Agenda item

            The Committee considered the undernoted report:

“1.0     Purpose of Report or Summary of main Issues

1.1       The Strategic Policy & Resources Committee at its meeting on the 24th November 2017 agreed the recommendations contained in the outline business case for an enhanced and innovative approach to customer focus across the council.

1.2       A further report was presented to Strategic Policy & Resources Committee on the 16th February 2018 at which time an overview of a blueprint for Customer Focus was presented to and accepted by the Committee. It was acknowledged that this would represent a major programme of work, which would require careful planning and significant resources to deliver. For this reason, the Council subsequently agreed to adopt a three-phase approach starting with mobilisation, then discovery and ending with a design and implementation phase.

1.3       Phase one has already been completed which culminated in the production of the Blueprint for Customer Focus (Appendix 1) and an Outline Business Case.

1.4       Digital Services has also recently procured external assistance to help deliver a new ICT Strategy and this work will be aligned with the Customer Focus Discovery phase. A combined approach has the potential to optimise, transform and improve the services we deliver and ensure information and technology are properly positioned to enable the delivery of the Council’s key priorities.

2.0       Recommendations

2.1       The Committee is asked to note:

1.     The approach outlined in this report and that Deloitte has now been appointed to undertake the ‘Discovery Phase’ of the Customer Focus Corporate project. This phase of work is expected to be completed by mid-July 2018.

2.     Deloitte has also been appointed to assist with the delivery of a new ICT Strategy which will be aligned with the Discovery phase.

3.     Member engagement will begin with an initial Discovery workshop before further member engagement is arranged.

4.     Preliminary meetings with external customer groups across the city is also being planned to gain insight into customer needs.

5.     Deloitte will be holding a series of workshops across Departments. It is likely that the C&NS and Place & Economy departments will be targeted initially due to the higher levels of direct customer interaction that they experience.

6.     The content of the draft ‘Customer Charter’ in appendix 2, to ascertain if it is ‘fit for purpose’ and can be used to provide a corporate framework to support the development of service specific customer standards.

3.0       Main report

3.1       Following recent procurement exercises, Deloitte has been appointed to support the council to undertake both the ‘Discovery Phase’ of the Customer Focus programme and the delivery of a new ICT Strategy. Initial project commencement meetings have already taken place over the past week and this phase of the project is expected to take 12 weeks culminating in a further update report being brought back to SP&R in August 2018. 

3.2       Deloitte has identified that the proposed deliverables from the Customer Focus ‘Discovery’ phase include the following areas:

3.3       To undertake the discovery phase Deloitte will need to directly engage with members, external customers and departments via a series of customer focus workshops. The majority of the internal workshops are to be held initially with the City & Neighbourhood Services and the Place and Economy Departments as they have been identified as having the highest levels of direct customer engagement. 

3.4       Representatives of the Customer Focus project team who co-ordinated the delivery of the Customer Focus Outline Business case make the necessary arrangements to coordinate these workshops over the coming weeks.

3.5       The Customer Focus Project Team has already undertaken extensive research and benchmarking to support the delivery of the Customer Focus Project. A key finding from the research has indicated that alongside a corporate customer strategy, a corporate customer charter can act as a key driver to support the alignment of corporate and service specific customer standards; such as those recently developed for planning.

3.6       In response to this, the Customer Focus team based on examples of best practice from across the UK has also developed a draft Belfast City Council Customer Charter for consideration. To ensure that the draft charter is aligned to the ongoing discovery phase, it will be fully considered and challenged through the work that Deloitte are currently undertaking. This is appended to this report as Appendix 2.

3.7       Financial & Resource Implications

            The Strategic Policy & Resources Committee agreed in November 2017 that a budget of £500k be set aside to cover the costs associated with the implementation of the customer focus project.

3.8       It was also agreed by the Strategic Policy & Resources Committee in February 2018 that a Programme Director would be appointed to oversee the project and to develop a comprehensive improvement programme in line with the recommendations contained in the OBC.

3.9       Equality or Good Relations Implications

            None.”

            The Committee adopted the recommendations.