DIGITAL PARTNERSHIP BUSINESS CONTINUITY UPDATE

Local Authorities are currently prioritising the continuous delivery of critical services and the Digital Office believe that this will continue until steady state is achieved in a few weeks’ time. If there is any service delivery issue you are currently struggling with, please get in touch to talk it through.

Once critical service delivery has achieved steady state, we believe that demand within Local Authorities to enable business as usual for non-essential services, whilst working remotely, will increase. We are working in the background to prepare for this increased demand. We have signposted some of the initial resources below and will continue to develop further products, based upon your needs, over the coming weeks.

PARTNERSHIP PRODUCT SHARING REQUEST

Already we are seeing the sharing of products to enable Local Authority business continuity and we will continue to facilitate this sharing to enable the widest possible impact. For example, Perth and Kinross delivered a webinar last week on 'Mastering Working from Home and invited colleagues from across the Digital Partnership to participate. You can view the content and recording of the webinar at the following links:  

• Slide deck
• Webinar recording

If you have any products which would benefit other Local Authorities within the Partnership, please email them to info@digitaloffice.scot.  

NATIONAL COORDINATION OF DATA-TOOLS IN RESPONSE TO COVID-19

We are aware Local Authority requirements surrounding data including improving access to data and the individual offers coming from suppliers to help the Local Government Sector with data.

In order to remove duplication of effort, the Digital Office has been working on coordinating key stakeholders across Public, Private and Academia sectors, to create a cross sector data task force which will combine resources to help with common data challenges we are all currently facing in the current crisis.

We are in the final stages of planning and a quick turnaround on this is anticipated. We will be contacting appropriate individuals across the Partnership in the coming days to gather further information and this will allow us to establish a backlog of prioritised products.

 
ENABLING REMOTE WORKING

We have reviewed appropriate tools, and negotiated free licencing, providing a menu of remote working options in order to allow IT Managers to focus on more pressing matters during this unprecedented time. Understanding that making drastic changes to infrastructure is not sensible during a crisis, we have focused on products with a minimum footprint or installation overhead. Additionally, we have mandated to suppliers a minimum of 90 days free licensing to take us beyond the anticipated epidemic peak in June.

TELECARE BUSINESS CONTINUITY

Digital Telecare for Scottish Local Government and Technology Enabled Care (Scottish Government) have developed business continuity guidance which should be considered by each Local Authority who deliver Telecare services. All guidance is subject to local risk assessment and decision making and will need to be considered in the context of wider planning and arrangements in each organisation.

BUSINESS AS USUAL

We have spent some time internally reviewing our current portfolios of work across Digital Telecare and Digital Partnership projects. From this review, we have already identified some projects in the early stages of planning where it would not be sensible to attempt to move these forward in the current climate. In order to sense check our current thinking we will review this list with the appropriate stakeholders and be in a position to finalise our interim roadmap in the next couple of weeks.