Reflections on Government Connect – from 2005 to
31 March 2011
Having supported the Government Connect programme for more than
five years, until its completion on 31 March 2011, VEGA looks
back on its role at the heart of the programme, and how the
initiative successfully delivered its objective to create a
private, secure, managed network for English and Welsh local
authorities to support better collaboration between themselves and
central government.
On 1 April 2011, the services and responsibilities of the
Government Connect Management Body (GCMB) transitioned formally to
Buying Solutions and the Cabinet Office.
Government Connect was born out of the vision to ‘transform
government’, making it easier for the UK public to interact with
government services by reducing cross-government bureaucracy and
duplication.
The programme was designed to deliver a private, secure, managed
network over which English and Welsh local authorities could share
sensitive information online, quickly, easily, accurately and in
real-time.
As it now becomes an integral part of public sector life,
Government Connect should be viewed as a success, with central
government, local government and the private sector all working
together in a flexible and pragmatic way to ultimately deliver
benefit to UK citizens.
In his foreword to the recently released Government ICT
Strategy, Francis Maude noted that Government ICT “has a really bad
name, much of which is unjustified.” Government Connect is a good
example of a major programme that has not, for very good reasons,
made the headlines, despite delivering an essential part of the
national infrastructure.
VEGA is one of the private sector companies that have been
intimately involved with the programme. The company’s association
with Government Connect started in late 2005, when the Government
Connect programme sat within the Department for Communities and
Local Government (CLG). Although VEGA’s contribution to Government
Connect was not seen initially as a significant one, the final 12
months of Government Connect were delivered exclusively by VEGA.
During the intervening period, VEGA provided many different
services to the programme, sharing in the significant achievements
of one the UK Government’s most understated of key enablers of
transformational government – the Government Connect Secure
eXtranet (GCSX).
Making it Work
Despite its original aspirations, the Government Connect
programme did not gain true traction and a clear scope of its
achievable outputs until mid-2006; an independent review of the
programme by VEGA was a key contributor to a fundamental change in
both programme staffing and proposed deliverables that
followed.
Another critical success factor was the transfer of the
programme from CLG to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in
March 2008, combined with the assignment of a critically-acclaimed
Programme Director, Philip Littleavon. The authority and
determination of the DWP, combined with the decisive leadership and
vision of the Programme Director to focus clearly on attainable
outcomes and the critical skills and resources required to achieve
them, was fundamental to the establishment of GCSX. Consequently,
the network that many openly dismissed as unachievable was
delivered, set-to-work, and utilised by both central and local
government.
Still, not everyone in local government appreciated GCSX being
“given” to them; while some local authorities found the security /
governance standards set by the GCSX Code of Connection (CoCo)
relatively easy to demonstrate compliance against, others struggled
and found it difficult to support a business case for making the
investment to achieve what has always been viewed as
industry-standard best practice. Those local authorities who
recognised the future benefits of IT-enabled business change led
the early take up of GCSX. But it was the hosting of the DWP
Customer Information Service (CIS) solely on GCSX, the
determination of the DWP to improve how it handled citizen data,
and the central funding to provide GCSX for free, that proved to be
the critical factors in achieving GCSX deployment.
Delivering a difference to the front-line
Although the Government Connect programme completed delivery of
the GCSX network in late 2009, the true value of connectivity to
the Government Secure intranet (GSi), for both local authorities
and central government, has little to do with the creation of an
accredited, secure, nationwide private network, and establishment
of improved security standards across all local authorities.
GCSX is a key enabler to information sharing, and for the last
12 months of the Government Connect programme, the GCMB has focused
on delivering new GCSX-enabled services and achieving secure
exchanges between the Police (via PNN), the NHS (via N3), Suppliers
(via GSE), Department for Education, DWP and CESG amongst others.
In many cases, the GCMB has acted as the focal point for new
information exchange requirements, liaising with central government
on behalf of local authorities, as well as advising local
authorities on their own GCSX-enabled developments. Inevitably, the
need for this function across government and the public sector is
increasing; the GCMB role has now been passed onto the Cabinet
Office, which obviously has transformational government (enabled by
technology) as a key responsibility.
Setting the government on the path to success
Looking to the future, the focus from both central and local
government is now on the Public Sector Network (PSN). Government
Connect openly advocated and encouraged the consideration of
regionally-aggregated networks; Kent’s PSN (KPSN) featured
prominently in the 2010 GCSX Forums. KPSN Partnership Development
Manager at Kent County Council, Jeff Wallbank, delivered a very
convincing argument for circuit rationalisation, data centre
consolidation and common network-based services such as IP
telephony and video-conferencing, all of which provided a
real-life, working example of how to get “much more for less”.
Since then, the Cabinet Office’s PSN programme has been promoting
PSN benefits, and there are now many regional PSNs being contracted
or considered.
Whilst it is commonplace for PSN-based presentations to present
GCSX as an unwanted and unloved but necessary encumbrance, it is
inevitable that GCSX and the GSi, as a whole, will continue to
provide the backbone of secure services for a while yet. Indeed,
one of the risks facing all stakeholders is that the focus on PSN
and, more importantly, future PSN-ready regional public sector
networks and G-cloud services, will inhibit the appetite for any
new, secure, information exchanges, effectively arresting the
progress and momentum achieved by Government Connect.
The Government ICT Strategy only makes one explicit reference
(Action 17) to PSN, which is to “reduce the cost of government
networks”. This really fails to capture how many of the other
Actions may be enabled by it, but also helps to set PSN in context
as, just like GCSX and the GSi, backbone networks alone are not
going to deliver a sea change in efficiency and innovation.
VEGA’s Government Connect team has had the benefit of working
alongside PSN, at both programme and regional level, and has
already articulated its view of some of the issues facing central
and local government organisations. In this context, VEGA is keen
to be seen as a “critical friend” as well as an experienced and
trusted adviser.
VEGA is extremely proud to be associated with a flagship
programme such as Government Connect. We would like to thank all
those unnamed individual contributors and associated government
bodies that made working on this programme such an enjoyable
experience. Of particular note were the contributions and support
from the DWP, CLG, Department for Education, Buying Solutions,
Cabinet Office, Department of Health, National Health Service
Connecting for Health, Ministry of Justice, National Police
Improvement Agency, CESG, Welsh Assembly Government, Local
Government Association, Local Government Improvement &
Development, Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, all local
authorities across England and Wales.
External websites relating to Government Connect
» Department for Work and
Pensions
»
Buying Solutions
» Local
Government Improvement and Development