Countryside Council for Wales - November 13th 2008
Reduced Costs and faster connections using PSBA network puts CCW ahead of field
The Countryside Council for Wales is the Government's statutory advisor on sustaining natural beauty, wildlife and the opportunity for outdoor enjoyment in Wales and its inshore waters.
CCW champions the environment and landscapes of Wales and its coastal waters as sources of natural and cultural riches, as a foundation for economic and social activity, and as a place for leisure and learning opportunities. It aims to make the environment a valued part of everyone's life in Wales.
CCW headquarters are in Bangor and it has an additional 13 local offices throughout Wales. CCW employs around 500 staff, some of whom, such as National Nature Reserve Managers, are based in small site offices or at home.
CCW now part of PSBA network
The CCW has joined the nationwide network and community of PSBA users. This will provide CCW with broadband connectivity between its fourteen sites across Wales with significant cost savings to be realised.
By moving from leased lines onto the shared network, the CCW will not only make considerable cost-savings (around £100,000 per year) but will enjoy a dramatic increase in network capacity (for some offices as much as 10 times).
In the past restrictions on affordable wide area network capacity resulted in a two-tier quality of service for users: some systems could not be made available everywhere and some offices were experiencing unacceptably low quality of service. Now with connection speeds of at least 4 megabits between offices the quality of service we can offer users is much improved.
Without the WAG investment in the PSBA project upgrading to the sort of network a modern Assembly Government Sponsored Body needs would have been prohibitively expensive.
To date eight CCW locations have been successfully migrated with the remaining scheduled by the end of the year.
New system allows new and improved systems to be deployed
The new system has removed a major constraint on the modernisation of CCW's operations. Key applications and systems can now be delivered to all CCW’s offices.
As soon as the first links went live we were able to make our web enabled GIS system available to more users, there was an immediate improvement in the quality of our voice over IP telephone system, and interaction with corporate systems was faster.
Looking ahead: a major constraint on the further rollout of our electronic document and records management system (EDRMS) has been removed; we can expand the use of video conferencing over IP; and we will be in a better position to promote flexible working.
For many years CCW has been working to improve information sharing, collaboration, reduce our environmental impacts and make systems easier to use and manage. At last we have the network to support those aspirations.
System available for other public sector organisations
The PSBA network is available to all public sector organisations in Wales. Now that the core psba network is in place, other public service organisations can potentially join the network quite easily and could also potentially benefit from reduced costs and improved performance