Best Practice: Hans and PSN

Hampshire County Council has more experience with the Public Services Network (PSN) than most organisations in the public sector. After all, the authority’s first stab at a county-wide network dates back to the late 1990s, when it developed the Hampshire Public Services Network (HPSN) which was owned and run by the county council.

 

Things have moved on - in a good way, it seems: for in 2012, in addition to the county itself, HPSN now serves the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Partnership of 11 district and borough councils and three unitary authorities. The managed network provides traditional data links to sites, telephony links between sites, and manages routers and gateways.

 

However, Hampshire, a leading exponent of shared services, was keen to go further. “My organisation has always believed that that a collaborative and shared approach to networking would improve risk and be better than managing from a single place,” its CIO Jos Creese told PublicTechnology.net.

 

Creese, who also acts as an advisor to the Cabinet Office on PSN matters, was sure a franchise model in which partners had a direct relationship with suppliers and chose which service to buy would work.

 

So, in August last year HPSN was superseded by HPSN2, which together with Kent Public Services Network (KPSN) forms part of Project Pathway, the first Public Services Network to link geographically dispersed networks.

 

The government’s PSN programme team worked with suppliers Global Crossing and Virgin Media Business to build a PSN to share services and applications amongst an initial 34 partner sites via the network.

 

Business services such as IP telephony and videoconferencing can now be delivered between Hampshire and Kent county councils across PSN-compliant services provided by two different suppliers. HPSN2 users benefit from economies of scale, cheaper commodity items, improved connectivity to public services such as Government Connect and joint value-added services, for example directories and disaster recovery.

 

The two councils have already delivered nearly £5m annual savings by aggregating each of their local authority and education networks. “The public sector needs to work together in procuring and delivering services. Cost effectiveness is a key driver and this initiative shows that it doesn’t need to come at the expense of innovation and creativity,” Councillor Ken Thornber, leader of Hampshire County Council was quoted saying at the launch.

 

In Hampshire over a 1,000 sites are now linked together, the majority of them schools. “While we have a fixed basket of services we want to share, each organisation chooses the scale and nature of services they use. The network is not bought through a central buying organisation,” explains Creese.

 

“Each department gets its own efficiencies. The county council alone is on record as saving £1m per year using HPSN2. But much more important is to share information across organisations locally. PSN is an enabler of shared services: you cannot work across teams without having a shared infrastructure.”

 

Network security issues? 

Not all the partners in HPSN2 are using its services yet, mind: while the Hampshire Fire and Emergency Service has signed up, the county’s Police Force and National Health Service organisations have yet to come on board.

 

“Engagement with the NHS seems rather patchy,” observes Jane Stedman, network and desktop services manager at Hampshire. “We are actively working with some local health organisations to enable them to procure PSN services through our existing PSN framework. Other parts of health are content with the direct links they already have in place locally.

 

Network security is the issue for the emergency services. “The links to the PSN programme nationally are important if we are to achieve the maximum benefit from our investment. It is early days and there is still work to done to ensure the right levels of security,” observes Stedman.

 

And although Creese acknowledges that security will always be an issue, he is sure that a solution can be found.to cater for secure communications on a PSN operating at Impact Level 2 (IL2). “If you have a blanket approach and don’t separate out secure traffic then everything has to be at the highest level of security,” he points out.

 

“If you are more precise about identifying where that higher level security should be, then you can separate that out and run higher security traffic using encryption over an IL2 network. “Some of the security problems can be solved by using the Government Connect Secure Extranet (GCSX) or encryption or by joining a network such as N3 to the PSN.”

 

Local authorities have taken a lead on PSN - and Creese explains that it is a case of “needs must” if they are to exploit shared services. “Local government has a track record of getting things done: it still has the drive to get on and do stuff. IT is not a political football locally; there are things we can do that are not politically possible elsewhere. And we are good at working collaboratively: that was what was behind our partnership with Kent.”

 

Hampshire is already sizing up its next foray into PSN: collaboration with neighbouring Dorset with whom it already shares data centre and disaster recovery arrangements. “It brings benefits and cost savings to both organisations and will be a key area for development of PSN services in the future,” says Stedman.