BT for the Public Sector

We all know the changes that Government expects from public service delivery organisations – less spending and more efficiency through collaboration and innovation.

The PSN will create a more open and competitive marketplace for interoperable ICT services, available through frameworks and accessible across the public sector. It is in effect a secure Internet for the public sector, joining up organisations like the MoD and the NHS, government departments such as the DWP and MoJ, local authorities, the police, and all agencies that deliver public services, whether national, regional, or local. But while PSN removes the technical and commercial blocks to shared infrastructure, organisations still need to work out how to get the most out of this secure network of networks and provide a service fit for the future.

We recognise that connecting to PSN is just the first step.  We understand that no two public sector bodies are exactly the same.  So we can work with you to develop and fine-tune a PSN strategy that meets your most specific needs. For us, compliance is only the beginning. It’s what you make of the PSN that makes the difference. We offer you unparalleled experience, depth of portfolio, security expertise and geographic reach – everything you need to simplify, share and save.

BT and the Public Services Network
See how you can benefit from PSN. Learn how BT is working with customers such as the NHS, MOD and DWP to ensure they get the most out of this secure network of networks and that they in turn, can help to benefit the nation at large. 

BT Delivery PSN
Spotlight on Defence and Security

Change today, transform tomorrow

BT is focused on helping public services develop further and faster. To collaborate more effectively and save more together, ultimately building and shaping a better future for every citizen. It’s why we’ve been involved in the creation and development of the Public Services Network every step of the way – one of only three suppliers to do so.

We’ve worked with the public sector for decades – we’ve been part of it ourselves – so we know how it works and exactly what’s required to get the job done. And with our innovation, unrivalled connectivity and one of the widest ranges of business-standard network solutions and services available, we make sure you get exactly what you need – from making the most of shared services, to new ways of working, to made-to-measure packages that fit your budget. Then together we can make services better and reduce costs for today, while at the same time redrawing the lines of collaboration and reinventing networks for tomorrow.

In short, with our national experience, public service expertise and unrivalled innovation, BT is uniquely placed to deliver for both your immediate needs and the nation’s better future.

Shared Services in the PSN era

Find out how PSN will bring new opportunities for nationwide connectivity and the sharing of services. Download our independently commissioned Kable whitepaper below.

Contact your BT Account Manager to find out how BT can help you re-shape your public services.

We have delivered efficiency and transformation across the public sector, such as DFTS for defence, N3 for health and solutions in central and local government.

In September 2012 we signed a deal with Surrey County Council to establish the UNICORN network, which will then expand to include libraries and schools, with the potential for other organisations, such as more emergency services and voluntary groups, to join. The deal represents an annual saving of up to £750,000 on the county council’s previous contract – adding up to £5.25m over the lifespan of the seven-year deal. Surrey’s Cabinet Member for Change and Efficiency, Denise Le Gal, said: “Our aim is to provide the highest quality services at the very best value for money and developing a cloud platform as part of a single public services network is the latest example of our willingness to embrace new ideas. We firmly believe public services should be seen as a single team co-operating to make taxpayers’ money go further wherever possible and this deal with BT will save the county council alone up to £5.25m.”

Recently, we strengthened our relationship with Northumberland County Council, agreeing on a deal to deliver PSN cost savings and faster internet speeds in schools, libraries and fire stations across the county. Through the advanced network access, BT is enabling the council to deliver better services and improved access for citizens in areas previously beyond reach of the NorthNet network. David McDonnell, networks and data manager at Northumberland County Council, said: “Northumberland County Council has been working with BT to ensure our rural locations in the county have access to fast internet speeds, Wooler library has just gone live with more areas to follow.”

We also worked with Norfolk County Council, helping them to become amongst the first councils to achieve the PSN Code of Connection (CoCo) certification. Working with BT, Norfolk is now exploring opportunities with Health, Fire, Police and District Councils to save money by removing duplicated network connections and improving collaborative working. Kurt Frary, ICT architecture manager at Norfolk County Council, said: “This is a fantastic milestone for Norfolk which underpins the Norfolk ICT Strategy, and we’re very proud to be setting the pace in the move to PSN”.

With PSN certified services available today, we are already delivering PSN to tens of thousands of end users at hundreds of sites across the UK. Our portfolio spans network services to next-generation voice to video conferencing, shared contact centres to virtual data centres, and a host of innovative cloud services.

