The Public Sector Network (PSN) strategy sets out to develop a single holistic telecommunications infrastructure for the whole of the public sector, rather than each public body designing, developing, installing and maintaining its own; an approach which has led to fragmented, unreliable and expensive service delivery.
The PSN Programme has been established to:
- Deliver converged voice and data communications
- Create a coherent design and facilitate market delivery of interoperable services
- stimulate the private sector to deliver PSN services and create the ‘Government Conveyance Network’
- Virtualise the network infrastructure across the public sector through creation of a network service marketplace operating to common standards and processes within an agreed governance structure
- Plan the transition of public sector organisations to the new approach and implement the governance regime to manage the environment
The PSN is expected to deliver at least £500m per annum savings by 2014 and public sector bodies will be able to use PSN contracting vehicles for all their telecommunications needs, thereby significantly reducing the costs and timescales of procurement for the private and public sectors. It will create an innovative market place – where competitively priced, commoditised services can be obtained on a utility basis and suppliers compete to introduce innovation.
PSN will introduce a move towards Internet Protocol based voice services utilising the networks already built for data services. There are currently over 4 million public sector voice lines, giving significant scope for cost savings through utilisation of these existing networks. Additionally a ‘roaming’ capability will ensure that mobile handsets will achieve further economies by operating over the PSN whenever possible.
In today’s world people are used to a much more mobile lifestyle and expect to be able to access their ICT services wherever and whenever is convenient – this will often be at locations outside of the office environment. The PSN will virtualise the network to allow the delivery of services to any location and, through standards, will enable Unified Communications (UC) in terms of voice, video and collaboration capabilities.
The core network infrastructure of the PSN will be:
- Secure by design
- Based on Open Standards
- Interoperable -supporting the transition from legacy systems
- Energy efficient
- Highly cost competitive
PSN will provide a number of core services, including:
- Government Conveyance Network (GCN): Used to interconnect supplier data networks and other services in terms of network transport, a composite ‘mesh’ of core industry networks in which any operator can participate provided they meet stated capability and standards criteria
- Service Information Monitor (SIM): A repository of data providing an appropriate end-to-end view of service information and service inter-dependency, underpinning service and performance management across services and suppliers. This will ensure that the most likely cause or origin is identified for the vast majority of service events and incidents
- Standardised common services: Other services that PSN will provide include common user Authentication standards, federated Intrusion Detection services, secure file transfer, federated email services, a Domain Name System, secure internet access and directory integration
The aim of the PSN programme is to enable the delivery of shared services through delivery of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), application Platforms as a Service (PaaS) and ultimately Software as a Service (SaaS). This will also both ensure and assure continuity of business and improvement through continued infrastructure capability enhancement and smooth transition.
The PSN Delivery programme will deliver a core set of PSN network and central services by the end of 2010, alongside a procurement directory that enables an innovative and responsive Network Services marketplace. By the end of 2012, all GSi and MTS customers will migrate to PSN services and 80% of public sector users will utilise the PSN marketplace. Further development work will ensure that 95% of Network Services procurements are through the PSN services directory by the end of 2015 and all government voice systems will move from the Public Service Telephone Network (PSTN) to delivery using VOIP by 2017.
I am disturbed that the words
Robust,
Resistant to attack
Secure
don’t appear anywhere in this. What goes is a cost effective PSN system if its not secure and proofed against terror.
Alan you should read more carefully, it actually does state secure in the above.
Secure by design
An obvious any secure design would be resistence to attack.
Robustness is my only concern, even Google have not solve this issue.
I don’t understand from this is three things listed in the penultimate paragraph here (Iaas, PaaS and SaaS) are intended to be achieved by outsourcing everything so the government no longer needs IT resources or if the intention is for the government to construct a full “cloud computing” service for its own use.
I looked up definitions of these terms. Here is what one site (http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/platform-as-a-service–paas-.html) said:
‘On the downside, PaaS involves some risk of “lock-in” if offerings require proprietary service interfaces or development languages. Another potential pitfall is that the flexibility of offerings may not meet the needs of some users whose requirements rapidly evolve.’
> The Public Sector Network (PSN) strategy sets out to develop a single holistic telecommunications infrastructure for the whole of the public sector, rather than each public body designing, developing, installing and maintaining its own; an approach which has led to fragmented, unreliable and expensive service delivery.
I don’t get this part. We’ve had GTN, GSI, MTN, GDN, NHS Spine etc. They were OK but somewhat inflexible contractually. As services moved on the contracted service started to look out of date.
The rest of the world uses BT, ATT, C&W DCSF, etc. Why does the entire public sector (what? schools, hospitals & all? Surely not the MoD and FCO??) need to recreate its own subset of hte telecomms industry? Not just to communicate with yourself, surely? Surely telecoms is about communicating with the outside world. If that’s the case, surely you’ll just contract with whoever’s bext and most convenient at the time? This soulnds like lock-in, mega-contract, complex internal recharging issues with recalcitrant parts of the public sector who are at the same time being encouraged to act in a devolved way. 80% by the end of 2012?
There’s no description of the context: BT’s C21st net: will it generally meet public sector needs or not? Will other competitive offerings? Why take competition out of the game?
I just dont get this. I’m not as cross and bored as I was reading the earlier parts – just baffled.
Whoops – in lists above DCSF was meant to be part of gov legacy, not what r.o.w uses. Havent quite woken up yet.
Also – disambiguation – there’s another William (hi!) so I switched to William H after my third comment. For more background and future upside of all this keep an eye on idealgovernment.com
What’s not mentioned is the current programme of designing the standards associated with the PSN vision that’s being undertaken by “industry”.
While the PSN concept is sound – reduce network replication and thereby make savings and have a secure comms infrastucture for the public sector – the programme of designing the commercial and technical interfaces has been ongoing for a couple of years now, and at great expense in terms of consultants from departments supporting the programme with very little having been delivered. Why do industry want to bring this forward if it means some of them will lose business? Answer – they don’t. The phrase turkeys voting for xmas” springs to mind
All of this bakes in a need to exist and a need to grow. As already commented the section begs the question “where is the margin?”
This work is a barrier to substitution by the private and third sector and creates an everlasting and non-contestable infrastructure for the public sector.
It limits the opportunities for localism, local ICT companies servicing local decentralised needs (which requires true interoperability) see the Dutch and Canadian models of government ICT