Benefits

The PSBA network is a next generation government communications network and is architected to securely support the needs of individual public services.

It supports voice, video and data, and diverse connectivity types, supporting the emerging communications and ICT needs of Welsh public services as a whole.

As well as being a secure, flexible and robust communications service, the PSBA network is a platform for innovation in public service cooperation and collaboration.

The benefits derived by the public sector from the PSBA include:

Reduction in communications costs

By consolidating effort and expenditure into a single technology platform managed by a single organisation overall communications costs can be lowered across Wales.

Individual sectors no longer need to procure and purchase their own wide area networking services. Instead, every organisation using the service uses a technology platform built from common infrastructural elements.

Local aggregation of needs is enabling different sectors to use the same network connection and further drive down their combined connection costs.

Improved collaboration

The secondary benefits are dependent on a variety of other projects, initiatives and departments. However, the goal is clear: to increase the quality and quantity of information sharing across public service organisations in Wales and deliver a better service to its people.

The PSBA network is a platform for innovation in cooperation and collaboration in Welsh public sector.

Collaborative tools already being used within individual organisations or sectors can benefit from the PSBA network by being able to securely connect people and systems.

Consistent national coverage

The PSBA network covers the whole of Wales.

Gateways are also provided into JANET (for education), N3 (for health) and GCSx (for Local Authorities). I n many areas of Wales increased network capacity and reach has resulted from investment in the PSBA network.

Resilient networking

The PSBA network has been designed for high availability public services.

State-of-the art systems and fail-over capabilities are used to provide a highly resilient core communications service.

Quality of Service (QoS)

The network supports QoS, allowing business critical applications and time-sensitive traffic (such as VoIP, thin client application and video) to be prioritised making VoIP or video collaboration a realistic and cost-saving proposition across Wales.

24/7 monitoring, management and support

Logicalis, the PSBA delivery partner provides 24/7 monitoring and service support and is the single point of contact for PSBA customers.

Specialised network-monitoring tools monitor network performance to ensure service quality and continuity, and real-time service information is accessible via the PSBA secure portal.