What to do with Government Connect?
17th December 2008
Information Security, or rather the perceived lack of true security, has hit the headlines in recent months. Much has been made of lost CDs, stolen laptops, misplaced USB sticks and leaving “Protected” or “Restricted” paper files on the seats of busy trains. The potential consequences associated with losing sensitive information held by the public sector are plain for all to see.
Securing the information public sector organisations hold and share with others will increase customer confidence. On top of this, the ability to securely share information between public sector partners offers the opportunity for real service delivery transformation.
Government Connect provides a trusted and secure network for all local authorities in England and Wales.
All 410 local authorities across England and Wales have now signed up to Government Connect. They will become part of the trusted Government Secure Intranet (GSI) family allowing them to share information securely with, and access databases held by, other public sector organisations. All local authorities are currently being assessed against a minimum acceptable standard of information security - compliance against a Code of Connection (CoCo).
Once compliance has been achieved, then the world of Government Connect is ready to be explored.
Government Connect will provide opportunities for:
• More Secure,
• Speedier, and,
• Cheaper
transfer of information between public sector organisations. Exploring these opportunities can lead to real improvements in service delivery.
How can you realise these benefits?
It is important to recognise that the Government Connect infrastructure simply provides the technology to enable public sector organisations to correspond in a secure manner. Over-laying Government Connect onto existing processes and services (for example accessing the same database but over the secure “pipe”) will only deliver an increase in security. This, by itself, is very important and may also provide some minimal cost reductions through reducing the volume of couriers and postage. However, the arrival of the secure channel does provide the capability to deliver true joined up government that will transform the citizen’s experience and radically reduce the cost of providing public services. To deliver these broader benefits requires true transformation in the way that local authorities, their staff and their LSP partners work together to share information and redesign services and processes in order to make optimum use of this technology.
The starting point for this transformation is to understand the customer or citizen – who you share with the rest of the public sector – and identify the broad range of public services that they consume.
Based upon their needs and circumstances, the citizen is currently forced to join up government on their own. They experience multiple repetitive interactions with a confusing array of different parts of government providing the same information and data (to explain their needs and circumstances) to identify, request and commission the services to which they may be entitled.
Government Connect provides the capability for this to change, providing the trusted channel for public sector partners to share information and insight about their shared customer. This will enable the citizen to not only tell government once about their needs and circumstances, but also to commission and even consume the services through this single interaction.
Meeting the challenges of the forthcoming Comprehensive Area Assessment, reducing cost and delivering improved outcomes for your communities to better meet their needs is the agenda. Government Connect should not be viewed as simply another IT project. Government Connect provides some of the key capability to enable this to happen. Government Connect should be seen as the catalyst for local authorities to work in real partnership with their LSP partners and lead the local transformation that they have been tasked to deliver.
Aperia have experience in supporting real transformation across both single tier and two-tier areas. We can demonstrate a successful track record in defining and delivering customer-centric change programmes that deliver significant benefits to our clients. For more information on, and assistance with, the following, please contact us:
• Delivering real transformation through Aperia’s Circles of Need transformation framework.
• Understanding what can be achieved by using Government Connect.
• Achieving CoCo compliance.