this year is that we will underspend by £2 million. Some of that is around timing rather than money. When we put the budgets together in the original business case we probably did not allow quite long enough for the signoff, so the process by which from the deliverables to us signing off to the invoices being raised to us paying the invoice, so the work will have been done but the cash will not be out the door. On a cash basis we will underspend by £2 million.

Mr. A. Lane:

Does that delay of expenditure knock on to any of the programme deliverables?

Chief Operating Officer:

No, it is simply the post-deliverable of going from here is a set of deliverables that we can sign off from our delivery partner to getting an invoice that we pay, which is taking slightly longer than we had in our original cashflows.

Mr. A. Lane:

Okay. You mentioned you are going into a replan. What precipitated that or is that just a normal activity?

Chief Operating Officer:

Just a normal activity. As we look at the critical path through the programme and the result of constraints between the workstreams release one is relatively simple, because it is the only release that is running up until 2 weeks' time when release 2 discovery starts. It is looking at as you get into more detail, so as you start to do, for instance, the testing plan in detail, looking at then does that have any resource constraints? We are a very shallow organisation. There are a lot of people where there is only one person who knows how something happens in the organisation, and if they go on holiday no one does their work for them; they just come back to a backlog of work. That is the reality of this organisation. You cannot use that person in 2 workstreams at the same time, so we have to resource plan at the individual level.

Mr. A. Lane:

When you talk about that key person, is that across the organisation or is that specific to I.T.?

Chief Operating Officer:

No, it is largely the businesses, the finance function, the H.R. function.

Mr. A. Lane:

Where are you at on the total programme cost now? So £63 million was the F.B.C. (full business case) number.

Chief Operating Officer:

Total programme cost, the current forecast, which is a slight underspend, less than £1 million underspend.

Mr. A. Lane:

That is to deliver the original scope?

Chief Operating Officer:

The original scope to the original timetable.

Mr. A. Lane:

There was some suggestion that payroll had been descoped?

Chief Operating Officer: Payroll was never in scope.

Mr. A. Lane:

Never in scope ever or just at the F.B.C. stage?

Chief Operating Officer:

Payroll was not in scope from the start of the procurement phase, so from the start of 2020. The reason we took it out of scope was that we discovered that there was only one E.R.P. (enterprise resource planning) provider that had a Jersey-compliant payroll, and if we left it in scope we had a non-competition competition.

Mr. A. Lane:

Sorry, what does that mean?

Chief Operating Officer:

There is only one E.R.P. that has a Jersey-compliant payroll, so if we left it in scope and made it a requirement that you delivered payroll

Mr. A. Lane:

Oh, I see. You would only have one?

Chief Operating Officer:

We would only have one bidder.

Mr. A. Lane:

That was not the bidder that you ended up going with?

Chief Operating Officer:

It was the bidder we ended up going with, so we could put it back in scope, but it was not in the costings.

Mr. A. Lane:

Okay, so presumably that means when you did the walk from £36 million or £38 million of O.B.C. (outline business case) to £63 million of F.B.C. there was a fairly significant scope item that fell out but I do not think it ever got called out in the walk in the cost increase?

Chief Operating Officer:

Yes, the payroll costs were minimal compared with the overall programme.

Mr. A. Lane:

Perhaps we could ask you to go back to that and just dig that out and see what was in those numbers. Great. So thinking through some of the programme governance, can you describe the scrutiny that is applied, how you sign off on the delivery of milestones within the programme?

[15:30]

Chief Operating Officer:

Yes, so in terms of the programme governance, the programme has a partnership board - and I will just give you the background so you understand it - which I chair, and that includes key Government of Jersey people plus key members from each of the supplying organisations. Below that we have a programme board, which is chaired by the programme director, and that includes all of the leads from People Services and Corporate Services, Commercial Services, Finance, I.T., as well as the programme office. Deliverables are submitted by the delivery partner to the programme management office. They are then sent out to the relevant Government of Jersey people for review and comments are provided back either accepted or not accepted. If they are accepted they then go to the programme board for final ratification. If we take a deliverable, a level 3 process map is a deliverable, or say it is a process for accounts receivable, it will come into the programme office. It will then be sent to the finance lead. They will discuss it with their team who have been working on the level 3 process and to the degree that that now represents their agreed level 3 process it will then go back in as agreed or not agreed. If they do not agree it then we rework it.

