Professional Documents
Culture Documents
W H I T E
P A P E R
Table of contents
1
Introduction
Driving efficiencies
Sharing of services
Shared-infrastructure services
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Introduction
The objective of this paper is to examine how public-sector bodies can gain savings and increase
efficiencies from a shared-services approach through the deployment of the Alcatel-Lucent High
Leverage Network (hereafter HLN) architecture.
By building the right network, public-sector bodies can operate a single secure, scalable infrastructure
capable of being shared by many organizations with different requirements that delivers a mixture of
services and applications, is accessible to users with fixed or wireless connectivity, and is centrally
controlled and managed.
This presents an opportunity to increase bandwidth, expand network access, deliver additional
services, and centralize management while driving down costs.
Driving efficiencies
Despite the current uncertain economic climate, there is still pressure on public-sector bodies to
create new ways of delivering efficiencies while pushing the government agenda forward.
In 2005, the Government of the United Kingdom (UK) issued Transformational Government
Enabled by Technology, a document that outlines a six-year strategy in leveraging technology to
deliver improved services around three prime areas: customer-centric services, shared services
and professionalism.
The strategy built on existing arguments for shared services across the public sector, as previously
highlighted in reports by Gershon and Varney. Focusing on increasing efficiency in government, both
these reports highlighted by examining the private sector that corporate shared services can
typically deliver efficiencies of 20 percent to 50 percent.
Following from this, the UK Government ICT Strategy paper, issued in December 2009, further
emphasized the value to be derived from the adoption of shared services, both at a local level and
from a centrally implemented service model.
In many cases, public-sector organizations have made major inroads in delivering this vision;
for example, collaboration among public-sector bodies in the sharing of resources and business
functions typically back-office services such as human resources, finance and procurement.
These have delivered efficiency in resource consolidation, operations and services as well as
enabling greater power in contract negotiations.
The next challenge will be not only extending the shared-services model by collaborating on a wider
scale, but also delivering the information and communication technology (ICT) strategy at a local
level. For example, where there is a consolidated data center, there is a need to provide a robust,
high-bandwidth network infrastructure with sufficient bandwidth capacity at the local level.
This opens the question as to who will carry the responsibility for providing the infrastructure at the
local level. The National Health Service (NHS) Connecting for Health program advanced a number
of the ideas in the ICT Strategy; however, the question of delivering the last mile remains open.
Sharing of services
The shared-services model has been widely recognized as having the potential to deliver efficiencies,
improve productivity and significantly reduce costs across many areas where there is commonality
in business operations and delivery of services, both internally and externally. This is especially
applicable within the public sector.
Implemented correctly, the shared-services model presents the opportunity to standardize, consolidate
and simplify the delivery of services. This applies at an operational level and, in the case of ICT, at
a technology level.
To date, a number of organizations have implemented a shared-services approach to areas such as
back-office functions (human resources, finance, and so on) and have formed partnerships in the
procurement of goods and services, both locally and across verticals.
Extending beyond this approach, further efficiency savings can be derived within ICT operations.
By bringing together common departments and functions from across a number of organizations, in
effect forming an in-house outsourcing model, public-sector bodies can consolidate teams and
budgets while retaining full control.
The in-house model has been identified by the Society of Information Technology (Socitm) as a
change in direction from recent outsourcing trends that have led in some cases to local authorities
getting locked into costly and inflexible deals. Socitms view, expressed in its policy paper, is that
outsourcing can mean economies of scale being lost between ICT services such as help desks,
maintenance and support services.
This view has been further supported in a recent survey by the Association for Public Service
Excellence (ASPE), which revealed that councils are benefiting from the in-house model in areas
such as:
Improved service performance
Stronger governance
Cost efficiencies
Greater flexibility
By extending the in-house model across a number of collaborative bodies, key benefits include:
Economies of scale: budgets spent on common goods and services can be consolidated and used
more effectively in driving down costs
Duplicated resources can be better utilized
Standardization of technology simplifies support and maintenance contracts
Centralization enables wider strategy to be consistently delivered and controlled during change
One area in the shared ICT services model that is gaining more traction is the data-infrastructure
level, where a number of public bodies are implementing models around the sharing of a single network.
The wide area network (WAN) infrastructure level can deliver potential savings in the current
environment as well as a model that will support the wider ICT strategy, such as extending the
Public Sector Network (PSN) at the local level to the end user.
The scope and breadth of the PSN is currently unclear in terms of what will be delivered from this
project and how far it will extend to the local level. However, early moves by some local authorities
indicate that there will be a need to provide connectivity from the region to the PSN backbone,
similar to the NHS N3 backbone, with the onus on the local authority to deliver the area network
(WAN and LAN).
The sharing of infrastructure services presents a number of options and opportunities for public-sector
organizations to take the lead in forming collaborative partnerships in building and operating a
shared network.