However, the savings don’t come from the network services and IT technology – they come from how these are used, how organisations realise that the ability to change and rethink how they work at all levels is now a reality, not hampered by isolationist IT.  With our innovation, unrivalled connectivity and one of the widest ranges of business-standard network solutions and services available, we can help public service organisations develop their networks further and faster, collaborate more effectively and save more together, ultimately shaping and building a better future for everyone.

Maximise the benefits of PSN with BT

How can we help you review, redefine or restructure how you work?

By reinventing networks

BT Connect for Public Services, our PSN certified intelligent network solutions are built to adapt intuitively to your business objectives, processes and organisational needs, simple to control and easy to update, helping to deliver services more smoothly to the people that matter.

By redefining collaboration

With BT One Cloud, our customised unified communications solutions change the way you collaborate, through cost-cutting, pay-as-you-go options picked by you and managed, maintained and updated by us – all for the benefit of the nation at large.

By reconnecting the people, reducing cost and rethinking risk
We are on eight lots of the PSN Connectivity Framework giving you access to an extensive portfolio of products and solutions. Whatever your unique challenge; from connectivity compliance, security, or service flexibility, to ensuring the efficiency of your contact centres, we can work with you to help your services develop further, faster and for less and ensure PSN compliance.

The PSN is not just about compliance. It’s about positive change, both short and long term, with quantifiable savings and benefits. It’s also about improving contact with citizens, allowing simpler and more effective communication, and enhancing the quality of service delivery.

By reducing cost and complexity, standardising networks, allowing service sharing, and extending the parameters of collaborative working, the PSN not only supports the ICT objectives set by Government, it aims to exceed them.

There are many ways the PSN can make more of limited budgets. The list below highlights specific areas in which the PSN not only saves money, but goes further, to deliver even more impressive benefits.

Simplified procurement
Direct access to the PSN Frameworks makes procurement easier, faster, and more cost-effective. Many offerings in the PSN Frameworks are already PSN-certified, with more going through the accreditation process so you can confidently choose the services to buy, and the providers to buy them from, with full assurance of compatibility and value for money.

Business transformation
The initial cost savings achieved with the PSN are only the beginning. The PSN enables innovation and major business transformation. With the PSN, all organisations involved in public service delivery can do more for less, exploiting common ICT services to work more effectively, sharing resources, accessing information, cutting overheads, improving productivity, and enhancing public service delivery.

Seamless connectivity
PSN users will be seamlessly linked through the robust “network of networks,” governed by strict standards of compliance. This provides fast, secure, and reliable access to business and network services wherever and whenever they are needed.

Streamlined operation
Through rationalisation, the PSN can streamline incompatible, inflexible, and duplicated networks, multiple procurement contracts, complex SLAs, and unsustainable maintenance overheads. Find out how we can help you reinvent your network with BT Connect

Closer collaboration
Information can be securely shared and directly accessed through the PSN, enabling genuine collaborative working between departments, agencies, and the third sector, at national, regional, and local levels.

Flexible working
By enabling secure, seamless connectivity and cross-boundary working, the PSN liberates your workforce, offering virtually unlimited work style options and mobility, totally independent of location, while consolidating public sector estates. Redefine your collaboration with BT One

Shared services
The PSN makes it possible for the public sector to share business and application services as needed, including voice, video, email, messaging, and data centres. This leads to significant cost savings, as well as greater efficiency and enhanced performance.

Technical interoperability
The PSN’s versatile network infrastructure offers interoperability across the entire public sector, enabling all users to share information and access standards-based services. This gives the public sector a substantial reduction in overall operating costs.

Service assurance
The PSN can combine the proven benefits of a multi-supplier environment with the reassurance of common levels of assurance and service management, enabling resilient performance and consistent service levels.

Enhanced security
The base PSN security standard is CAS(T), a recognised level of security assurance for Business Impact Level 2 (IL2), protecting critical communications service across the public sector. Providers can also build on this with CESG-approved solutions to provide and certify PSN services with greater levels of security (at IL3 and IL4) as needed.

Like the Internet, the PSN is made up of different networks which are connected together. To provide the performance, resilience, and security required by the public sector, the PSN is unified by an agreed set of standards with which all suppliers and customers must comply.

These standards, the PSN Codes and Conditions, are administered by the PSN Authority. As the PSN market and services develop, the Codes and Conditions are being refined and extended to ensure that PSN evolves and improves.

