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eNews issue 1

Welcome to eNews!

I am very pleased to introduce our new newsletter – eNews.

You can read here about what we’ve achieved so far and about our successes as we reach important project milestones. It will keep you posted on what’s happening in e-government, as well as feature sector news, profiles of people and new product information.

eNews will focus on updates on the Government Shared Network (GSN), the Authentication programme (GLS and IVS), Public Sector Intranet (PSI) and shared workspace, newzealand.govt.nz, and other projects from the ICT branch at SSC.

It will keep our public sector subscribers in the know about which agencies have already signed up to the expanding community of users of the Government Shared Network (GSN) and Government Logon Service (GLS), and be a source of information about exciting upcoming events run by SSC.

I hope you enjoy our first issue, please feel free to share eNews with public sector colleagues.

Laurence Millar

Deputy Commissioner Information and Communication Technologies

e-Government News

Maximising newzealand.govt.nz

Hot on the heels of the successful implementation of the Vivisimo Search platform, the website was re-launched in March. newzealand.govt.nz delivers an exciting new online experience for finding New Zealand government agencies' information and services online.

New services include:

A ‘Smart Search Box’ that can be downloaded from newzealand.govt.nz to provide your website(s) with an all-of-government search option
Free advertising opportunities on the home page and content pages for you to promote your products, services or specific campaigns to over 2 million visitors per year
RSS feeds that provide visitors to newzealand.govt.nz with seamless access to your information and services
Search spotlights on results pages can be used to highlight your agency's contact details, popular information and resources.

newzealand.govt.nz has been redesigned to reinforce the all-of-government brand, and to provide visitors with a sense of New Zealand – its people, culture and land. Banners presenting images of land, sea, flora and nature head every page of the website.

The website page layouts are clean, simple and friendly, and provide open and easy access to information and services offered by the New Zealand Government.

In the development stage, the State Services Commission worked with Catalyst IT, who produced a document about optimising search in government. To read the document, see: https://psi.govt.nz/ims/Library/search%20engine%20optimisation%20basics%20report.pdf

For more information about the free promotional spaces and new services, please send an email to info@newzealand.govt.nz

or contact Jane Ratcliffe email: jane.ratcliffe@ssc.govt.nz

Demand Aggregation

Demand aggregation is a powerful mechanism for government, local government and the business community to stimulate new capital investment in broadband network infrastructure and to promote competition by providing potential investors with greater certainty when assessing an opportunity. The aggregation of demand can result in greater benefits than can be achieved by users entering into individual contracts. Demand aggregation strategies rely on establishing a business case which will attract investment in the provision of new services, or the extension of existing services.

The State Services Commission (SSC) has been working with the Ministry of Economic Development on broadband initiatives. The government is looking to aggregate demand in the sector because of its significant expenditure, in order to stimulate investment. A set of principles has been developed and endorsed by Cabinet to apply across the state sector, known as the Common Framework for State Sector Demand Aggregation. All agencies therefore need to look at how the Framework impacts on them.

SSC is leading an initiative to align state sector purchasing of telecommunications services to better support demand aggregation initiatives. Initially there are two outputs:

A National Broadband Map
Common Framework for State Sector Demand Aggregation

Work is currently underway to implement the principles outlined in the Common Framework which is involving co-ordination across the ‘Connected Health’, KAREN, ‘National Education Network’ and Government Shared Network initiatives. Agencies are asked to look at how the Common Framework impacts on them and how to align with it. One of the most effective ways to do this is to engage with and participate in the GSN which is actively implementing the Common Framework and also aligning with other major sector initiatives.

There is growing recognition by the public sector, businesses and communities that telecommunications services and infrastructure play an important role in economic transformation, sustainability and social well-being. In this new environment, greater alignment is being sought both within the public sector, and also with local government and the private sector.

