Fishwick said, “Being appointed as SME Director of PSNGB is a great honour because the directors are elected by the various Telecom companies (large and small) that comprise the PSNGB trade association. This is a clear sign of the respect with which AdEPT Telecom plc is held by its’ peers, and the growing recognition that AdEPT is an important government supplier.
He continued, “The government is trying to get rid of the traditional aproach of having individual stand-alone networks for each major department such as Defence, Justice, Health etc. Instead they want a single network; the Public Service Network (PSN). The concept put very simply is that suppliers all provide connectivity to the same technical standards so that all local and central government networks are inter-operable. The PSN will then become the key enabler for a whole range of new ways of delivering online services and the adoption of cloud-based offerings.
The key challenge is to ensure that all of the contracts don’t go to the normal winners: very large Telco’s.
My role is to identify the key barriers to entry for SME’s and then to try to persuade government to remove them. We are pushing at a door that is already partially open. Sir Francis Maude, the Paymaster General, has already set ambitious targets for the proportion of ICT spend that should be placed with SME’s.”
If you have any ideas or suggestions for Ian to consider, please email them to ian.fishwick@psngb.org