Equality impact assessment - ICT operational support services

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1. What is the name of the function, policy or service that is being assessed?

• Provision of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Operational Support Services. These services are currently provided mostly by Steria Ltd but the Council's information ICT Operations team manages the Steria contract and the interface into the Council.

2. What are the aims of the function, policy or service? Whose needs it is designed to meet? What are the current priorities?

• To provide ICT support services in accordance with the contractual service level agreements (SLAs). The contract includes the standard terms on equality and diversity (E&D) that the council includes in all its contracts. These require Steria to comply with E&D legislation etc in the delivery of its services.

3. In what ways might this function, policy or service affect some groups of people differently? Might some groups find it harder to access the service? Do some groups have particular needs that are not well met by the current policy or service?

• Steria's services are accessed via phone, e-mail or SMS messages to their service desk. The provision of phone sets and keyboards to meet the particular needs of disabled employees (so that they can access the service desk) is not part of Steria's service; however the in-house Operations team will provide specialist keyboards, mice viewers, phones etc to meet individual needs. These will be paid for out of the ICT Operations budget even though this budget does not cover the routine replacement of life-expired telephone handsets.

4. What evidence do you have for your judgement? Is there evidence of public concern (e.g. complaints)? Have staff raised concerns? Is there local or national research to suggest that there could be a problem?

• I have not across any evidence that particular groups find it harder to access our services. We have not received any complaints from either council employees or members of the public in relation to the availability and accessibility of ICT services and I am not aware of any local or national research that suggests that there may be a problem.

5. Who have you consulted with as part of your assessment? What were the results? Have you published the results of that consultation? If so, where?

• We have consulted my staff, many of whom have worked in providing the council's ICT services for many years and a number of whom have previously worked in providing non-ICT services elsewhere in the council. We have also referred to the results of user satisfaction surveys which contained no adverse comments about accessing our services. NB We did not ask about this directly but comments about service access could have been made in response to some of the more open questions.

6. If you have found that the function, policy or service might have an adverse impact on a particular group of people, can you justify this?

• We have not made such a finding.

7. If the impact cannot be justified, what do you intend to do about this? Are there changes that you could introduce which would make the function, policy or service work better for this group of people? Is further research or consultation required?

• See answer to Q6

8. How will you monitor the take-up or impact of the function, policy or service in future?

• Both Steria and the in-house ICT team use the Steria service desk tool to record details of the reporting/requesting and processing of ICT incidents and requests for change. We are therefore able comprehensively to monitor the take-up of our services.

9. What actions do you plan to take as a result of this equality impact assessment? Please state any resource implications.

• None

10. There is a legal requirement to publish the outcomes of Equality Impact Assessments. Please outline how / where this will happen.

• I assume that the outcomes of the survey are being collated by the Equality and Diversity Officer, from results received from across the council, for publication as part of a segmented, corporate equality impact assessment.

Name of person completing form

• Head of ICT Design & Delivery

Date assessment completed

• 12 June 2007 and reviewed August 2010

Senior manager approval

• Director of ICT and Business Management Programme

Date of approval

• 1 November 2007

Last updated: 25 January 2011