Decision

For the reasons set out in this report, the
Chief Operating Officer has decided to:

Commence a competitive tender
exercise for the provision of a cloud-based web proxy and content
filtering solution along with a remote access zero trust solution
for a period of up to five years commencing in October 2025 for a
total estimated value of £498k (exc VAT).

Alternative options considered

Potential
alternative options could be:
1.1         
“Do nothing” – This option is not feasible as the
Council is seeking to vacate one of its two on-premise datacentres.
If nothing is done, the current content filtering technology will
continue to utilise these datacentres.
 
1.2         
Continuing with the current on-premise solution and avoiding
cloud-based alternatives introduces additional business risk, such
as higher maintenance costs, limited scalability and possible
downtime and service disruptions and does not align with the
technology industry trends or the Council’s Digital, Data,
and Technology Strategy (DDaT).