Mr. A. Lane:

So the majority of things are dealt with inside the programme?

Chief Operating Officer: Yes.

Mr. A. Lane:

Looking ahead, presumably as you move towards this more cloud-based solution it changes what you as a function particularly in Modernisation and Digital need to do. How is that going to be reflected in your target operating model?

Chief Operating Officer:

So within the target operating model as a result of I.T.S., which was not in the original target operating model, we have a S.A.P. centre of excellence that will be created.

Mr. A. Lane:

So that becomes more of a procurement function?

Chief Operating Officer:

No, it is a delivery function, so one of the big things about the cloud-based solution is the regular updates. So effectively we will get code drops every quarter, so we must have a function that can do several things. One is obviously to test those code drops to make sure that they work for us, secondly to implement those code drops, particularly around the interfaces. It is not the code drop in terms of dropping it into S.A.P. S.A.P. will do it, but we need to make sure the interfaces work. Also those code drops include new functionality, so we need to have a capability and we will build a capability to understand and, where appropriate, implement that new functionality.

Mr. A. Lane:

Okay, so the things you may get automatically as part of the functionality of the core platform, which you can choose to use. How will you manage or what control do you have around things that create consequential changes for you, which you just cannot avoid because the vendor just has the right to change things?

Chief Operating Officer:

Most things that they force on us will be a bit like your iPhone update. It will be background changes. The things that will have an impact are usually the optional things, where you can turn them on or not. Part of the testing will be to identify if there is anything in the background and it is unlikely to have a significant impact on the core, but it will have an impact on interfaces and extensions, and that is where we will have to do the testing.

Mr. A. Lane:

Okay. When we spoke in March you were talking about the development of the intelligent client function. Can you tell us how that is going? I think you said that was essential to the delivery of this programme.

Chief Operating Officer:

Yes, so we have an intelligent client function. There is one key role that is filled by the contractor. The rest of them are now filled, so we have a comms capability, we have a change capability, we have capability of contracting, so the contract team are all up and running now. Now it is developing within that and is starting to build the capability within M. and D. that will become the centre of excellence when we hand over from development to live. When we go live initially we will have support from the partner, and then we have a staged handover of that support from initially taking on level one support, and then we will take on level 2 and then we will take on level 3 support.

Mr. A. Lane:

Okay, and the intelligent client function is the contracting capability. Is that around the management of the contract that you have got already?

Chief Operating Officer:

Yes, which is not an inconsiderable challenge.

Mr. A. Lane:

No, I imagine it is a 12-binder bible of stuff. I wonder how you have got yourself comfortable, absent that person being in the organisation to run that function, or absent that function to build it, you have got to a point where you have got a contract before the function is there.

Chief Operating Officer: We have had support.

Mr. A. Lane:

From?

Chief Operating Officer:

We had one person internally and we had support from our procurement partners on the contract, for instance, and we are also using a London firm of lawyers on the contract.

Mr. A. Lane:

I will try a simple question. How do you risk-assess the relationship with what is going to be a much bigger partner than the Government of Jersey in terms of your ability to manage the risks that they impose on you?

Chief Operating Officer:

We have put a lot of effort into our requirements and getting those well-documented and the contract is based around those requirements. We have got our governance structures in place. We have got regular reporting. We have got our intelligent client function and our permanent programme director arrives on Wednesday to pick up the cudgels, which will be the next internal appointment. They are coming in externally but they are a Government of Jersey employee, so we will have a permanent employee who will run the programme working directly to me. I think it came out in the C. and A.G. report that the governance of the programme is complicated but sound. We are getting much better on the reporting to the governance bodies and I have also instigated an assurance function outside of the formal assurance, and I have to be careful how I describe it because it is not an assurance function in the sense that it is not independent assurance, but it is an advisory board to advise me. That is made up of the assurance partners from each of the supplier organisations.

Mr. A. Lane:

How do you kick the tyres on what your suppliers tell you? It seems that you are very reliant on what you are told. How do we understand that it is right, particularly where there is a potential conflict between the 2 organisations?

