October 2008: First GP Practices Switch to PSBA
The health sector in Wales starts to migrate to the new public sector network (www.psba.org.uk).
Six GP practices, in the Merthyr Tydfil and Pontypridd areas, are leading the way as early adopters.
They switched to the new network recently and several immediately reported a noticeable improvement in performance.
The Public Sector Broadband Aggregation (PSBA) is bringing together the telecommunications networks of all public sector bodies in Wales, and will enable more sharing of information across and between sectors.
The health sector is the largest sector to migrate, with almost 1000 communications circuits to switch across from the existing NHS network. This includes all of the 650 plus GP practices and major NHS trust sites.
The rollout of GP practices is being organised so each practice can move over to PSBA within a single working day. Plans are for all health organisations to move across to PSBA by the end of this financial year.
Connecting Wales
Connecting Wales – The PSBA project
For the first time key Information and Communication Technology (ICT) networks supporting health, education, local government and other local services in Wales are joining together into a single communications network called the PSBA network (Public Sector Broadband Aggregation).
Last year the Welsh Assembly Government awarded a £74 million, seven year contract to Logicalis UK to provide the underlying network infrastructure.
The development of the new network has involved major collaboration activity across the Welsh public sector, which started as early as 2004.
Replacing dawn2
The new PSBA network will be making use of the same technical architecture already in use on dawn2, but will bring the benefit of extending its scope beyond health and to other sectors.
This new network will facilitate much more effective and secure sharing of information across and between sectors, as appropriate, and will help to promote much more common approaches to service provision.
During the coming years the PSBA network will touch every corner of public services and will be a major facilitator to the delivery of improved and richer services in Wales.
Migrating to PSBA
Migration to the health sector began in July 2008. The health sector is the largest community to migrate, with almost 1000 communications circuits to switch. This includes all of the 650 or so GP practices and major NHS Trust sites. This is being driven from Logicalis office in Wales at Nantgarw near Cardiff.
Six GP practices began the migration as ‘early adopters’. Several practices reported a noticeable improvement in performance straightaway.
The current plan is for everyone to be across to PSBA by the end of this financial year.
The PSBA brings with it the ability to better classify different applications and give them more appropriate relative priorities over the network. This will enable NHS Wales, for example, to give improved priority of online/clinical applications over other less-critical services.