The Joint Information Communication Technology Committee met to discuss the IT Partnership Dashboard for April 2023 to July 2025. The committee reviewed IT infrastructure uptime, incident management, service desk performance, and cyber security. A portion of the meeting addressing cyber security was closed to the public due to the sensitive nature of the information.

IT Partnership Dashboard

The committee reviewed the IT Partnership Dashboard for April 2023 to July 2025, which included data on IT infrastructure uptime, Priority 1 (P1) incidents¹, service desk performance, and email and web security.

IT Infrastructure Uptime and P1 Incidents

The dashboard reported on the uptime of IT infrastructure at both the East Herts and Stevenage sites. The target uptime was 99%.

• 2023-2024: East Herts achieved 100% uptime, while Stevenage reached 99%. A significant P1 incident in May 2023 at the Stevenage site, caused by a Windows 7 vulnerability, resulted in 17 hours of downtime for 150 Housing department staff.
• 2024-2025: East Herts maintained 100% uptime, and Stevenage achieved 99.83%. The only P1 incident was a minor SBC Pool VDI issue in March 2025, resolved in under 20 minutes.
• 2025-2026 (current): Performance challenges were noted. East Herts reported 94.74% uptime, and Stevenage reported 96.05%. Incidents included desk phone and ZC offline issues, application unavailability, printing problems, and user reauthentication failures.

A major incident on May 1, 2025, impacted both East Herts and Stevenage, causing application unavailability and preventing users from reauthenticating from their Hosted Desktops. The root cause was a blade server losing time synchronisation with the domain controller². Difficulties were encountered on June 25 and July 2, 2025, by VDI desktop users unable to access their profiles. The issue was traced to a new version of FSLogix³ with updated Group Policy templates that were not fully compatible with the existing configuration.

IT Network Infrastructure Uptime and P1 Incidents

The dashboard also detailed the performance of the IT network infrastructure, with a target uptime of 99%.

• 2023-2024: Both East Herts and Stevenage achieved 99.8% uptime. A P1 incident in November 2023, due to a fibre cut, caused 5.5 hours of downtime.
• 2024-2025: East Herts had 99.81% uptime, and Stevenage had 99.73%. Issues included intermittent Wi-Fi, server storage problems, a Virgin Media outage, and a brief network loss at the Wallfields site.
• 2025-2026 (current): Both East Herts and Stevenage reported 100% uptime with no P1 incidents.

IT Service Desk Performance

The committee also received information about the IT service desk.

• Call Volumes: There was a general trend of decreasing call volumes over the past three years. The average calls logged per day decreased from 63 in 2022-2023 to 46 in 2024-2025. However, June and July 2025 saw an increase in call volume, which will be monitored.
• Incident Resolution: East Herts had a slightly higher average incident resolution rate within four hours compared to Stevenage. Both sites showed performance improvement in 2023-2024, followed by a decline in 2024-2025, attributed to an organisational restructure and staffing challenges.
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Both East Herts and Stevenage demonstrated improved SLA compliance from 2022-2023 to 2023-2024, followed by a decline in 2024-2025 due to elections, restructure, and staffing issues.
• First-Line Fix Rate: There was a fluctuating performance trend, with a decline in the first-line fix rate for both councils during 2024-2025. However, data for 2025-2026 showed a significant positive reversal, attributed to the full implementation of the new organisational structure.

Email and Web Security

The committee were given information about email and web security.

• Email Volumes: High email traffic was reported, with a peak in September 2023 due to a Denial of Service (DOS) attack.
• Malware Detection: There was a decrease in detected malware incidents from 2023-2024 to 2025-2026, indicating improved security measures.
• Unsafe Website Clicks: There was a concerning spike in incidents from unsafe website clicks in 2025-2026.
• Security Incident Analysis: A shift in the nature of security threats was noted, with user behaviour and web browsing now representing the most significant security risk.

The report included a detailed breakdown of inbound malware instances detected and stopped from April 2023 to April 2024, identifying the types of threats and their prevalence. Phishing attacks remained the most consistent and dominant threat.

Exclusion of Public and Press

The committee moved to exclude the public and press from a portion of the meeting to discuss a cyber security update, citing Section 100 (A) (4) of the Local Government Act 1972, as the discussion involved the likely disclosure of exempt information.