Weeknotes w/e 5 June 2026

Director’s weeknote

Atika Mohammed, DDaT Luton Director

It was a short week again this week as I had a couple of days off. Key focus was:

• prepping for the quarterly Connect
• attended a briefing about being added to the on-call rota, part of the wider organisational responsibilities of my role
• 1-1s with my team
• reviewing the work Dave has done on the Local Government Digital Standard/Checklist
• quite a few meetings internally and with Civica around the housing project replan
• meeting with audit to plan the audit activity over the next few years

Low code and web

Kevin Rowe, Head of Digital Development

Read the latest blog update on our low code digital platform.

OneDrive user adoption

Carol Osborne, Project Manager, DDaT Luton

📌 Project overview

The OneDrive project remains in the user adoption and optimisation phase. Over the past week, activity has been largely limited to monitoring and reporting, with the project operating in a transition phase ahead of handover. The 365Tribe will assume responsibility for ongoing adoption support.

✅ Key achievements this week

User adoption monitoring continued
1. Weekly usage data produced and reviewed
2. Adoption trends remain stable with no material shift in overall engagement

User support maintained
1. Light touch support continues for OneDrive usage queries
2. Ongoing reinforcement of guidance on OneDrive (personal storage) vs SharePoint (shared collaboration)

365Tribe transition progressed
1. Handover planning continues, with 365Tribe expected to take ownership of adoption activity
2. Current effort focused on maintaining baseline reporting and continuity until transition completes

📊 User adoption snapshot (week on week)

Based on data from 24 to 31 May 2026.

• Active file viewing and editing decreased by 2.5%, from 2,124 to 2,070 users.
• File syncing activity decreased by 1.6%, from 1,470 to 1,446 users.
• Internal file sharing increased by 6%, from 681 to 640 users.
• Users not actively using OneDrive decreased from 1,077 to 1,086 viewed/edited cohort showing minor fluctuation in engagement levels.
• Overall adoption remains steady, with small week on week reductions consistent with normal variation rather than any sustained decline.

Image showing growth in One Drive adoption, as described in text.

📊 Current status

• Overall status: 🟢 on track
• Deployment: complete
• User adoption: monitoring only – transition phase
• Governance and policy: in progress – handover to 365Tribe pending
• No new blockers or escalations identified this week

⚠️ Risks and issues

• Low active delivery activity: limited project activity outside of reporting reflects transition phase
• Dependency on 365Tribe mobilisation: continued progress dependent on onboarding and activation of 365Tribe support
• Residual non adoption behaviour: a small cohort of users continue to revert to legacy network drive behaviours
• External sharing governance: historic decisions remain partially documented, creating dependency for some services

🔜 Planned activities

• Continue weekly adoption reporting and monitoring
• Maintain light touch user support during transition
• Support onboarding and mobilisation of 365Tribe
• Progress any remaining external sharing (egress) clarification
• Confirm final BAU ownership model post-handover

Frontline Services

Ian Pavitt, Project Manager DDaT Luton

The project status is green now that Bartec have agreed to the change of scope and the low code platform foundation related activities have commenced.

Key outcomes in last period

• Domestic waste specifications going through approval process (Waste)
• Waste module specs – workshops
• Low code – portal build – APIs/Process Flows
• Low code platform foundation build – Ongoing
• DPIA process for Bartec back end – Ongoing
• Wider stakeholder communication strategy planning
• Transformation dept project connect

Key activities in next period

• Portal change of scope requirements schedule – Bartec/LBCApproved service requests/processes specifications into dev (Bartec)
• Continue work on domestic waste specifications with Bartec
• Low code portal – Timeline planning – Ongoing
• DPIA process for Bartec back end – Ongoing
• Wider stakeholder communication strategy 1st draft
• Transformation dept project connect

Regulatory Services

Ian Pavitt, Project Manager DDaT Luton

The project status is green with the tender award in progress.

Key outcomes in previous period

• Tender award – complete
• Tender contract – started
• Data retention policy complete / evolving
• BA process mapping paused
• Data cleansing – ongoing
• Transformation dept project connect
• Wider comms planning

Key activities in next period

• Tender contract – ongoing
• Services activity planning – ongoing
• Data cleansing – final runs
• Wider comms plan – finalise
• Data migration planning meeting – strategy planning
• Transformation dept project combo

Data governance purview pilot

Ian Pavitt, Project Manager DDaT Luton

Project summary

• No further update – project meetings to restart at the end of May
• Meetings on pause until end of May with procurement options being explored

Workplace experience

Ben McCartney, Head of Workplace Experience, DDaT Luton

Another busy and productive week across Workplace Experience, with strong progress on several key initiatives.

• Attended a session with ADA to agree how we will provide 365Tribe access for our Digital Champion network, helping build digital capability across the council.
• Met to discuss DDaT Intranet Site 2.0, focusing on how we can lead the way in improving communication and knowledge sharing across the organisation.
• Held a full-day workshop with Viraj and Naheed to redesign our Alemba ticket categories – we’ve nearly halved them, making them much simpler and more user-friendly. Target go-live is 29 June.
• Responded to an intermittent network outage at Town Hall, which resulted in a major incident and required immediate support.
• Finalised my slides for the DDaT Quarterly Connect Day taking place on Monday.
• Met with Microsoft and Provance to explore opportunities to automate the asset handover and registration process.
• Took part in a discussion on the Local Government Digital Standard and how we begin applying this more consistently across DDaT.
• Attended the 2026 LEX Awards, hosting a table with our partners Alemba, Softcat and FourNet – a great evening and opportunity to strengthen relationships.

