Vale of Glamorgan Council is in a race against time to replace a digital system that stores the data of people in care before it becomes unsupported.
Last year, the local authority entered an agreement with Merthyr, Rhondda Cynon Taff and Bridgend councils in 2024 to introduce a new digital record keeping system that will replace CareDirector.
The current system, also known as the Welsh Customer Care Information System (WCCIS), will become end of life from 26th January 2026.
Fearing the council might not complete the transition to a new system by then, members of the live well scrutiny committee asked at a meeting in May what measures are in place to cope with such an eventuality.
The procurement process for a new system concluded in October 2024 and the The Access Group’s Mosaic system was awarded the contract.
However, scrutiny committee members, like Cllr Neil Thomas stressed the need “to get this up and running pretty quickly”.
Another member, former Mayor of the Vale, Cllr Susan Lloyd-Selby, said: “I note that…the report recognises the need potentially for mitigations if there are delays in actually getting the new system across the line when this is no more and I think it would be helpful for the committee to understand how mature the preparations are to ensure that as far as possible there is a smooth transition."
The procurement exercise for a new system was carried out on behalf of 18 councils and six regional health boards in Wales.
Lance Carver, Vale of Glamorgan Council's director of social services, said: "We are in a nationally led approach which I think is…very helpful."
"There are a number of challenges I suppose with getting certain elements of the detail of all parts of the plan organised."
"We are working through those. There are issues like the extraction of the data, migrating on to the new system and so on."
"There is still some areas that haven’t yet been finalised and so therefore we can’t end up working out an exact date for when everything would happen."
"I think what we have been able to start...is that work with the access group in terms of developing a system to make sure that it fits and works for us in the Vale and in our cluster."
"I wish everything was nailed down and we could be…accurate, but I suppose what I can say is we are working with…other local authorities."
"There are 18 of us in terms of implementations, and my expectation is that we will be managing any risks collectively and working together in terms of timescales as well."
A Vale Council report states £2.67m from the Welsh Government has been allocated to help fund the continuation of the current system and aid in the transition to the new one.
However, the report adds that it remains uncertain how any regional staffing or costs would be funded going forward as the fund that this money is coming from, the Digital Priorities Investment Fund (DPIF), will not be available in 2025/26.
Councillors raised concerns about the cost of a new digital record keeping system ahead of the procurement exercise in May 2024.
At that time, Plaid Cymru Cllr Chris Franks, said the proposal was “full of financial risk” and that he could not see what the maximum cost of the project would be in relation to the potential impact of it failing.
Vale of Glamorgan Council underestimated how much it would cost to install new IT software that it started using for managing its finances and payroll in 2023.
It was initially estimated the cost of installing Oracle Fusion would be about £1.5m, but this eventually went up by £3.7m.
At that time, council officers said Covid-19 posed major challenges in getting that particular project up and running and that local authorities across the UK were experiencing issues with a lack of specialist resources and procurement specialists.
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