The council has needed to increase the use of on-line video conferencing during Covid 19 emergency as the majority to staff are required to work from home. The free licence for Webex comes to an end on 1st July 2020 and a decision was made to continue with the licence to Webex based on “active user” agreement – this means if someone is not active in using the licence this will be withdrawn. Consideration was given to other conference call tools with the pros-and-cons considered. The decision was made based on:
• The advantage of Webex having the number of participants who can be viewed at one time
• That participants are familiar with the system, and people who are not confident with IT or do not use conference call regularly may struggle to adapt to a new system
• That the licence is based on “active users” so cost may reduce (though balanced with increased demand).

The licence will run until February 2021 and this gives time for a full evaluation of what the council needs from a video conferencing function next to the available systems and their costs –this will involve both research and testing. This evaluation to be commissioned to Hoople who are the council’s ICT delivery partner - evaluation work of this nature is not included in the SLA therefore a cost of up to £4,000.

New requests for video conferencing will be asked to use Microsoft Teams as a trial of that system.

It is also expected over the next six months video conferencing providers will develop and improve their offer to be more comparable and competitive with each other.