Council's £175,000 savings with WAN deal

Council's £175,000 savings with WAN deal

Upgrades and improvements to East Lothian council’s networking could save £175,000 per year. The local authority has tackled wide area network (WAN) costs to reduce site overheads in a new five-year deal with Updata.

The council’s new networking costs should add up to savings of more than 40 per cent in the first 12 months over a WAN infrastructure, supporting the council's plans for an eventual transition to an accredited public services network (PSN).

Like many local authorities, East Lothian is currently looking into ways to support home workers. About 10 per cent of East Lothian's 5,000 council staff have the ability to work from home for some of the week and a 'Work Smart' rationalisation project is underway to increase this figure, offering more flexible employment and reducing on-site overheads.

Previously, changes in the council's operational structure meant high charges when network links needed to be re-routed or shut down. The PSN-ready network will feature a high capacity core fibre ring connecting six BT exchanges and connection speeds will range between a minimum of 10Mbps up to 100Mbps. The schools planned to join the network by the end of August 2012 and the council corporate sites will follow on later this year.

Alan Cruikshank, IT services manager at East Lothian council, said: "Updata has opened up the scope for future transition to a PSN network as well as collaboration with East Lothian health authorities and other public sector bodies.”

He added that the project is already running ahead of schedule. "When both our schools and corporate sites are fully operational on the new network, we anticipate like for like savings of £175,000 per year in addition to the greater flexibility offered by the new infrastructure,” he said.