Who’s who?
There are three classes of PSN service provider:
• PSNSPs (who supply PSN services)
• DNSPs (PSNSPs who meet more stringent conditions and can connect to the GCN)
• GCNSPs (who provide the links between DNSPs)

As a customer seeking to buy from the PSN marketplace, you can select services from one or more PSN Service Providers (PSNPs/DNSPs). These are suppliers who provide certified PSN services from, for example, WAN connectivity to voice services, conferencing, security, internet access or hosting and application services. PSNSPs cannot connect or ‘peer’ directly with each other, but must communicate across the PSN via Direct Network Service Providers (DNSPs).

DNSPs are PSNSPs who, like BT and other suppliers, must meet additional, stringent obligations allowing them to connect to other DNSPs via the Government Conveyance Network (GCN).

The GCN is the hub of the PSN, acting as the gateway between the networks of different service providers. It is supplied by a small number of key providers who ‘mesh’ together their networks so that the GCN appears as a single logical network. GCN services are only bought by DNSPs, not by end customers of PSN services.

Some providers choose to offer services at both PSNSP and DNSP levels, making use of this flexibility to minimise the cost and complexity of individual services, while ensuring that connection is still made through their DNSP service and the GCN hub to other service providers and customers.

Providers of PSN services do not have to be private sector ICT companies. Public sector bodies may also share services through the PSN marketplace if they comply with the appropriate Codes and Conditions as a PSNSP or DNSP.

Through this architecture, the PSN allows information and communication to flow from one customer or service provider to another, regardless of location or supplier.

21 September

Elmbridge Today
BT wins public services network contract
BT has won a contract to connect at least 20 public services in Surrey and Berkshire, it has been announced. The firm is set to replace up to 40 separate networks in the two counties with just one, called Unicorn. The deal is due to last seven years, with the possibility of an extension of up to five years. Unicorn – which stands for unified community over regional network – will be available to all public sector bodies in Surrey and Berkshire.

19 September

Civil Service World
It’s time to realise PSN’s potential
BT’s Mark Langdale thinks PSN is at a tipping point. With the network being put in place, he says the time has come for detailed planning on its potential for delivering improved public services. Here’s his view about how to make that happen.

The Information Daily
British government agency hoards £1bn unused IPv4 addresses

14 September

The Register
Surrey council plans to SAVE money by switching to BT

13 September

Computing
E-procurement and cloud form centrepiece of government’s green IT strategy

12 September

Government Computing
Surrey says PSN deal could save £5m plus

10 September

Sourcing Focus
Surrey County Council to save £5 million through BT consolidation

7 September

IT Pro
BT bags Surrey County Council shared services deal

Computer Weekly
BT network consolidation saves Surrey County Council £5m
Surrey Council has signed a seven year contract with BT to replace up to 40 separate networks with one public services network (PSN). The network will be made available to all public services in Surrey and its neighbouring county Berkshire. BT claims it will cut costs by up to £750,000 a year, compared with the previous networking deployments. Once the network has been established, the Surrey Council hopes to extend the network to libraries and schools, as well as voluntary organisations or emergency services who may want to take advantage of the technology and cost savings.

3 September

Information Age
Phoenix IT Group uncovers accounting irregularities

31 August

Public Service
Collaboration is no longer a choice – now it’s a must
As the debate over public sector procurement continues, Virgin Media Business director Lee Hull looks at public service network (PSN) frameworks, identifying the challenges and arguing how they can be overcome.

13 August

Government recognises BT as leading supplier

10 August

Public Service
Government IT savings reached £249m

7 August

Bdaily business network
CMA welcomes ‘clarion call for fresh thinking’

David Brunnen, head of communication at the CMA, on the House of Lords communications committee report:

The Communications Management Association (CMA) is pleased the House of Lords communications committee report on broadband recognizes that the provision of digital access networks ‘should be considered a key part of our national infrastructure’ and is a ‘strategic national asset’. Taken alongside the committee’s concerns for investment that is ‘future-proof’ and the priority to ‘eliminate the digital divide’ they have clearly understood that all parts of the UK economy are increasingly dependent on the quality of digital access and the open availability of competitive services that can be delivered via those local networks... It is also interesting that the report backs widespread availability of ‘dark fibre’. The flexibility and affordability of dark fibre has provided a significant businesses benefit in Sweden and other advanced European States where local access networks have been able to utilize the capacity inherent in modernised Public Service Networks. The cost of IP Transit at major Hubs has been steadily falling and the Lords Report is right to focus attention on the layer between the Major and Local hubs. Dark Fibre might encourage the deployment of radical technologies such as Optical Packet Switching that are being developed by ‘Intune Networks’ in Northern Ireland and the Republic. It is very odd that many overlapping networks paid for from the public purse (such as JANET, the academic network and many other PSNs) are not yet deployed to boost the services for the wider community and enterprise...

