Nottinghamshire County Council

Nottinghamshire County Council has been working on a number of joint projects over the last few years, all of which require an element of secure data sharing and real-time collaborative working. Current projects include the launch of a regional adoption agency, a social impact bond to deliver support for children, and regional commissioning and cost control strategies. These projects involve partnership working with between 1 and 3 partner authorities.

It has become obvious that there is a need for a secure network infrastructure to improve collaborative working. Tools exist such as Skype which can reduce the amount of wasted travel time to meetings, and colleagues can make use of secure WiFi across the region so that they can work alongside colleagues from neighbouring local authorities, but these tools are limited.

Our strategic vision involves a secure network that can be accessed by partner authorities, outside of existing local networks, to enable safe and accessible data transfer and storage that meets GDPR regulations and can underpin current and future information sharing agreements.

Discovery evidence

We have arrived at this solution following the joint working described above – projects have been delayed and issues created because of a lack of a secure, shared network. Bespoke workarounds have had to be developed and deployed, impacting on project and operational budgets and creating costly delay.

Joint projects which are currently in the design and discovery stage are having to build in risk mitigation to allow for a lack of a secure shared network.