Minutes:
The Chairman made the following announcements:-
1. Public Services Network (PSN) accreditation
Congratulations to Wiltshire Council and Wiltshire Police who after a lengthy and rigorous national audit had received accreditation from Central Government recognising that our infrastructure and networks are secure.
On Wednesday 19 August 2015, the Cabinet Office informed us that we had received the Public Services Network (PSN) accreditation. We were also informed that the Home Office, who controlled the Public Services Network for Policing (PSNP), had granted accreditation for Wiltshire Police.
The PSN is a Central Government secure network enabling sensitive information to be passed between departments. Run by the Department of Work and Pensions, all communications between Central Government departments and Local Authorities and other public sector organisations MUST go via a PSN connection In order to have a connection to the PSN, agencies and Local Authorities are required to prove that their networks are secure to a specific standard, set by PSN/PSNP, called the Code of Connection.
The PSN/PSNP connection allows the Council and Police to provide services such as Tell Us Once, Benefits payments, and access to the Police National Computer (PNC) and Police National Database (PND), all highly sensitive information applications.
This year’s PSN audit was the first since most services moved into the hubs, and the first since taking on ICT for Wiltshire Police, so not only were we being audited against our changed environment, we also had to contend with the challenges of the Police environment, essentially two full PSN audits at the same time.
2. Windows XP remediation
Alongside this, Microsoft had announced that they had withdrawn support for the Windows XP operating system used across the Police estate, and that they were also withdrawing support for the Windows Server 2003 Operating System and the Structured Query Language (SQL) 2005 database platform on which a large number of the more legacy applications were hosted on. This added another dimension to the PSN, removal of obsolete software is a critical control.
Over the course of 6 months and working to extremely tight timescales, the ICT team upgraded 283 2003 Servers (~206 have been decommissioned), 20 SQL 2003/5 Servers (~11 have been decommissioned), 46 Applications, and 604 XP systems.
Now that Wiltshire Police have achieved accreditation, work can begin on the transition of their services from the old GCSx system to the new PSN based system, which is expected to complete in November 2015.
3. HR Team
The HR team had just been informed that it has been shortlisted for a number of HR awards taking place later this year as follows:
The Personnel Today Awards 2015 (award ceremony in November 2015)
Shortlisted for the 3 awards below:
· Award for Excellence in Public Service HR
· Award for Managing Change
· HR Team of the Year Award
The Engagement Excellence Awards 2015 (award ceremony in September 2015)
Shortlisted for the award below:
· Most effective re-launch campaign (for Wiltshire Rewards)
4. Apprenticeship success - PPMA Apprentice of the Year 2015
Megan Mounty, a former apprentice in the Cabinet Office, had been shortlisted as a finalist for the PPMA Apprentice of the Year awards. Megan was encouraged to apply by Cathy Hucker, Developer Practitioner /Assessor who supported her through her apprenticeship development programme, and her former supervisor, Victoria Moloney. Megan would now take part in two days of individual and group activities and presentations at Warwick University in September 2015. We all wish Megan all the best in the next selection round. Since completing her apprenticeship Megan successfully applied and was recruited to a PA role working directly to Parvis Khansari, Associate Director Highways & Transport.
5. Health and Safety (H&S) benchmarking
Colleagues in H&S benchmark accident data were rated with 19 other unitary authorities in respect of all local authority employees including schools.For 2014/15 period Wiltshire ranked 3/20 in respect of overall accident rates; and 2/20 in respect of reportable accidents to HSE, an overall top ranking of all of the larger authorities.
Members of the Committee joined with the Chairman in warmly congratulating all these members of staff in achieving such excellent results.