The Cabinet considered the draft report on the findings of the scrutiny project entitled ‘Maximising the Use of Technology through the Smart City and Digital Futures Agenda’.

Resolved:

1. That the report and conclusions from the in depth scrutiny project, detailed at Section 4 of the submitted report, be approved.

2. That the SMART City agenda and its associated programme 2017/20 be taken forward through the People Management, Accommodation and Digital Strategy Working Party, chaired by the Cabinet Member for Digital Futures.

3. That the Council takes steps to make more effective use of data it has or generates as a tool for intelligent decision making, policy making and commissioning.  Steps to include the development of a corporate data warehouse and the inclusion of Business Intelligence and Analytics as a core component of the functionality of the proposed Intelligence Hub.  This resolution is likely to see the formal involvement of academia, e.g. the University of Essex.

4. That the Digital Futures Service continues to progress the proof of concept data driven automation of strategies in response to real time events, e.g. traffic congestion or poor air quality or through the CISCO KINETIC platform.

Reasons for decision:

To progress a SMART agenda for the borough.  Failure to progress this agenda would be remiss on the Council’s part and ultimately disadvantage the borough in a number of ways.

Other options:

None.

Note: This is an Executive Function

Eligible for call-in to: Place Scrutiny Committee

Cabinet Member: Cllr Moring