Chief Operating Officer:

I do not think we have hit conflict yet. A lot of it is based on our own experience. We have kept our procurement partner on as an assurance, so they are independent.

Mr. A. Lane:

Working purely for your side?

Yes, for us. So Credera, who were the procurement partner, when they wrote the original spec for that, which they did and were successful, the bulk of the work was to do with procurement. The tail end was assure delivery. Much in the same way as if I go back to finance and construction when I worked in financial services you would keep the architect on to have a sniff around to make sure that the builders were building what the architect had architected. That is the sort of role that Credera do, so they are doing monthly reviews of parts of the programme to assure that it is delivering what we bought. We also have a member of Gartner on our programme board to provide independent advice and Gary uses Gartner quite a lot on the work that we are doing in the M. and D.

Mr. A. Lane:

Internally then within the government, how are you keeping your stakeholder buy-in? I recall from when we spoke in March that there had been some issues around the expectation of how much each function would contribute their resources to the delivery of the programme and you found that there was a cost overrun issue as a result of that. How are you keeping them on board?

Chief Operating Officer:

The functions are represented at the programme board, all the functions represented at the programme board, so from a functions perspective that is the way in which they provide input. From a broader government perspective we also have a business change forum, which has a representative of each department and they provide input and are kept up to date and provide feedback on the programme from a departmental perspective. We have 2 lenses. The business change forum looks at individuals from each part of the business saying: "How is this going to work for us? What change activity do we need to do? What support do we need to deliver it?" and from a functional perspective, which is around do the processes work, we have a programme board where each of the functions are represented and where resource discussions will happen.

Mr. A. Lane:

So other than the Treasury I guess calling out issues around a Q1 drop for release one, are there any other functions that are raising any material issues?

Chief Operating Officer: Not at this stage.

Mr. A. Lane:

I have one other thing to ask, which is around scope, which I should have done before. Apologies. Project accounting, we understand it was excluded from the scope of release one delivery for the core accounting modules. Given we are in a world where we are about to spend £X hundred million on a hospital, among other things, why was that excluded?

I would have to get back to you on that one.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Thank you very much. Senator Vallois, do you have a follow-up question or will we move to the next item?

Senator T.A. Vallois:

No, I am just intrigued to hear because I have been doing this job for longer than I probably should have, but a lot of things around having an evidence base, having milestones, project management, all those areas, without the strategy that overarches that. So an explanation because you talked about a blank cheque, which really pricked my ears up because I think any politician could turn around and say they could spend a lot of money with a blank cheque on different areas. But there is an accountability issue here, so having that strategy, like the people and culture strategy we have, or we have other strategies to understand where we are going with projects and what the position is and how that accumulates in terms of the outcome. The way I have listened to the answers is there are different projects, and it might cost us lots of money, but for me it does not seem to all come into one place.

Chief Operating Officer:

The strategy that we set out in the 2020 Government Plan, and you will probably recall some of the discussions that we had at C.O.M. (Council of Ministers) was around dealing with the legacy deficit and that is why we set out the 10 programme phases, which is the I.T.S., the electronic patient record, the tax system, the replacement of N.E.S.S.I.E., the electronic document management, which was critical to the hospital and the new headquarters building, cyber to protect it all and enabling the workforce. We did have a strategy, but the strategy covered specifics, probably 50 of those 900 applications we found.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

In terms of now you have found those 900, I think I am trying to get to the point where I am saying you clearly found that there were issues. How do we make sure those issues do not happen again? We found these 900 applications. You are talking about going for a cloud-first approach. We have got the data centre sorted with the replacement assets and all those different pieces, but if we are going for that cloud-first approach we need to know and understand those applications and whether there is a need assessment done about whether we need those particular applications. That is why I am trying to understand, okay, we are trying to deal with legacy issues here but will there be a strategy that says for those first cloud applications, will that be a case?

Chief Operating Officer:

I think when new applications come along we absolutely have a cloud-first approach. We look at the approach we have taken and bats is a very good example, here is a new application, a new requirement that came out of the blue, it was not part of the strategy because we did not know when we wrote in 2019 that COVID was going to come along and we want to do border testing, no one thought we would test everyone who arrived on an island.

