AGENDA ITEM NO.

TO: EXECUTIVE – 8th December 2003

SUBJECT: UPGRADE OF WIDE AREA NETWORK

FROM: ICT SERVICES ______

1 RECOMMENDATION(S)

1.1 That members approve the upgrade of the wide area network.

2 REASONS FOR RECOMMENDATION(S)

2.1 The upgrade of the wide area network is part of the Best value and e- Government (BVeG) programme. It will allow faster access to systems and data to the frontline staff and hence the public at 13 of the remote Council facilities as detailed in 5.9 below.

3 ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS CONSIDERED

3.1 Originally it was anticipated that all our remote sites could be connected onto County Council’s Broadband network. However, due to WCC’s existing commitments, this would not be possible until the autumn of next year at the earliest.

4 POLICY AND BUDGET FRAMEWORK

4.1 There is a budget provision of £90,000 in the BVeG capital programme. The detailed costs for the upgrade including hardware, line installation fees and consultancy amount to £82,000. There will be a saving on the current annual line rental of £6,650 with an additional saving of £1,279 on the annual hardware maintenance. This saving is not yet reflected in the base estimates report elsewhere on the agenda.

Jane Jack Head of ICT Services

BACKGROUND PAPERS Report to Executive - 7th April 2003

Areas in District Affected: All. Executive Portfolio Area and Holder: Corporate and Strategic Leadership, Bob Crowther. Overview and Scrutiny Committee: Audit & Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee Key Decision: Yes Included in Forward Plan: Yes If Yes, method of consultation: Best Value & e-Government Steering Group

For further information about this report please contact:

Contact Officer: Richard Bates Tel:(01926) 456657 (Direct Line)

E-Mail: [email protected]

5 BACKGROUND

5.1 The two year draft programme for Best Value Reviews and Implementing e- Government (IEG) development, as presented to the Executive Committee on 7th April 2003, included a project named Sports Facilities Centralised Booking including Broadband Links. This report covers the broadband links part of this project.

5.2 All the Council’s core computer facilities are located at Riverside House. There are data links to remote offices via a mixture of ISDN, kilostream and megastream circuits. The ISDN circuits are proving to be an expensive option for a relatively low bandwidth.

5.3 There is a requirement from Leisure Services to have a centrally located system for the booking of sports facilities. They currently have a server at each of the main sports sites within the towns of the district. This central system would then link to the web site to enable Internet booking. The current data links to the sports centres would not be able to support a centrally located server. In addition, if the leisure centres are to rely on a central server then an element of resilience will be required in the solution.

5.4 A document management system is due to be introduced which all departments will be required to use. It is anticipated that the use of the Customer Relationship Management system by the One Stop Shops in and will expand. Both these systems will put added pressure on the existing data links.

5.5 The upgrades need to be completed by the end of March 2004 to enable work to commence on the centralised booking system and in preparation for Document Management.

5.6 An external company has looked at the most cost effective way of upgrading the line speeds to the remote sites without increasing the annual revenue costs (line rental). They have proposed to use relatively cheap leased lines to link the Leamington based sites to Riverside House and with the introduction of high speed modems provide a service to these sites at 10Mbps.

5.7 Kenilworth Connection and Warwick Connection would link via LES10 circuits from BT at a speed of 10Mbps. To provide a fast and cheap service to the remote offices in Kenilworth and Warwick it is proposed that these offices link first to either Kenilworth Connection or Warwick Connection using leased lines then share the LES10 circuit back to Riverside House. This would provide the most cost effective method of linking remote offices outside the Leamington exchange at a speed of 10Mbps. Oakley Wood Crematorium being slightly remote could be linked at a speed of 2Mbps directly to Riverside House.

5.8 This will mean that the following sites will be linked at a line speed of 10mbps: Kenilworth Connection Warwick Connection Leisure Centre St Nicholas park leisure Centre Kenilworth Abbey Fields Kenilworth Castle Farm Royal Spa Centre Royal Spa Pump Rooms Town Hall Regenesis Brunswick Hub Acorn Court