SmartGov: September start planned for PSN services

Siemens and BT, which have recently formed a partnership to deliver applications and services on the PSN, are said to be on course to offer wide area network (WAN) and unified communications facilities to public sector organisations. Michael Bowyer, head of public sector strategy for Siemens and a member of the PSN Steering Group, said this would be a significant step towards the development of the Government Applications Store, which with the PSN is one of the prime features of the Government ICT Strategy. Speaking to GC News at the SmartGov Live conference and exhibition, Bowyer said: "We are hoping to commoditise services and open up the ability to commission services on demand." The PSN, which is being developed by a team led by the Cabinet Office, is aimed at providing a 'network of networks' to support communications and information sharing across the public sector. Bowyer claimed that the services would enable organisations connected to the network to "reconstruct the ICT budget" and obtain significant savings. Public bodies will have to comply with a code of connection for the PSN, following which they will be able to take up licences for the services on offer and use them on a utility computing model, under which they effectively pay only for the capacity they use. "Chief information officers want to do it that way," Bowyer said. "They want to turn services on and off based on internal demand and access from any public sector building that is connected to the PSN." He said the WAN and unified communications services would lay the ground for more applications, developed by a range of suppliers, to be integrated into the PSN. "It's about how we will integrate more applications into services with the security wrap which enables them for use," he said, adding that this could involve the creation of more social networking tools for public bodies. Bowyer forecast that 200,000 public sector staff could be using the services after 16 months, and that the total potential market is for 1.4m users.