Agenda item

IT Division Risk Update

Report of the Chamberlain.

Minutes:

The Sub-Committee received a report of the Chamberlain on the IT Division Risk Update.

 

A Member raised concerns as to the YouTube Channel for the City of London committee meetings unexpectedly dropped out of service from a live session for a few minutes during the voting session of the Court of the Common Council. The Director of IT agreed to look further into the matter but noted that the incident was due a laptop malfunctioning and assured the Sub-Committee that Officers are now exploring ways to reduce points of potential failure. 

 

This was followed by another Member who commented that considering the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruling that the agreement, known as Privacy Shield, did not comply with European privacy rights. The ruling affects big tech companies like Facebook and Google, as well as thousands of other multinational businesses. The Member asked if any of the City of London’s contractors are affected on the data transfer ruling, as at present more than 100 complaints have been logged with regulators on this.

 

The Deputy Head of IT (Delivery) responded that the Department has carried out some work on this with the Comptroller and City Solicitor. The majority of the City of London’s contracts are with Microsoft which stores most of the data within the United Kingdom with the possibility of a small number of contactors who may be storing out of the United Kingdom.  It was noted that the Privacy Shield expired on 16 august 2020.

 

A Member noted that the City of London holds a lot of data in various programs. It may be leaving our shores by merit of how apps are structured. There is a need to provide an assurance that any contractors don’t’ just rely on privacy shield as they could put the City of London in disrepute. The Director of IT agreed to review this further and bring it back to the Committee. 

 

The Director of Information & CISO at City of London Police noted that in terms of the CR16 risk, a lot more risks have taken place considering COVID-19. Although the risks level at the City of London remains unchanged, there is a need to scrutinize such risks carefully.

 

The Director of IT noted that the team have been working on improving IT resilience during COVID-19, with several areas seeing improvements with extra resilience being built in during the datacenter migrations from Agilisys to Microsoft Azure.

 

The Deputy Chairman request a separate session for Members to support the IT Director with a review of the new Digital Services Strategy.

 

RESOLVED – That the Sub-Committee noted the report.

 

Supporting documents: