GDS seeks advice on migration from Public Services Network

The Government Digital Service has started the process of moving public sector organisations away from the Public Services Network. Just over a year after it said “the internet is okay” for most government work, the Government Digital Service (GDS) is looking to begin migrating public sector organisations off the Public Services Network (PSN), starting the discovery and alpha processes to demonstrate how government can move on. The project will draw together evidence to test how the public sector can best adopt future networks in a way that is cost-effective, maximises commercial services, maintains a strong marketplace, delivers measurable security, and supports working across organisational boundaries. The discovery process, which will run for around five months, has a budget of up to £380,000 and will begin in July 2018. In the tender preamble, GDS said it needed “ways to ensure public sector organisations connecting to the internet get the continuous and consistent service quality and security they need”. “This project will confirm the detail behind that need, and deliver standards and guidance which meet it. Any standards and guidance must be easily adoptable by service providers, and their implementation and effectiveness must be measurable through automated means,” it said.  In the discovery phase, the successful bidder will work alongside GDS and National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) teams to understand user needs at the network level for communications and security, and understand how the market is evolving and how public sector organisations can benefit from that.