5 July

BT Press Release
BT signs five year PSN deal with Northumberland Council

19 June

Computer World UK
Government awards PSN services framework

18 June

BT Press Release
BT chosen for second PSN framework

15 June

Tech Week Europe
Government names suppliers for Public Services Network

7 June

UKAuthority.com
Norfolk’s PSN certification success
BT helps the council to become one of the first to successfully gain PSN Certification for its network environment and supplier PSN services.

6 June

Guardian Government Computing
Norfolk county council receives full PSN certification

2 May

Local Government IT in Use
Out of the comfort zone
Michael Cross reports on a driver for transformational change whose effects might not be seen for a few years – but could change everything from costs to service models.

11 April

Public Service
Let's Talk about PSN
Neil Rogers talks about communicating the benefits of PSN across government28 March

28 March

BT selected as supplier to Public Services Network (PSN) connectivity framework
BT is playing a leading role in transitioning the Civil Service and a wide range of other public service organisations to PSN

23 March

Guardian Government Computing

BT wins position on PSN connectivity Framework 
PSN connectivity framework suppliers revealed 
The Cabinet Office has announced the successful bidders for the Public Services Network (PSN) connectivity framework. The cross-government framework covers a managed telecoms service to facilitate collaboration and secure communication between central and local government, the NHS, voluntary organisations and other public sector bodies. The Cabinet Office invited 17 vendors to bid for a place on the framework for the network of networks, 16 of which did so. Of the 16, 12 were successful: BT, Cable & Wireless, Capita Business Services, Eircom, Fujitsu, KCom, Level 3, Logicalis, MDNX, Thales, Updata and Virgin Media Business. The framework will be worth between £500m and £3bn, according to the original tender document…

01 March

Computer Weekly

Ministry of Justice signs up to PSN
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has become the first government department to sign up for the early deployment of a public services network (PSN), in a deal with BT that is expected to save the department £8m per year by 2015.

The PSN, designed to become a “network of networks” across government, will be used across the MoJ’s courts and tribunals and take out around 30% of data and telephone service costs. The deal was signed ahead of the PSN framework agreement, with the roll-out expected to be complete by 2013.  The deal includes the use of BT’s 21st century network capability and Siemens IP telephony. “We are buying a PSN-compliant service ahead of time,” said Philip French, chief technology officer at the MoJ, speaking at a PSN conference organised by BT.

The core network will run at security Impact Level 2 (IL2), with an encryption overlay for more sensitive data marked at IL3.

18th March

Market Mettle
BT highlights demand for UK’s Public Services Network (PSN)

7th March

Civil Service World
Even target groups have little knowledge of PSN, survey finds

5th March

The Information Daily (formerly E-Gov Monitor)
PSN – more than a tick in the box 

29th February

IP Expo
Public Services Network awareness low among government employees, survey finds.

The Information Daily (formerly E-Gov Monitor)
Public Services Network vital for enhancing public sector efficiency: BT PSNsus report 

28th February

Government Technology
BT survey reveals optimistic attitude towards PSN 

Government business
BT survey reveals optimistic attitude towards PSN

eHealth Insider
NHS ‘on board’ with PSN programme

PC Advisor
Public Sector Network confusion rife among government IT professionals 

Public Sector Executive
PSN drives efficiency but lacks awareness 

HealthBusinessuk.net
BT survey reveals optimistic attitude towards PSN

Telecom Paper
UK public servants optimistic about PSN adoption: study

Sourcing Focus
Over half of Civil Servants do not know about Public Sector Network 

27 February

Public Technology
What’s PSN,’ wonder 60% of non-techie council staff 

Computer Weekly
PSN needs to happen before cloud, say IT chiefs 

Computerworld UK
Public Sector Network confusion rife among government IT professionals 

Public Service
Government ‘not getting good deal’ on telecoms 

CIO
Public Sector Network confusion rife among government IT professionals

4 Traders
Public Services network considered crucial to public sector efficiency drive, survey reveals