There have been major changes in the telecommunications environment in the last decade. The rise of the Internet and of broadband technologies has increased the demand for infrastructure far beyond the level previously needed for basic telephony. This changing telecommunications environment in New Zealand has brought significant opportunities. However, outside the heart of New Zealand’s largest urban centres, the demand for broadband services has outstripped the supply of world-class services. A number of regional communities have devised local strategies to help achieve both better telecommunications outcomes and broader community goals. For other regional communities, how best to manage their telecommunications future remains a challenge.

Demand aggregation is one strategy that has been successfully employed by communities to improve telecommunications outcomes in their regions. In this context, demand aggregation is about pooling the demand for telecommunications services in a region or sector.

Demand aggregation has been used by Australian and American state governments, European communities and the Canadian government to assist in driving new broadband investment, particularly into areas outside the main central business districts. This overseas experience indicates that combining e-government, e-education and e-health initiatives can be a significant contributor in demand aggregation strategies.

http://www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz/Your-Region/broadbandmap/Common-Framework-for-State-Sector-Broadband-Demand-Aggregation/

e-Govt Newsbriefs

Public Sector Intranet Alerts

Each week you can receive news, events and content alerts from the Public Sector Intranet in your Inbox. For example, the latest Cabinet and Cabinet Committees timetable, Statistics New Zealand seminars and new material on the PSI Sustainability community.

Go to the home page of the PSI https://psi.govt.nz to subscribe, or click on this link - https://psi.govt.nz/home/alerts.aspx

NZ Government joint winner of global online identity award

Iddy Award image

The development of a uniquely New Zealand authentication solution saw the State Services Commission’s Authentication Programme collect one of the global 2007 IDDY (Identity Deployment of the Year) Awards from Liberty Alliance.

The solution provides for authoritative sources of data held across government being made available to people and businesses in their online interactions with agencies.

The winning concept allows New Zealand citizens and organisations accessing government services on the Internet the convenience of being able to request and control the sending of authoritative information rather than obtaining and submitting paper documents.

It also means quicker and more consistent government services and entitlement decisions and reduced compliance costs for businesses.

Developed by the State Services Commission, with input from across government and international experts, the solution brings virtual, online joined-up government services a step closer. It is driven by principles of privacy, security and user-control.

http://www.projectliberty.org/liberty/news_events/iddy_awards

Identity Conference 2008

This international conference on “Managing Identity in New Zealand: Conference 2008" (29-30 April) is a forum for presenting and discussing state of the art thinking, research and practice around managing identity in the 21st Century. The conference will focus on the development and future directions of identity management (IdM) in New Zealand, and its wider implications for users, with particular reference to the introduction and use of new digitised forms of IdM. A major issue for future IdM will be establishing user-centric IdM: individuals’ ability to control the (digital) representation of their identity and its potential uses.

Dialogue between key identity management stakeholders from government, business and academia will evolve thinking on the broader topic of identity, as well as promote knowledge sharing and discussion.

Keynote speakers include:

Dick Hardt Founder and CEO, Sxip Identity, Canada.

Malcolm Crompton Managing Director of Information Integrity Solutions Pty Ltd, and former Federal privacy Commissioner, Australia.

Stefan Brands Founder and President Credentica, Adjunct Professor in Modern Cryptology at McGill University’s School of computer Science, Canada.

Eve Maler Principal Engineer at Sun Microsystems, USA.

Roger Clarke Managing Director and consultant, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Australia

Marie Shroff Privacy Commissioner, New Zealand

Mark Prebble State Services Commissioner, New Zealand

Brendan Boyle Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, New Zealand

Miriam Lips Professor of E-Government, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

http://www.identityconference.victoria.ac.nz/

Identity Month 2008

April 2008 is Identity Month in New Zealand, the month for government agencies to talk about identity management. Get together with one or more agencies to talk about identity management and discuss ways to collaborate and work together on related issues.

To register your meeting and get together with other agencies to talk about identity management contact:

ict.business@ssc.govt.nz

or call 04 439 6388.

