Innovation in ICT is nothing new in Wales - June 3rd 2009

It was 20 years ago in March 1989, a proposition was put to the then Welsh Office to carry all of NHS Wales' electronic communication traffic across a single communications network This would carry all data, voice and other traffic and included video conferencing. This was despite the fact that no other networks existed at that time to carry such diverse traffic types together - so the Digital All Wales Network (DAWN) was launched.

This created a single virtual environment for NHS Wales' data services, telephony and video and provided unprecedented opportunities at the time for new services for NHS Wales with significant operational and financial savings.

DAWN transformed itself in 2001 by moving to the latest MPLS-based architecture as 'dawn2'.  This has now been incorporated into the All Wales Public Sector network, PSBA, which carries forward the same principles across all of the Public Sector in Wales.

Peter Stansfield the original designer of DAWN and now responsible for the health sector on the PSBA Management Board said

“The original strategy of a single architecture continues to thrive within NHS and now with PSBA, extends across the whole of public sector in Wales. Even though the underlying technologies may have changed, the benefits to be gained and the value principles behind PSBA remain”.