Newham Council in London has
made preparations for the capital's hosting of the 2012 Olympic
Games by building a network with enough spare capacity to host the
Olympics datacentre.
Newham hopes that the Olympics, most of which will take place
within its geographical boundaries, will use the network, thereby
providing the borough council with a substantial improvement to its
cashflow.
Newham has already cut the running costs of its network by
£650,000 a year after completing an overhaul early last year.
With the overhaul having cost £2m, Newham should see a complete
return on its investment by the beginning of 2009.
The council also hopes to sell to neighbouring councils in east
London the spare capacity it built into its new datacentre, which
went live at the same time as Newham upgraded its network.
Newham, along with Redbridge and Tower Hamlets, belongs to the
North East London Partnership of councils. The partnership councils
are looking to set up shared services to help them meet central
government targets for cutting their running costs before 2008, as
required by the Gershon efficiency review.
Added to this, last December's pre-Budget statement set further
cost reduction targets for councils from 2008 to 2011.
The new targets will require councils to find new ways of
achieving cost savings, such as sharing services with other public
sector agencies.
Newham's network contains enough dark fibre - spare network that
it put in the ground in anticipation of future demand - to sell
capacity to several other large-scale users of IT.
The council hired consultants from SNT and Vanguard to implement
the network. The cost of the consultants has been met from the
improved services that the ICT function now provides to Newham's
various departments.
The IT department has also refreshed Newham's desktop estate.
The total cost of maintaining the desktops has fallen from £3m to
£2m a year, after a large number of budgets were consolidated into
one.
Newham is also looking to use radio frequency identification
(RFID) or another form of smart chip technology to control employee
access to council property.
Employees would have to swipe their cards over RFID or similar
types of readers to gain access to buildings.
The council could then limit access to particular properties or
sensitive areas, such as the datacentre, to a small number of
employees.
Newham strengthens Microsoft links
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