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PSBA Update

PSBA Update

What have the following got in common?

Aneurin Bevan Health Board, Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council, Caerphilly County Borough Council, Coleg Gwent, Gwent Police Authority, Monmouthshire County Council, Newport City Council and Torfaen County Borough Council

The answer:

They’ve come together as the first Network Neighbourhood Design within the PSBA framework. These organisations across all four sectors have been meeting on a monthly basis for over a year with the objective of delivering a collaborative approach to public sector networking.

This will bring together the largest multi-agency multi-sector group onto a next generation public sector network (PSN) in the United Kingdom.

Chairman of the group by Steve Harding, and assistant director informatics for Aneurin Bevan health board has been instrumental in driving the development of the GNND, describing it as a "technical vehicle that runs across this shared network called the PSBA Extranet".

"When we get to a point where every public sector body in Wales is connected in this way, any-to-any connection will be possible and through the PSBA extranet you will be able to get to the front door of applications," says Harding.

"It is not an open house. All we have created is a vehicle that given the right level of access we now have the potential to perform connectivity that we could not perform before," he says.

"From good ideas come other good ideas and that is what we are now hoping for as we build this cross public sector, high capacity, highly resilient network in a lower cost way. I am hoping that we will realise a lot of other good ideas once people see what the possibilities are."

(Caldwell, 2011)

This unique opportunity has generated a huge level of interest from the press with positive reviews, for details of coverage see the PSBA in the News section.