COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

South Dublin County Council Crest

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, July 14, 2014

QUESTION NO.5

QUESTION: Councillor M. Devine

To ask that the Chief Executive to provide a report on the process of outsourcing Members IT requirements - to include costing and contract?

REPLY:

The Council has not outsourced Members IT requirements. In this particular instance, the Council has procured a range of hardware and services offerings - a process which in general terms is reasonably normal in the context of various services procured by the Council in it's normal day to day operations. Through this procurement, the level of third party support has been increased commensurate with the requirements of the new enlarged council, addressing the perceived deficiencies identified by the last council, and ensuring support for the new technical operating environments of the elected members which is not the same as is supported for Council staff.

By means of context to the provision of IT facilities for the newly elected Council the following should be noted - overriding direction with respect to delivery of IT facilities and services within local government is derived from policy entitled “the Organisation of IT”. This policy adopted by the County and City Managers Association mandated inter alia in order of preference and priority an approach with respect to the delivery of IT services by Councils. In brief, the order of preference and priority directed is as follows; national level / sectoral delivery, followed by sub-sectoral level delivery, regional delivery, and finally if all other avenues are exhausted then local IS service delivery. The provision of hardware for the elected members and supporting services were in this instance deemed most appropriate to be delivered at the regional level and following planning and discussion on both a regional and shared service basis between the Dublin regional Heads of Information Systems, it was agreed that South Dublin County Council’s IT Department would tender on behalf of SDCC, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown and Fingal County Councils. For technical and operation reasons, Dublin City Council did not partake in the shared tender.

Amid this context it is also worth noting that public sector organisations are obliged where practical to purchase certain technologies such as in this case laptop/notebook computers through the Office of Government Procurement Framework Agreement. The framework agreement includes 5 previously tendered and prequalified companies who guarantee provision of tendered items at the best possible rates. The companies included on that agreement are: Datapac Ltd; Dell Products Ireland; Fujitsu (Ireland) Ltd; Hewlett-Packard (Ireland) Ltd; and PC Peripherals. A mini competition then runs amongst those companies for business to be awarded under the framework procurement. The framework provides that prices are on average 30% lower than retail availability pricing. In addition to these reductions, further discounts are available from 3 of the 5 companies for public sector bodies that use online or electronic payments. The performance of this tender is monitored by the Office of Government Procurement.

In May 2014, on the basis outlined above, the Council issued requests for tender under said framework agreement on behalf of the 3 authorities. As is their prerogative, 3 of the 5 companies on the framework responded and following evaluation Hewlett Packard was the successful bidder and deemed selected to provide the requested IT facilities under 5 year contract. Sord Data Systems is HP’s nominated partner for the purposes of this contract. The contract established will run for the term of newly elected council. The contract incorporates the provision of standard laptops, desktop application suite, email, antivirus, encryption, remote management, on-site support, image deployment, profile management, data migration and training. These services were incorporated as a result of operational necessity and feedback received over the course of the last Council from the elected members themselves.

Due to the commercially sensitive nature of the contract cost, this information is not available for this report.