* As an added bonus all participants in Identity Month meetings will go in the draw to win a free ticket to the Managing Identity in New Zealand: 2008 Conference.

Sector Close-Up

Education – cross sector collaboration

The education portal website (see www.edcentre.govt.nz ), launched in January 2005, is an example of successful collaboration across the education sector.

The project goal was to assist first time and occasional users find online education information and services quickly and easily, through establishing a gateway or portal and providing consistent content and related processes across education agency websites.

There are currently 28 websites supported by education agencies, 14 other government sites with an education component, and hundreds of other sites having some education content. Confronted with this maze of sites, the question for a first-time or infrequent user seeking information or services was – where to look?

The portal www.edcentre.govt.nz has become a recognised starting point for people looking for education information. It increases awareness of publicly available information, and provides a single gateway to this information. It is an up to date information channel tailored to audience needs.

The participating agencies in the portal’s development were Career Services, Education Review Office, the Ministry of Education (lead agency), National Library, NZQA, the Teachers Council and the Tertiary Education Commission. Sector Communications Managers and the project steering committee met every week during business case development, and agencies continue to provide regular content references.

This collaborative approach to ICT initiatives (which now includes a number of shared services) is contributing to a joined-up sector that provides a basis for conducting business in a seamless and integrated manner to support improved learning achievement, but also for pooling information from the various agencies. The agencies involved would say that this is worth the ongoing effort that effective collaboration requires.

Education community

Interaction between early childhood centres, schools, tertiary organisations and agencies has been difficult due to the lack of appropriate network interoperability across the network providers. The cost to institutions for sufficient bandwidth to use ICT via the networks has also been significant.

The Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN) is currently being implemented across the tertiary and research sectors. Work is underway investigating the best configuration of existing networks to serve the needs of the broad education sector.

The initial focus is on a sustainable approach for the schooling sector, which will then be extended to a whole-of-sector approach. The approach is in line with the government’s Common Framework for State Sector Broadband Demand Aggregation to ensure interconnectivity with sectors such as health and social development.

How the GSN will help

Alongside the KAREN network, the GSN is the shared, secure, cost effective infrastructure pipe through which all this connectivity with government agencies will flow. For the Ministry of Education, the GSN will improve the resiliency of the core components of the computing environment; while simplifying WAN, Internet and external email connectivity.

This initiative will help deliver on Ministry of Education strategic objectives by:

Improving the resilience of the core computing infrastructure while easing and enhancing the support and management of the computing environment
Providing an increased level of security across the WAN
Standardising and enhancing support processes for telecommunication services
Enabling participation in an all of government initiative
Providing potential for simplified networking/communication between agencies.

The GSN supports three of the State Services Development Goals: networked, connected and accessible state services.

Shared Services

About GSN & GLS

Government Shared Network (GSN)

The Government Shared Network (GSN) enables government agencies to securely share information at higher speeds and more cost effectively. The shared network improves the delivery of information and services to the New Zealand public.

Benefits:

· use of telecommunications can be significantly improved by adopting a corporate approach to security, connection and cost effectiveness

· security of government information systems is greatly improved by consolidating expertise and resources at a small number of network connections

· a shared network provides connection at the telecommunications network layer, which helps to achieve collaboration between agencies for data exchange, shared services and joint service delivery

· improvements in cost-effectiveness are achieved through consolidated use of network services. The GSN replaces and rationalises duplicated services currently employed and delivers a suite of converged voice, video and data transmission at a lower unit cost than to many agencies through existing supply arrangements.

See: www.e.govt.nz/services/gsn

Government Logon Service (GLS)

The Government Logon Service (GLS) is an all-of-government shared service to manage the logon process for online services of participating agencies.

Agencies are providing services to an increasingly technologically-sophisticated customer base. This means they have to continuously invest in ever-changing authentication technologies and are facing significant barriers in their ability to use the online channel to transform the way they deliver services to people, other agencies and businesses. The GLS is a solution that assists customer-centric government, allowing agencies to deliver responsive, inclusive, customer focused service.

