Governance

"Strict governance of key elements on which service delivery depends ie ICT, web, customer service resources"

 The Council of the Future will be totally dependent on a number of key elements - its ICT infrastructure for its internal management of information and for the processing of it, its website and associated systems for the delivery of information and services to customers, and its customer service staff for the help and support given to customers who require mediated services. Strict governance of these is needed to ensure that they operate to the required standards so as to ensure the overall quality management of the council's services.

Issues which require to be addressed incude:

• Governance of the ICT function - who is authorised to make changes to the core infrastructure, access core databases or information stores
• Governance of the web - the publishing process for web content; who drafts, who authorises, who quality assures; the publishing and testing process for services delivered over the web
• Governance of customer services - operational standards, definitiions of boundaries - what can customer service staff deal with directly, and what must they pass to more specialist staff?