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Agreement paves way for PSN services

Gov organisations will be able to share information with each other

A Cabinet Office official has said there has been an agreement for some of the first services on the Public Sector Network (PSN).

John Stubley, the PSN programme director, released a short statement on Twitter that IP services company Global Crossing has signed a deed of undertaking (DoU) to provide the first Government Conveyance Network (GCN) for the PSN. He indicated that other agreements are expected to follow shortly.

Mike Thomas, public sector consultant for Global Crossing and the lead on the PSN's commercial workstream, told GC News that this is a big step in the delivery of the network, as the GCN provides connectivity for the different networks that will link up within the PSN.

"We've been instrumental in helping the Cabinet Office to put a lot of the definitions together," he said. "The DoU effectively says: 'This is the standard you will deliver the service to'."

Under the DoU the company has agreed to deliver the GCN, and will now go through an accreditation and certification process. Thomas said this should be fast enough to enable the first customer, the Kent Public Service Network (KPSN), to connect next month.

There are plans for Hantsweb, the network for public services in Hampshire, to connect the following month, and negotiations are under way to bring in a number of other existing networks, including the Government Secure Intranet, N3 for the NHS, Joint Academic NETwork (Janet) for the further and higher education sector and Wales' Public Sector Broadband Aggregation network.

The connections will enable organisations using the different networks to securely share information with each other.

"We are now in a position to start entering agreements to contract GCN services," Thomas said. "The customers are likely to be aggregated networks such as the KPSN and Hantsweb, along with other network providers who do not have a presence on the PSN, systems integrators and data centres.

This article was originally published at Kable.

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