Customer-centric service delivery, and the technology to provide this, have become much more relevant in the public sector as citizens have become accustomed to high levels of service and convenience. Performance driven public agencies are shifting toward processes that address the needs of citizens more efficiently and effectively. Increased public expectations of performance, along with government direction, are driving the technological transformation of government agencies.

The GLS means that agencies can improve the transactions directly related to their mission and core functions, driving major customer service improvements in operational efficiency and cost effectiveness.

See: Government Logon Service (GLS)

Sign-Ups Update

Who’s already on board?

GLS

GSN

People Profile

Gerard Bone

Gerard Bone is the All of Government Operations Service Manager, Customer Services. Prior to joining the All of Government Operations team in February 2006, he was the Services Manager at Statistics New Zealand responsible for the Service Desk, Infrastructure Services and Database Administrators.

Gerard spent most of his working life at Statistics NZ, joining the Dunedin office after leaving school. Gerard lived in Christchurch for a further 4 years before moving to Wellington in 1987. In 2005, Gerard and his services team had the opportunity to build their desired computer room when the decision was made to build Statistics NZ’s new building on the waterfront. The outcome was a very successful move, both for the organisation and the services group.

Role at SSC

As the operational arm within SSC’s ICT branch, All of Government Operations is responsible for the effective management, maintenance and support of the infrastructure and shared services portfolio and subsequent delivery of these services to customers, on behalf of the state sector.

Gerard leads the All of Government Operations Customer Services team, whose role is to champion the customer service experience. They have been focussing on establishing and building a consistent, professional focussed customer service. Gerard's particular focus over the last twelve months has been implementing the core customer facing IT Service Management process management and operation of Incident Management, customer engagement and Service Level Management for customers.

How might you come across Gerard?

Gerard is involved in establishing the day to day operations and ongoing customer relationship for GSN customers. As new customers join the GSN and GLS, Gerard and his team will be at the forefront of providing the customer service that you expect.

Gerard is an avid sport follower and a die hard Otago rugby supporter (well someone had to be), having played (many decades back) in the Otago under 16 team. As Gerard mentions, he always hears from Hurricanes / Lions supporters when results don't go his way - he heard plenty from them last year!

Product Update

Internet.connect

Internet.connect provides secure connectivity for the agency to the Internet. Features include:

content filtering and caching
anti-virus protection
email and SEEmail
hosting of Domain Name System (DNS) for agency domains
reverse proxy, and
firewalls so agencies can host their websites securely
bandwidth being obtained from at least two providers to ensure no single point of failure
the GSN will exchange traffic at all NZ Internet peering exchanges where it has a presence – allowing peering to local ISPs and sharing of traffic between business and government; and
an optional Internet Pass-through service used by agencies that self host web sites and similar server based Internet-facing services.

Internet.connect gives agencies security and means that they do not have to manage all the above high-cost services themselves, so their skilled resources can be employed elsewhere on other projects.

Base pricing is a fixed rate per Internet user, with agencies maintaining their own user register. Agencies can use as much of the service as they require, as they are not charged for bandwidth.

Who can use internet.connect?

Agencies that are connected to the Government Shared Network (GSN) and can use internet.connect.

Agencies including Te Puni Kokiri and the Department of Labour have been piloting internet.connect for the last few months. It will be rolled out in the second quarter of 2008.

Enquiries

To order your internet.connect, please contact the Business Development and Uptake team at SSC,

Email: ICT.Business@ssc.govt.nz

Phone the BDU Team: 495-6601

Upcoming Events

Authentication Workshops

Dates: Ongoing

Authentication Overview

Integration with GLS

Authentication Standards

Risk Assessment for Online Services

Contact: ict.business@ssc.govt.nz

Identity Month April 2008