[15:45]

We have a set of principles we fall back on, which is ... the last thing we will do is write bespoke code; the very last thing. The first thing we will do is: can you buy it off the shelf? If you can buy it off the shelf, go buy it. If you cannot buy it off the shelf, can you build it using containerised products? That is what we did with that; we took different parts of the Microsoft suite and we, effectively, bolted them together. It is off the shelf, software is a service first, containerised products bolted together second and the last resort would be build; that is the test. If someone comes with a new requirement today to M. and D. then that is the route we go down, which says we are going to go for cloud off the shelf if we can. If something exists out there we will go and buy it.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Okay, thanks. I will move on because I feel that we have 2 more things to cover and 15 minutes left. Very quick to Paul, yes.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

Just moving on to automatic electoral registration: who is responsible for the project delivery of the automatic electoral registration programme?

Chief Operating Officer: The Greffier.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

The Greffier; there was not somebody assigned to look after that individually.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

What was your responsibility with your department?

I was hoping we were not going to do this in public forum but we will have to since you have raised it. The responsibilities of board members for that project, so: "Responsibility 1: to approve financial budget and spending for the project with the States Greffier. Responsibility 2: accountable for success of the project, chair the project board and make key decisions with regard to project direction and with mitigation, review accuracy and content of any project reports and escalate any required information to a senior leadership team, authorising gateway sign-off and progression through the C.O.O. delivery framework, ensure resources requirements are met in order for the project to succeed, responsible for legal and commercial project considerations and delivery of the value for the Government of Jersey organisation and maintain regular contact with the project manager and oversight progress the Greffier."

Deputy I. Gardiner :

What was the role of your department?

Chief Operating Officer: We were supplier.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

When the Greffier asked us to do the health check, what happened? It was a particular request from the Greffier, I think, or you should not

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

That was a joint decision to do that. First of all, the project manager was not an M. and D. project manager. The replacement of the project manager was a discussion between M. and D. and the Greffier. The reason it was a joint discussion was because in order to reduce costs for this particular project we agreed to share an external project manager. It was not an M. and D. project manager, it was a shared project manager. There was a discussion around where the project was going and the decision was taken to bring in a new project manager for it and an agreement was made to a health check.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

What does it mean "supplier"? What is the definition of "supplier"?

Chief Operating Officer:

If the project had gone ahead and they were going to build an I.T. solution, then we would have overseen, as a supplier to the Greffier, the development of that I.T. solution.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

Can I just ask, in terms of the document you just read out, I take it that was the business case?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital: It is terms of reference for the project.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

Terms of reference and when was that document changed for shared project manager?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

The project manager, I am not sure what the document says about the project manager. It is not

Senator T.A. Vallois:

I would just like to understand how a project would be managed if you have got a shared project manager. Everyone is very, very busy with their particular roles but the particular document there refers to the accounting officer, therefore the Greffier, responsible for project management. But then some point along the road there was a shared project manager, would that be an amendment to that

Chief Operating Officer:

No, so the project manager was supplied by an external party to reduce the costs and because it was felt that it was not a full-time role for this project. Then an agreement was made that we would use that project manager on another project as well to reduce the cost of the project.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

Many project managers manage many projects, if that makes sense. It is not

Senator T.A. Vallois:

Yes. No, it does make sense. But I am trying to get to the point, we have got the chief operating officer basically saying that the accounting officer for the budget is the Greffe but then at some point there was an agreement for shared project management.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital: There was but

Chief Operating Officer:

Simply we agreed that we would bring in an external party, we would pay half of their costs to do our project and they would pay half of their costs to do their project.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

To help out, we agreed that we would administer it and charge back.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

The health check, which was mentioned, was that a regular health check or was that just one-off and that is why we found out it was not

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

Yes. It was a one-off, it was a decision around it. If you look at the original description of the objective of the programme, the objective of the programme was the budget was £100,000 to look at whether this was a viable situation. You ask, when did it get changed. I am not sure if it ever got changed to say that: "For £100,000 we are going to implement a solution." When M. and D. first stumped up with this we said: "That is nowhere near enough money for this. This is just not the viable thing to deliver it." Because that £100,000 was supposed to include project management, a business consultant, communications to the citizens; that is an awful lot to have in a £100,000 project. The primary role, according to the business case, was assess the viability of using existing systems to deliver this. It was done, that work was done. The requirements definitions of it was done but it was quite clear that there was not enough money in there to implement it and that was made clear at the beginning of the year by M. and D. There was also an exercise to go outside and see if this was worth purchasing, to go to John's point, and I believe that that came back at around £750,000. There was a point here that it has achieved it, and I understand there is a confusion or it is disappointing that the ambition to deliver it was not there. But to be clear, M. and D. did say: "If you get funding for this we will do everything we can to get that in this year." We were not resisting it at all. For £100,000 that was not deliverable.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

