Agenda item

A live demonstration of how Clearview works and how it will enable the committee ro monitor progress on various aspects of Council business

Darren Knight, Executive Director of People & Change explained that the range of services delivered by the council, involved a wide a range of projects with varying degrees of complexity; for which performance and risk needed to be closely monitored.  Clearview, which had been used by CBH for some time, allowed for the creation and execution of the strategic plan, as well as management of performance and risk, at the same time as allowing the organisation to easily report this information and therefore prioritise resources most effectively.

He stressed that Officers had only just started to populate the system immediately prior to lockdown and therefore the data that would be shown was incomplete or now out of date, but he was keen that members understand how it would work when it was updated and fully operational.

He gave a live demonstration of the system, first explaining that the priorities set out in the corporate plan had been entered into the system as ‘Projects’.  Under each ‘Project’ were a number of ‘Goals’ which were projects that once complete, would take the organisation closer to achieving the corporate priorities.  The number in closed brackets shown at the end of each ‘project’ showed the number of goals listed against it and each goal would have a RAG (Red, Amber, Green) status which would in turn inform the RAG status of the ‘Project’.  He showed examples of this, but again stressed that many were showing as red as the data had not yet been populated fully, or had not been updated since the initial data had been added.  He demonstrated how the use of milestones would aid progress management and performance scorecards could show performance over a monthly, quarterly or annual period; allowing Directors and Cabinet Members to easily identify areas of concern.  Clearview also allowed for the inclusion of detail that would provide a narrative to how a target had been identified, or why performance had slipped or progress had halted, which would be highly beneficial to O&S when reviewing performance.  Ultimately this system would enable the organisation to review, monitor and manage, ensuring that resources were aligned to corporate objectives.  He noted that the risk module had not yet been populated, but would demonstrate this functionality once it was. 

The Executive Director of People & Change gave the following responses to member questions:

·      Members could be assured that Clearview met the security requirements demanded by the council and he would email details to the individual member separately.

·      The system did integrate with other software such as Uniform.

·      He reiterated that Officers would input explanatory notes where targets were not achieved, as well as details of any measures that had/would be taken to address any issues.

·      Original timelines were derailed by Covid but it was expected that the Risk Module would be updated in the next 2 months, for completion by November, but the performance aspect would likely be after Christmas now. 

·      Staff were previously updating word or excel service plans and would now simply input the data directly into Clearview, so this would be resource neutral.  The officer would be required to explain the course of any data and how it had been calculated and the system would flag where data was not current.

·      There were plans to make a read-only version of the system available to all members, but populating the system and rolling it out to Cabinet Members was the priority.

Members felt that the system looked impressive and that once fully populated, it would be useful on many levels.  It was agreed that a further demonstration would be scheduled once the system had been populated/updated.