Herts County Council is exploring ways to update its information systems as bring its core services up to speed with 21st century technology.

Members of the county council's overview and scrutiny committee were presented with a performance review for the local authority's third quarter.

The review was divided into five areas, notably children's services, highways, environment and sustainability, supporting those most in need and delivering more.

The report stated: "Colleagues across the organisation are working incredibly hard, demonstrated through recent achievements ranging from SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) provision expansion to major infrastructure improvements and strengthened community support.

"At the same time, teams are managing ongoing uncertainty linked to Local Government Reorganisation, with implementation plans and governance structures still evolving."

Milestones in children's services include a public consultation in February 2026 into the draft SEND strategy, family help teams to support families with early intervention and child protection strategies, and the Building Bridges programme dedicated to helping children in care safely return to live with their birth families.

Highways has seen advances made in raising the profile of the bus saver card, and bus passes for care leavers, as well as the introduction of a new speed management programme and 20mph zones.

Environmental successes include carrying out aims to plant 100,000 trees a year in 2025/26, reducing household waste per person by 3.3% and woodland improvements to Berrygrove, Bullens Green, High Canons, plus a major restoration at Broxbourne Wood, as well as coppice trees planted at Bencroft Wood.

Seventeen out of 25 indicators in adult care services are in the top quarters for performance, although two indicators – adults with enough social contact (42.1%) and adults 65+ still at home 12 weeks after discharge (58/2%) – are in the bottom.

Paraic McKenna, head of corporate performance, said: "In terms of the council as a whole as to how it fits together, I would advocate that this report really does help us look more cross-functionally, or across directorates, than perhaps we did previously.

"The report that we had before this one, which was approved by the task and finish group, was absolutely structured directorate by directorate. This one, by aligning priorities, does follow, to an extent, that same structure. So, obviously, keeping children and young people safe will largely align with children's services.

"I'm just really pleased that in the fourth priority, which is supporting those most in need, we do bring in there a metric around safe and well visits, which is around our community protection team.

"We talk about assistive technology, delivering more proactive preventative care to help adults remain in their own home, and that's been such a cross-functional programme, linking technology directly to adult care.

"In terms of the flow of information and data and how it comes together, it is one that we spent a lot of time on, and as a really quick answer, fundamentally, our core systems are structured around our key services.

"So, we look at liquid logic for our adult and children's social care system. We have some systems which are commissioned and managed externally; highways is a great example of that. In every single case, we have performance teams which are directly aligned, managed and monitor those systems."

He added that the council was looking at the possibility of a data mesh system, a framework that shifts data away from a central IT system to one that can be easily managed and accessed by different departments, looking at tools such as Microsoft Fabric and Microsoft Power BI.