I have got a note here that it was £60,000 and that was approved by the States and included in the Common Strategic Policy in 2018. You have got a figure of £60,000 and you have got one project manager who you are sharing between 2 projects; it sounds like you were stretched from the outset.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

I think that may be true. This was not an M. and D. project.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

At what point do you say: "There is not enough money on one project manager dealing with 2 separate projects, it is under-resourced"?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

I come back to this was not an M. and D. project.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

What Paul is asking: what is your responsibility, what are you administrating this project? Because we cannot understand with

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

The Greffier would have used the project manager to administrate the project; that is what

Deputy I. Gardiner :

M. and D. does not have anything to do with this.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital: Not the administration of the project, no.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

Can I just check then, Modernisation and Digital, the programme side of whether it is digital or I.T. for Government of Jersey, does it have responsibility for I.T. for non-ministerial really because that includes the Greffe, the law officers and all those areas, a bit similar to like People and Corporate Services? Does it have responsibility around that area?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

Had a solution been decided upon we would have been responsible for delivering it, so that is the job that we do. As John said, we will supply the delivery of a solution once it has been decided on purchase procured, all that kind of thing.

Chief Operating Officer:

If you take this as an example, the electronic patient record, the requirements have been defined by Health. It is not a technical requirement. There will be non-functional requirements that will come out that will put in but the key requirement is what do Health want. Once they have decided what they want, we will fit in a non-functional requirement underneath that because clearly it has to work in our architecture and everything else has to be secure, and all the other things we talked about, and then we will go out to procurement and then M. and D. will implement it. M. and D. cannot define requirements for every part of government.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

Who had the contract? Who was responsible for

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital: For that particular project manager?

Mr. P. van Bodegom: Yes.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

That was an agreement between M. and D. and the Greffier to do that.

Mr. P. van Bodegom: Okay.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Yes, it is an alternative from 2018 and the requirement was very simple, that we will have an electoral register and this is why the conversation needs to be held, how

Chief Operating Officer:

The requirement was simple, the approach that was suggested was speculative and the first part of the piece of work was to see whether that speculation was feasible and the answer was basically not but a solution was proposed.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

Within the timeframe and with the budget provided, is that what you are saying; that was the outcome but it was not feasible?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital: Correct, yes.

Chief Operating Officer: Yes.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

We were not involved in 2018, by the way, in that original assessment.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

Okay. What is your assessment going forward? It is not going to happen for the next election.

Chief Operating Officer:

It is perfectly doable.

Mr. P. van Bodegom: For this election.

Chief Operating Officer:

Probably not now; it would have been.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

No, in the next election because they have £150,000, is that correct?

Chief Operating Officer:

Yes, we can go buy a system that will do it, just give us £750,000.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital: We will put it in.

Senator T.A. Vallois:

We will have to find that blank cheque again, will we not?

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

We have touched on migrating to the cloud now. Did I misunderstand when we said that we were not going to migrate to the cloud and we were going to use our existing data centres and we have got home-grown talent to manage these? Is that the case?

Chief Operating Officer:

At the moment we will not do a massed forced migration to the cloud because there is no financial yes, it will cost money to do that because of the investment we have made, because we have got the resources. It is just an interesting thing. I just think that when we proposed moving out of Cyril Le Marquand and I arrived after that decision had been made. I think at the time I was told we probably had to be out of Cyril within 6 months and there was no option, therefore, but to go to J.T., take a second data centre space from J.T. and the Five Oaks data centre is our primary data centre. Had we been given longer we might not have made that investment. If someone said: "You have got 18 months to get out of Cyril" we would have gone: "That has pushed a lot of this up into the cloud." But having made the investment in the physical data centre and got it to be reliable, got it to be working, if you literally do the lift and shift it would increase costs. Running VMware in the cloud is expensive and if you wanted to shift it you have got to re-engineer how you run your applications, otherwise you end up just having a very expensive replica in the cloud of what you have got in your

physical environment. Because if you are running your own VMware then you are having to optimise your machine capabilities and capacity and what you want in a cloud solution is the cloud provider to optimise these capabilities. We would have to re-engineer the way we run our applications.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

I have to stop for a minute because I am really worried about the time.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

Can I just ask one more question, Chair?

