Council spills on secret $1.3 million decision

L-R front Bev Edlin, Catherine Stewart, back L-R Rick Curach, Steve Morris, John Robson, Matt Cowley,Kelvin Clout, Clayton Mitchell, Bill Grainger

Tauranga City Council will spend $1.3 million this year on information technology for which there was no budget.

The secret decision to buy the technology was made in the dying days of the last council - five days before the election on October 12 last year that swept seven of the 10 councillors from power.

One of the new face councillors John Robson highlighted the $1.35 million which was not in the 2013-14 Annual Plan that went out for public consultation.

Council communications manager Frank Begley said the arrival of the council's new management team last year had highlighted how information communication and technology needed to be updated to "drive improvements and reduce risks".

Decisions taken by the former council included increasing backup capacity to cope with the growing digital information held on council systems, beefing up network security and upgrading council systems to Windows 7 because the previous system was about to become "unsupported" by the provider.

The report that went to the council on October 7 last year remained in confidential "due to the sensitive nature of information pertaining to council and inter-council networks as well as the fact that commercial negotiations were required to procure the hardware to address the issues".