East Devon District Council wants to pay up to quarter of a million pounds for a new computer system to help it monitor its performance, risks and complaints.
Officers are in the early stages of working with supplier Strata to help create it, and now councillors have been asked for fundig for the first-year implementation phase.
“This budget would be to cover the system upfront cost, annual cost, Stata project implementation costs, and our own project implementation costs,” officers told a cabinet meeting.
“The funding of this could be taken from the transformation fund, as this work will transform our management of performance and risk across all of our services bring much needed business insight.”
Officers expect ongoing costs would have to be found through savings.
The move come after the Local Government Association was commissioned to conduct a peer review, assessing the council’s strategies and processes to decide how well it is performing.
The outcome was largely positive, describing the authority as an “ambitious council that is keen to make a positive difference to residents’ lives and the environment in East Devon.”
It made nine key recommendations, which the council has been working on.
Cllr John Loudoun (Independent, Sidmouth Rural) said the peer review had been “an extremely useful exercise. As the report demonstrates, they saw a great deal of positive things in this council and came up with a number of recommendations which have been helpful.
“We have got an action plan now that sets out what we want to achieve, when by, who is responsible and where we are at this point.”
He added that the peer review, along with other recent inputs from external agencies including the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny, which carried out a review last year, had helped the authority craft its strategy.
The cabinet approved funding for the initial phase, but the decision will have to be ratified by full council.
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