Buckinghamshire council to implement £100m public sector network

Buckinghamshire County Council (BCC) plans to implement a wide-ranging public sector network (PSN) that will enable it to share resources with other councils and organisations in the surrounding area.

BCC is seeking a provider of managed ICT services for a four-year period, according an online contract notice.

It is estimated that the full cost of the network could reach about £100m over the period.

The notice reads: "The resultant contract shall provide a framework to deliver collaborative services across the public and voluntary sectors within Buckinghamshire and neighbouring organisations connected to the Government Conveyance Network."

The government's plan for established PSNs is to connect them up to one another via the Government Conveyance Network, which is a basic transport mechanism that allows the flow of resources between separate private sector networks. It is hoped that the PSNs will be connected in a piecemeal fashion in order to create a truly connected country-wide PSN.

Buckinghamshire County Council is looking for a range of services including a wide area network providing connectivity to partner sites, mobile telephony, remote access connectivity including mobile and fixed line broadband services, perimeter security services, Wi-Fi infrastructure, IP telephony and unified communications.

The chosen firm will also be responsible for incident management, troubleshooting and fault management.

The council also indicated that it plans to move to cloud or hosted services in the future and hopes that this contract will enable the delivery of infrastructure-as-a-service.

Some of the bodies that could connect to the PSN include Aylesbury Vale District Council, Oxfordshire Health NHS Foundation Trust, Milton Keynes Council, Northamptonshire County Council and London Borough of Hillingdon Council.