'PSN services will be live by Christmas'

Ian Wilcox said that during December the government will run tests on things like VoIP and video conferencing "to show a number of the technical issues have been cracked". He said the launch will be the "first instance" of the PSN being live, suggesting that it will begin on a small scale. Speaking at the Network for Devon event hosted by Siemens Enterprise Communications on 12 November 2010, he told the audience: "So it's that close. We're not talking about something that's a whiteboard, we are talking about real tangible deliverables now. Just to put it in context, the orders have been placed on all suppliers and they're all busy provisioning those at the moment." Wilcox, who represents local government interests within the Cabinet Office's PSN team, also revealed that big departments like the Department for Work and Pensions "don't have a choice" about participating in the project. "They have got to put up a plan that says how they are going to migrate to the PSN world and they're all busy tearing their hair out and trying to put these plans together as we speak," he added. The official disclosed that the network has come through an internal government review "largely unscathed", but with a clear message to complete the programme faster and to make "even more savings". He told the audience that there has been a "90 degree shift in thinking" by government and said that there is now "huge recognition" of the need for local authority participation. "It's a very different approach to projects in the past. Local government is in there, it's at the centre of the thinking and to a certain extent it's actually driving the thinking. We're probably being more innovative in the way that we're approaching this than perhaps some of our colleagues in central government are," he said. Wilcox stated that the project was progressing well, but acknowledged that there were some issues about getting the health sector on board due to information assurance incompatibilities. However, he said he was hopeful that this can be resolved in the near future. Looking forward, he said that the key to the success of PSN will be the transition from the Government Secure Extranet (GCSx) and N3 to the new network. "What we're looking to do is put the transition tools in place for that. So things like gateways between the GCSx and PSN so that local authorities can still access the services that they access over GCSx." If all goes according to plan, the tools will be place by Easter next year. Wilcox continued that there are a number of partnership networks which have already expressed an interest in participating in the project. "There are a number of the PSN ready for compliance networks out there saying 'when can we have it? We want to be part of this world now'. And potentially we could actually be looking at, in the order of 20% of local authorities covered by these partnerships. So there's a initial tidal wave of authorities wanting to come on board," he added.