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Solutions
Planning Inspectorate
Flexible working for Inspectors using Remote Access
Brief:
The Planning Inspectorate (PINS), an agency of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the National Assembly for Wales, performs a variety of tasks under planning, housing, environment, highways and allied legislation.
To help achieve challenging Government targets, PINS developed and implemented a new software solution to help their Inspectors complete their work in a more effective and efficient manner. However, this software solution increased the requirement for bandwidth for those Inspectors who work from home, who were using an existing Remote Access solution in to connect to their corporate network. Subsequently, the legacy ISDN platform provided insufficient capacity to cope with the new levels of traffic and was expensive to run.
Solution:
In need of immediate improvements, PINS met with Synetrix pre-sales and technical consultants who listened and discussed their requirements in detail, exploring the connectivity options and security functionality to best solve the problem within budget. The key drivers were:
- Security – to comply with CESG (Communications-Electronics Security Group) guidelines for secure remote connections for RESTRICTED traffic over the GSI (Government Secure Intranet)
- Performance – greater scale with equal if not greater availability
- Value – to provide additional cost benefits
Through a consultative process, Synetrix designed the first phase of the project, a VPN based solution comprising of dual resilient Cisco equipment to provide a completely resilient infrastructure for remote users. Single points of failure were eliminated using resilient Internet feeds and once connected to the head office, users were allowed filtered access to the Internet via WebSense software.
CESG compliance was accomplished and a successful pilot was rolled-out to 70 Consultant Inspectors, a figure which has since grown to over 180.
The next phase provided secure remote access to central PINS services for 305 home based Salaried Inspectors. Synetrix produced a CAPS (CESG Accredited Product Scheme) approved solution using existing infrastructure with capacity for 500-users which reduced management overheads and operational costs significantly.
Synetrix was responsible for delivering the entire solution from design to installation managing a sub-contract relationship with DirectIT that provided cost savings to PINS. A support SLA was defined to utilise the existing PINS helpdesk for maximum cost efficiency.
The solution provides PINS with a fully managed service, secure resilient remote access for their staff, greater flexibility and cost savings. Synetrix have future-proofed the service as much as possible with equipment which can integrate with evolving technologies to address the advancing demands of PINS.
