Agenda item

Joint report of the Chamberlain and the Chief Information Officer.

The Sub-Committee considered a report of the Chamberlain seeking support for the proposal to re-baseline the IT Division Budget.  The additional funding would contribute to the divisions ability to react with pace to issues as they arose as well as to mitigate any risks.

Members expressed surprise that no revenue costs had been allocated to the Oracle programme, and it was acknowledged that a lesson would be learnt from the assumption that this could be absorbed by the budget.

There was a discussion on how other departments spending impacted on the IT division budget and, the extent to which the division could recharge costs to those departments. It was agreed that the division needed a better understanding of departmental spending which impacted on the IT budget. 

A Member asked for clarification on which committee should be responsible for the revaluation of budgets mid-year, and suggested that a change to the Grand Committees Terms of Reference be made to allow for the Sub-Committee to make proposals to the Resource Allocation committee in such circumstances.

The Sub-Committee felt that any requests for budget changes (including either reviewing the base line or zero based budgeting) should not be proposed until there was a thorough understanding of how the budget came to be in the position it was.

RESOLVED – That the Sub-Committee notes the report.