County council chiefs will spend up to a quarter of million pounds on new laptops and IT systems for their staff.
Herefordshire Council finance and corporate services cabinet member Nigel Shaw approved the decision today to purchase 20 laptops for new starters and to replace ten machines which are damaged.
The £250,000 will also go towards email system, website filtering and database server upgrades along with other IT improvements.
The council’s cabinet approved a new digital strategy earlier this year which aims to ensure its systems are protected from cyber-attacks, the technology helps residents access services, and it empowers its staff to work efficiently.
Assistant corporate support director Natalie Silver said: “The new strategy reflects that digital services are critically important organisational asset, and like other key assets needs proactive management to maximise its value for residents and operation of the council.
“Digital services also operate in a fast-paced environment providing a range of technology advances which helps create efficient services and respond to customer expectation on accessing services through technology.
“With this increased utilisation comes heightened risk of abuse through cyber-attacks and IT data breaches that the council needs to mitigate against.”
The council will use funds from its ear-marked reserve of £0.8m for IT which has been built up from the IT budget over the past four years.
The 30 laptops are expected to cost £26,000 with upgrades for its email engine and website filtering system to tally £47,000.
The council’s education tracking system and systems centre configuration manager are expected to cost £35,000 each.
While upgrading the local authority’s database server and sharepoint will cost £20,000 and £30,000 respectively.
It will also cost the council £50,000 to implement the upgrades.
The estimated total cost to the taxpayer comes to £243,000.
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