£2.5m council IT systems ‘sluggish’ and ‘not working’

COUNCIL IT systems which cost taxpayers £2.5 million a year ‘are not working’, a council leader has stated.
Adur and Worthing councils director Paul Brewer SUS-141010-122146001Adur and Worthing councils director Paul Brewer SUS-141010-122146001
Adur and Worthing councils director Paul Brewer SUS-141010-122146001

Adur and Worthing Councils have approved funding for a consultation into new IT systems to bring its technology up to date.

The current systems have been blamed for a series of outages, often leaving key services unavailable for days at a time.

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Responding to a report presented to the Joint Strategic Committee last week, Worthing Borough Council leader Paul Yallop said: “The report picks out all the issues and has highlighted how much we are spending on services which haven’t delivered our business need.

“We are spending £2.5 million on systems that aren’t working very well.”

The IT problems have hit the headlines several times in the past two years. An outage in November, 2012, left funeral directors unable to book crematorium slots and leisure centres unable to take online bookings for around a week.

The councils have hired director for digital and resources Paul Brewer to lead the modernisation.

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He said: “We recognise our IT hasn’t been stable enough and this piece of work will look for a clear resolution. We are developing options at this stage but we recognise the problem and we are seeking to find a cost-effective way to address that.”

For the full story, see the Herald, out Thursday, October 16.