Issues

Changing the way we do business

eolas7

Jim Leahy from the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer on how the Government Cloud Network is changing the way the public service is doing business.

“The Government Cloud Network is specifically designed to change the way we do business. Until now government agencies would go out and get a connection even if there was already one in the same building. With this project we have looked at making the amount of bandwidth available in a town to meet all the needs of government agencies in that town,” explains Leahy.

OGCIO ran a competition for the design, build and support of the GCN which was subsequently won by Vodafone Ireland. The project grew from the idea of connecting government agencies in the major cities and a few of the large towns. The objective of the project is to get to a point where bandwidth does not become an issue for any of the agencies: “If someone wants to add another service the bandwidth is either there or there is a mechanism to give it without having to re-engineer anything. That is what the Government Cloud Network is about.”

On the benefits of GCN, Leahy stresses that having a dedicated network is strategically important: “Instead of getting a service from a carrier out of their network we have point to point links between towns and between sites. On top of that we have built our own network which guarantees only government customers on the network. The benefit of this is that government has control over the total network. If you bought a similar service from any carrier you always have the question in the back of your mind: Who am I sharing this with? Or, how is it routed? With our own network we know all this,” explains Leahy.

There are also clear benefits in linking together government agencies, including real time backup of data in another location. It allows agencies “to do things differently”.

“That’s a big thing about build to share. Why should we all be building the same thing? Build it or buy it once and then share it,” he continues.
By starting the build to share approach with the network “you change people’s mind sets and it demonstrates the benefits of the build to share approach, which is a key element of the Government’s ICT strategy launched at the start of this year,” observes Leahy.

Connecting cities and towns
The Government Cloud Network has now been rolled out to over 20 towns, with a target of thirty plus by the end of this year. Leahy sees this as “achievable, and we might get to 40 towns but it depends on the take-up from agencies in specific towns. Towns connected so far include Wexford, Dungarvan and Ballina, some of which will have high speed broadband access for the very first time. It also facilitates the SME market. For example, bringing the high speed network to Ballina puts in place an infrastructure that will facilitate the next customer. This ties into DCENR’s strategy for getting connectivity for homes across the country.

In conclusion, Leahy sees the Government Cloud Network as a key element of the Government’s ICT strategy which OGCIO is now implementing. It puts in place a platform that will underpin the move of government services towards digital.

Show More
Back to top button