Children's services users will be able to access resources through 'digital portals' under £1.5m council plans

Peterborough City Council (PCC) says it will spend up to £6m on two new IT contracts, including one that could help people access children’s services through “digital portals” rather than having to meet face-to-face.

That contract, worth up to £1.5m, will allow both the public and professionals to access services online, “reducing touch points” and “improving service delivery”, PCC says.

It will also “ensure the stability of a service facing significant delivery challenges”, it adds.

The five-year contract, which has two optional one-year extensions, is with social care software and IT suppliers LiquidLogic as well as ContrOCC Provider Portal which will manage any associated costs.

The other, larger, contract is with Amazon Web Services (AWS), and also comes with a financial operations partner, Strategic Blue, which “helps organisations get the most value from the cloud”.

AWS services, which PCC says are the "backbone" to its applications delivery, are cloud-based, meaning that they’re accessed via the internet rather than a physical server.

The council’s web servers used to be located in the Town Hall, but it has already migrated them to the cloud.

Next, it plans to transfer its data to the cloud, rather than having to store it in physical hardware.

PCC’s new contract with AWS, running from 1 June 2023 and 31 May 2027, is worth up to £4.5m.

But the council says that because it will only spend what it needs to each year, it doesn’t anticipate spending that full amount in the first four.

The new contracts are part of an ongoing effort to modernise PCC’s IT systems.

Earlier this year, the council awarded a contract to Access UK Limited to supply its web services in relation to adult social care.

The five-year contract, also with an option to extend for two years, is worth up to £2.2m and includes replacing physical servers at Sand Martin House with cloud-based services.