IT improvements worth £420k to be considered by councillors
Orkney Islands Council (OIC) is set to consider how it will spend its £420,000 per annum IT replacement programme.
Beyond this annual amount, which was agreed in 2014, there will also be an additional £1.4million allocation for Windows 11, school IT equipment, and corporate IT equipment.
A report set to go before the asset management sub-committee this Tuesday, states that “a focus on the most urgent and business critical systems and infrastructure is required, and this is the approach that is normally taken.”
It also says that the total value of the council’s tangible IT assets is £6.1million.
In April 2014, the council agreed that an annual amount of £420,000 should be allocated to support a programme of IT replacement. This covers devices across all council services, and the infrastructure hardware used to deliver the services that all staff are increasingly dependent upon.
This includes servers, end-user devices, fixed-wireless network links, firewalls, data storage and backup systems. It also includes server, laptop and desktop PC assets purchased by other services, but does not include other technology such as smartboards, plant and machinery or control systems.
The £1.4million spend was recommended in December 2021 by the policy and resources committee, when it was “considering the allocation of one-off funding towards a series of projects considered to provide excellent recovery prospects from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