Deputy I. Gardiner :

A very short answer and another 5 minutes for us, please.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

Very quickly. You have bolted together, as you say in your own words, very quickly track and trace of the airport for it to link to the vaccine. How much did that cost and how quickly was that put together?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

We would have to come back with that because all of that was managed under the test and trace, so those numbers would be broken down and we can get those for you.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

You already have a database, how many people have been tested; probably 800,000? You have a database, could that not be linked to the electoral?

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital: I see where you are going with this.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

You already have that data.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

Yes. There is G.D.P.R. (General Data Protection Regulations) issues around that and how long we can retain that, et cetera, so that, again, is not a short answer, I am afraid.

Mr. P. van Bodegom:

No, but can you run the same protocol in isolation for the electoral?

Chief Operating Officer:

We already have a people directory. The issue is the people directory does not record eligibility and that is the issue. We know who lives on the Island and if everyone who lived on the Island was allowed to vote, simple. But everyone who lives on the Island is not allowed to vote.

Group Director, Modernisation and Digital:

We would have to manage the life cycle of eligibility. We would also have to make sure it is incredibly secure and it is mission critical. There are a number of things there that make it not such a simple demand.

Mr. P. van Bodegom: Thank you, Chair.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

As chair of the subgroup looking into the COVID response, I have got quite a few questions obviously but due to time constraints, would you be able to answer the questions by letter?

Chief Operating Officer: Yes, sure.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

Thank you. I will just ask this one: as the chief operating officer, we know your usual activities include People Services, Modernisation and Digital, and Commercial Services. For the benefit of the public, can you explain what new responsibilities the Chief Operating Office took on during the COVID pandemic?

Chief Operating Officer:

We did not really take on new responsibilities. What we took on was new challenges for our existing responsibilities. If I just think about what happened in those early stages and I will just go through a brief overview, as we have not got a lot of time. The primary role in mid-March was enabling thousands of people to work from home. If I go back to 2019 we probably had less than a few hundred people working remotely at any one time and suddenly we wanted 5,000 people to work remotely, Office 365 deploying Teams, cranking up our remote access servers and then we got involved in the whole testing regime and developing technology to support something which was unexpected, unusual. Microsoft have taken the story around the world to their people on how we

responded. If I look at people in Corporate Services, as they said, we virtually stopped business as usual and went into resourcing and became how do we get right bodies in the right place to do the work that was needed. That was initially internal resourcing and moving people out of departments so they can set up tracing teams over very short notice. The whole business continuity element, which was a very small part of Mark's portfolio, suddenly became the most important part of Mark's portfolio. Denise, Team Jersey changed its focus to support and we talked about it in quite detail. If I look at Maria as well, pre-COVID it was procurement, suddenly it became procurement in a different scale, in a different way completely, trying to source P.P.E. (Personal Protective Equipment) around the world, trying to keep the air bridge open to Southampton, making sure that ferries still operated. No one ever thought about supply chain until last year. Yes, supply chains were just things that happened until suddenly they did not and Maria's team became heavily involved in supply-chain management. It was not really a change and new responsibilities but it was a very different focus and a lot of what we call business-as-usual activity just stopped because we had to do these things.

The Connétable of St. Martin : Thank you.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Thank you. We will follow up those questions around COVID, just to make sure that it is around people, business continuity.

Chief Operating Officer: Okay.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

It is about I.T. developments and about Commercial Services procurement and we might invite you again before we finish our review on COVID.

Chief Operating Officer: Okay. Thank you.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

Thank you very much and thank you for your time. Thank you.

Chief Operating Officer: Thank you.

Deputy I. Gardiner :

The public hearing is closed.

[16:04]