The External Services/Providers Monitoring Group were scheduled to meet on Tuesday to discuss the performance of the contract between Scottish Borders Council and CGI, an IT and business consulting services firm¹. The meeting was scheduled to include a review of CGI's performance between April and June 2025, as well as updates on digital transformation projects. Some of the meeting was expected to be held in private.

CGI Contract Performance

A report by Suzy Douglas, Director of Finance, along with an associated slide deck, were scheduled to be considered by the External Services/Providers Monitoring Group. The report presented key information regarding the CGI contract for the second quarter of 2025. It was designed to provide elected members with information on the governance of the contract, updates on the transformation programme, and key performance information regarding service delivery.

The slide deck was divided into four sections: governance, progress with the transformation programme, key performance information regarding service delivery, and community benefits and recruitment.

Governance

The governance arrangements associated with the contract were set out in the presentation. Meetings of the various groups that oversee the contract were highlighted, confirming that all meetings within Q2 had been held as planned, with the exception of the Executive Review Board, which was covered via email.

Transformation Projects

The report pack included an update on digital transformation projects for the council. Each of the projects has been RAG assessed² and commentary has been provided against each status.

Two projects were marked as Green RAG, meaning they are progressing as planned against the baselined plan:

• Comino upgrade to Cloud
• Curricular refresh

Seven projects were tracking Amber, meaning they are progressing but are subject to delays against the initial project planned date:

• CCTV
• Council Information Hub phase 2
• Business World to Cloud
• Lync to Teams migration
• Windows 11 upgrade
• Gala and Peebles new schools infrastructure

Two projects were highlighted as blue, meaning the project is completed and is now in business as usual:

• Uniform project
• Corporate Device refresh

The Office 365 project is categorised as red due to material delays in project finalisation with the 5 remaining migrations making up a major portion of the migration and meaning the completion has been delayed until late 2025.

Key Performance Information

The key activities, issues, and successes were detailed in the report. Key activities in Q2 included achieving PSN³ accreditation, meeting 2024/25 KPIs⁴, and enhancing the service catalogue and introducing standard change templates.

Successes included achieving PSN accreditation quickly and further enhancements to Service Now. Issues identified included KPI 25 (IA Production) still failing to meet targets, and ongoing Finance Model improvements.

One amber service failure was noted over Q2 2025, due to non-delivery of Impact Assessments in-line with agreed timescales in each month of Q2.

The report also provided details of quality levels with regards to complaints, security of the infrastructure including security alerts patching and upgrade to infrastructure data which is now managed through the Digital Security Board.

Continuous Service Improvements were also detailed, including the number of proposals submitted and implemented.

Communities

Community benefits were highlighted, showing the teams and events sponsored by CGI.

Jobs Created

Detailed information was provided regarding CGI's recruitment campaign within the Scottish Borders. CGI currently employs 65 members in the Borders region and have between 80 and 96 members working on Borders activity.

Further roles are being actively recruited and all roles are open to applicants from the Borders region. CGI is planning the next phase of recruitment events to support their drive to increase headcount from within the Borders region.

Recommendations

The External Services/Providers Monitoring Group were scheduled to review the report and slide deck, seek clarification from officers or CGI representatives on any issues identified, and determine whether they were satisfied with the information provided detailing the performance of the CGI contract to the end of Q2 2025.

Previous Minutes

The minutes from the previous meeting held on 27 May 2025 were scheduled to be reviewed. The previous meeting included discussion of the CGI contract performance to 31 March 2025, recent cyber attacks on West Lothian Council and Edinburgh Council, and community benefits including the celebration of International Women's Day.