Eastern county council CIOs in network-sharing talks

Vision of the Public Sector Network takes a step closer to reality

IT leaders from five county councils on the east coast of Britain have begun high-level talks about sharing network infrastructure services to help achieve the budget cuts demanded by central government.

Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Kent County Council CIOs are meeting to discuss where they can share IT services, said Goy Roper, head of ICT at Norfolk County Council, speaking to an audience of IT bosses at Computing's IT Leaders Forum at the London Stock Exchange today.

"Obviously, other county councils do the same things as us. Some things we do better and some things they do better. So we would be a consumer of some services and a provider of others," said Roper.

The goal is to save money by reducing duplication while maintaining or even increasing service provision to citizens. Norfolk County Council alone faces cuts of £155m while demand for services is rising, he added.

Initial collaboration is likely to be in procurement, disaster recovery and in ensuring all county councils' network infrastructure is compliant with central government's Public Service Network (PSN) standards.

The PSN, a public sector network of networks, was established under the last Labour government.

"PSN went very quiet after the election, but the Cabinet Office is now driving adoption," said Roper.

However, no new money is available for implementation, he added.

The group of five county councils could be extended to other eastern England public sector bodies, as demand for cooperation grows among entities such as fire, police, health and education services.

Norfolk County Council already provides some services for other eastern England public sector bodies, such as Great Yarmouth Council and the Fisheries Authority.

"Politics sometimes gets in the way, but the politics vanishes as soon as you mention saving money," Roper told Computing.

Computing's IT Leaders Forum, sponsored by BT, was entitled Intelligent networking for an uncertain world.

IT heads from construction, engineering, services, healthcare, education, the media and financial services, as well as the public sector, gathered at the London Stock Exchange to discuss how they are adapting their networks to the changing requirements of increased demand for video, mobility and consumerisation.