Product and Delivery – People Services update

Steven Scott, Service Manager, Luton DDaT

General updates

• NVEST (National Voice for Excellence in Safeguarding Tech) session exploring impacts of AI within social care
• Secured dates for server upgrades and main system roadmap upgrades in the coming weeks
• Ongoing review of scripts and testing of new Xantura OneView platform
• Resource and development prioritisation for children’s social care and family help reforms
• Task and finish group for risk outside of the home for children social care
• Implementation of a new development request and management process within teams alongside forms/power automate
• Enrolment onto leadership and management apprenticeship

Looking ahead

• Install of latest roadmap release for LCS/EHM/EYES/ContrOCC/portals and adults
• Social Care Systems UserCon in Birmingham
• Reconfiguration of portals to match new Luton website branding
• Progression and install of our stage 2 developments as part of the TOM redesign in adult social care
• Exploring strategies to reduce meeting fatigue

Technology and infrastructure (T&I)

Richard Pacheco, project manager, DDaT Luton

These T&I notes provide a collective update on highlighted activity every two weeks.

Product and delivery – LOB

Covering Housing, Finance HR, Data, Highways GIS and other projects.

• Housing Business readiness and go-live planning: progress made through structured forums dedicated to business readiness and early life support. The delivery teams and stakeholders remain closely aligned as we approach operational readiness, to support a smooth transition towards go-live.
• Significant focus continues with understanding data journeys and system interfaces, with productive ‘what data is where?’ sessions and cross-team coordination on technical dependencies through forums such as Housing data.
• Cross-programme governance and delivery oversight remains strong, ensuring all our delivery and operational stakeholders are kept in sync.
• Consistent (senior) stakeholder and supplier engagement continues to be prioritised, including coordinating closely with external suppliers and partners across service and system delivery activities.

Product and delivery – corporate

• The IT new starter process has been updated to include capture of employee ID in preparation for Trent to AD integration.
• Agreed changes with HR in their processes to maintain new data that will be needed to support the new AD feed.
• Collaborated with Woking Council’s Digital Transformation team to build and produce content for their M365 learning site.
• Facilitated and hosted a (directory) product demo for Local Offer, FIS and ASC team
• Setup automated forms submission flow to support dashboard reporting on Neighbourhood Enforcement data for the Neighbourhood Enforcement team.
• Organised end of month 1 day workshop session with Microsoft to explore automation and innovation opportunities using their Power Platform.
• Started PoC builds for procurement process review.

Technical architects update

• A solution has been developed for sharing CCTV data across the authority, and with other external organisations. The implementation activity and planning in now in progress.
• Some long-standing reporting issues around finance and payroll reporting have been resolved and waiting on HR to approve implementation.

Network team update

• Capacity management: upgrade 1 of 3 datacentre WAN circuits
• Successfully upgraded our WAN circuit capacity from 1G/1G to a 10G/2G service at one of our datacentre sites.
• This allows us to increase the bandwidth allocations for both corporate and public network traffic in/out of the datacentres for our remote sites. The remaining two circuits are scheduled to be upgraded very soon

Public network refresh

• Ordering of public network switch replacements has been completed. The team is in the process of installation planning.

Public / guest WiFi

• The team has been working with building services to ensure new brackets have been installed for the new public/guest WiFi access points across 12 sites.
• GovWifi, along with the NCSC Protective DNS service, has been configured and successfully tested. This means GovWifi can proceed to UAT once the VMB MPLS circuits upgrades are complete.
• A FortiAnalyzer tool has been implemented in evaluation mode. this collects, analyses, and reports on security data from our Firewalls to provide visibility, compliance reporting, and threat detection across a network. This tool will also feed into and compliment the new SIEM & SOC solution.

Welcome!

This week, we were delighted to welcome Amyrah Khanamv to the Network team, joining us as an apprentice to gain hands-on experience in networks.

Infrastructure team update

Service improvement projects

• Finalised requirements for Teams hotdesk booking system pilot build and started activity and implementation planning.
• Continued data cleansing and script development for iTrent / Active Directory integration
• Developed an agreed integration strategy for the Low Code platform with the email environment.
• Progressed email integration and SSO configuration for multiple cloud-based services including TribePad, TRL and Locata.

Maintenance projects

• Continued success with rollout of Windows 11 24H2 to devices
• Continued progress with upgrades and replacements with the Server 2016 environment
• Finalised the upgrade strategy for multiple SQL 2016 environments
• Started pilot deployment of automated VMware tools upgrades
• Completed build of application and DB environments to host the new CMIS application
• Commenced major Citrix infrastructure upgrade at DR site
• Refreshed the cloud security configuration for Lansweeper and Alemba
• Ran Citrix knowledge share sessions and scheduled task shadowing to enhance team resilience and capabilities.