The GovWifi service was made available in Whitehall late last year but is now ready to be deployed more widely  Credit: GDS

The Government Digital Service is expanding its GovWifi offering, which has now passed its beta assessment and is available in over 100 locations nationwide

The service offers a single wireless internet login for staff, external contractors, and visitors which “can be cheaply and simply installed” on the existing infrastructure of public bodies, for use in their facilities. The ultimate aim is for GovWiFi to become “the standard way to connect to WiFi across all government and public-sector locations”.

The service was trialled [1] in a small number of government buildings in summer 2016, ahead of being made available [2] in private beta form to certain Whitehall departments late last year. 

Having now passed its beta assessment, GovWifi will be rolled out more widely. Public sector bodies wishing to deploy the service can do so by following a set of instructions posted on the GOV.UK website.

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“GovWifi represents a change in the way civil servants work. It gives them the flexibility to work wherever they need to, with the same WiFi experience at every location – just turn up and automatically connect,” GDS said. “One of the best use cases we’ve seen so far is for departments which have moved buildings – like those who’ve moved into a government hub. Instead of workers losing their connection, GovWifi provides a seamless transition, with no loss of service.”

Once users have registered for an account, they will automatically connect to service every time they visit a building with GovWifi connectivity, without the need to re-enter their password,

Since it first went live in trial form, the service has facilitated more than one million individual connections at a total of more than 100 sites across the UK. The current daily average is 15,000 connections. This figure is growing by about 20% each month, according to GDS.