Government Connect

VEGA has spent more than five years at the heart of the Government Connect programme, providing specialist support to help create and roll out a private, secure, managed network for English and Welsh local authorities to support better strategic collaboration between themselves and central government.

The Challenge

Government Connect is a strategic partnership comprising the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Communities and Local Government (CLG), the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the Local Government Association (LGA). These partners collectively invested £33m in the programme to support better collaboration between central and local government.

Answering the ambitions of the UK Government’s 'Transformational Government: Enabled by Technology' IT strategy, the programme aimed to establish a private, secure, managed network for English and Welsh Local Authorities to share sensitive information online, quickly, easily, accurately and in real time. It also aimed to provide secure email and data exchange for local government employees, so that they could transmit and access sensitive information appropriately.

How VEGA helped

VEGA began providing specialist support to Government Connect in November 2006, undertaking an independent system assurance task, which contributed significantly to a major programme re-organisation. Four months later, VEGA’s team was extended to provide Government Connect with critical resources that understood and had experience of secure system delivery and rollout.

During 2007, VEGA became embedded within the heart of the Government Connect programme team, providing support to the Programme Support Office, the Requirements and System Architecture Team, a Service Desk and Support Manager, and the majority of the central and regionally-based Connectivity Team, including account managers / security advisors as well as a CLAS Security Consultant.

In June 2008, DWP awarded VEGA a contract to continue this support through to March 2009 (which was subsequently extended to April 2009). In April 2009, DWP undertook a competitive tender for continuation of support to the Government Connect programme, which resulted in VEGA being awarded an additional contract through to October 2009, by which time, all 375 English and Welsh Local Authorities had gained Code of Connection (CoCo) compliance. In 2010, VEGA's contract was extended further to provide a new fully-managed service called the Government Connect Residual Operations Service (GCROS), which continued until the end of Government Connect programme in March 2011.

Value delivered

From the start of its support to Government Connect, VEGA played a crucial role in assisting all Local Authorities throughout England and Wales in analysing and proving security compliance, to achieve technical configuration and initial take-up of the secure GCSx network. VEGA gained a deep understanding of the Government Connect programme and its pivotal role in the ‘Transformational Government’ agenda, working closely with the programme's partners, as well as the Office of Government Commerce Buying Solutions (OGCBS), Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Youth Justice Board, and CESG (the Information Assurance arm of Government Communications Headquarters). VEGA is also engaging with every Local Authority throughout England and Wales.

To ensure the initial phase of the programme was successfully completed, VEGA managed a national team of security consultants who advised local authorities on the GCSX CoCo compliance, and provided CLAS Security Consultants who assessed GCSX CoCo submissions and were involved in more than 1,600 security assessments.

During the five years of VEGA's involvment, the company 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).

Testimonials

Government Connect Programme Director, 2008-2010, Philip Littleavon, commented: “VEGA has been an essential part of the programme. The team’s professionalism, expertise and flexibility in the services they delivered meant the programme continually met key milestones, was delivered on time, and has been a great success. I have been able to rely completely on the VEGA consultants working for Government Connect as they always delivered quality services on time, to budget and to specification. I would recommend VEGA to others and am personally very grateful for the services provided by VEGA to the Government Connect programme. I am delighted the Government Connect programme has continued to do so well. Since 2010, VEGA has fielded a strong and expert team committed and dedicated to realising the programme vision.”

Government Connect Service Lead from 2010-2011, Patrick Clark, added: "“The Government Connect programme demonstrated that with clear vision, strong purpose and the right mix of resources and stakeholders, cross-government initiatives can deliver positive outcomes. Whilst there are a growing number of shared services being established over GCSX, the potential to do more to improve information sharing across the public sector using this infrastructure is still huge. Local Government can and should seek to derive much more benefit from what they, in partnership with Government Connect, have achieved and put in place already, and resist the temptation to wait for the Public Sector Network to provide all the answers.”

Of the overall Government Connect programme, Kenny Robertson, Director of CIT Shared Services and SRO for the Government Connect Programme, said: "This is a remarkable achievement and provides a network bridge not just between local authorities and central government, but between local authorities themselves. It will create opportunities for better, more secure, timely and innovative, service deliver."

Reflections on Government Connect – from 2005 to March 2011

Contact VEGA for further information about our work in Government