Shared-infrastructure services
Increasingly, public-sector bodies that deliver a range of services to staff internal and external,
office-based, mobile and home workers and citizens are examining ways of consolidating infrastructure,
reducing costs and ensuring governance across the network. With parallel networks being operated
by local public-sector bodies, the opportunity for consolidation and sharing of services is clear.
Network sharing is not a totally new concept in the public sector: a number of organizations have formed
partnerships under an outsourcing model, typically between local bodies and an external commercial
partner. The commercial partner, service provider or carrier takes operational responsibility for the
delivery, support and management of the LANs and WANs, providing connectivity between sites.
While this has proven the concept, many organizations are looking at alternatives, particularly the
ability to provide and manage this model in-house. Under the in-house outsourcing model, a number
of local government organizations are taking lead roles in collaboration with other local public-sector
organizations in the development and supply of services to local public-sector partners.
Delivery of additional services/applications The centralized model is easily expanded to provide services, such as unified communications applications, that are associated with VoIP. These
include voice conferencing, videoconferencing, document collaboration/sharing, desktop integration, and integration in mobile devices.
Simplification of network access control and security Adoption of standardized and consistent
security policies with the deployment and central management of security devices leads to lower
support requirements and potential savings within the licensing model.
The need to quickly react to changes without contractual and process constraints Many thirdparty arrangements do not meet commercial expectations or the fast-moving requirements of end
users. Key elements of reliable and flexible MPLS-based infrastructures are effective, simplified management tools that provide easy configuration and control of the network; fast, effective problem
isolation and resolution; and support of new management applications.
When the secure, reliable, flexible infrastructure has been built, the foundation is laid for incorporating
existing services and operations.
The collaborative approach has led organizations to consolidate and share their technical resources
and budgets capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenditures (OPEX) to build a
communication infrastructure comprising and delivering the preceding benefits. Operational efficiency
is delivered from a simplified, centrally managed service, enabling resources to be reallocated and
costs to be driven down.
To drive forward efficiencies in the centralized model, it is important that operational support is
built around solutions capable of providing end-to-end management of devices from the core to the
edge. This reduces the complexity of managing a service, provides greater visibility to actual and
potential issues, and reduces the need for local support services on the ground.
In addition to addressing internal operational needs across the mix of organizations, many are looking
at widening the scope to citizens and, in doing so, meeting additional targets defined within Digital
Britain initiatives. This is potentially achievable with additional funding support from the UK and
European Union development agencies, allowing organizations to explore opening the network to
external users through service provisioning and thereby becoming revenue generators.
A number of local government organizations are examining how to enhance and expand their
infrastructure strategies to better use their infrastructure to support the actions and recommendations
outlined in Lord Carters Digital Britain report. This creates opportunities to seek additional funding.
In addition, some are looking beyond this and examining how they can offset operational costs by
offering services to companies within their geographical locations that can be benefit from access to
their infrastructure. These services include closed-circuit television (CCTV) connectivity, voice services
and data connections to companies with multiple local locations.
Alcatel-Lucent is working with the public sector worldwide to build network infrastructures that are
shared across a mix of organizations, supported in-house by the lead authority. These infrastructures
have been brought together into a single entity that comprises a mix of new and legacy networks
using the Alcatel-Lucent HLN architecture.
Conclusion
The public sector is facing unprecedented times: the challenges of delivering services to meet
growing needs, delivering the government vision for services both internally and to citizens, and
fulfilling a stringent program of efficiencies and savings across all areas. To meet these challenges,
many organizations are looking for ways to collaborate, bringing together budgets, consolidating
operations and resources, and sharing key technology areas such as the data infrastructure.
By building the shared HLN architecture based on MPLS technology, public-sector organizations
can meet government efficiency targets by:
Easily and efficiently operating a simplified, in-house managed data infrastructure across a wide
area for a mix of public-sector organizations
Delivering multiple technologies and application-based services such as voice, video and data
Providing enhanced security, scalability and high availability
Extending services to citizens in line with the Digital Britain initiative
Meeting goals for reducing operational costs
Introducing the prospect of offsetting budgets with revenue generation
As a world leader in the development and deployment of advanced telecommunications networks in
more than 130 countries worldwide, Alcatel-Lucent has extensive experience working with central
governments and local authorities in emerging and industrialized countries. Leveraging its long-term
leadership in telecommunications network equipment as well as its expertise in applications and
services, Alcatel-Lucent has helped establish a variety of network solutions from simple voice
networks to complete end-to-end broadband networks and e-government programs.
For more information on Alcatel-Lucent Solution for the Government, visit:
http://enterprise.alcatel-lucent.com/?solution=Government&page=homepage
Abbreviations
ASPE
CAPEX
capital expenditures
CCTV
closed-circuit television
CoCo
Code of Connection
HLN
ICT
IT
information technology
LAN
MPLS
NHS
OABN
OPEX
operating expenditures
PSN
QoE
Quality of Experience
QoS
Quality of Service
R&D
Socitm
UK
United Kingdom
VoIP
Voice over IP
VPN
WAN
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