For something so innocuous-sounding, the Government Connect Secure Extranet (GCSx) has proved pretty controversial. This secure Wide Area Network (WAN) promises to let central and local government share sensitive data safely, avoiding both the internet and public networks, but its development has been far from smooth.

It seemed like a very good idea: why would councils want to collect information for housing benefit, for example, when they could get it direct from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) through a secure network? But the project ran into trouble as local authorities proved sceptical about the scope of the project and failed to sign up.

Government Connect programme director Philip Littleavon took control of the project in April last year, by which point it was already six years in the making and in serious danger of failing to deliver, with just 50 per cent of local authorities signed up.

“It was trying to be everything to everyone, overpromising and struggling to put a proposition to local authorities that was compelling,” says Littleavon. “To local authorities, it looked like something that was unlikely to deliver, not doing exactly what they wanted. They were indifferent to it and didn’t sign up to it.”

Littleavon joined Government Connect as the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) handed the project to DWP – which, it was felt, had more experience of delivering large projects and more at stake. DWP was usng the less secure Customer Information System (CIS) to communicate with local authorities, and was depending on GCSx to provide a safer, more widely-used and cheaper alternative.

DWP and Littleavon’s approach formed a carrot and stick proposition for local authorities. On the one hand the DWP, along with its central government partners CLG and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), came up with a £33m funding package. Whereas councils – which would have to put a lot of time and effort into making themselves compliant with the system’s security protocols – had previously only been offered one free year on the network, they would now get free access until 2011.

In an attempt to make the project a little more manageable, Government Connect also stripped out some functionalities. Not all of these changes proved popular with councils; Littleavon admits that the decision to require users to log in to individual GCSx applications, rather than come through a ‘front door’ giving access to all of them, was unpopular.

Also unpopular was the huge stick which accompanied the £33m sweetener: councils were told that if they didn’t sign up to GCSx, they would lose access to DWP data when the department switched off the CIS system in October 31 this year. “I had a look at the situation,” recalls Littleavon, “very much the new boy on the block, and realised that it is not going to happen unless we compel local authorities”. He admits that this did not make him popular with the people who “feel they have had their arms twisted”. Littleavon says that “Government Connect, more than any other programme I’ve been associated with, was surrounded in these controversial and very extreme views” – and this is quite a statement, given that Littleavon was previously in charge of the Child Support Agency.

However, while the arm-twisting “is not very pretty and not very subtle”, Littleavon says it is something he is comfortable with because, he says, everyone has to be signed up to the project if it is going to be of value. And the strongman approach has got Government Connect the result he wanted: all CIS-using councils met the switch-over deadline of October 31, and only four county councils (which do not need access to DWP data) still have work to do to  complete their connection to GCSx.

Having got everyone on board – albeit perhaps reluctantly in some cases – Littleavon is now focused on the drive to “win the hearts and minds and to get the traffic and usage up”. He believes that the scheme has broad support now; his aim is that, by the time councils must start paying for access in 2011, the network will have become indispensable to local authorities and they will happily stump up the cash.

One way of getting local authorities engaged – another carrot – has been a £1.5m ‘benefits-realisation fund’ available to local authorities which want to use GCSx to share information between themselves, rather than with central government. Littleavon says GCSx should prove invaluable in the development of shared services: “There are actually only six distinct and separate revenues and benefits systems in the country. Why do we need hundreds of services when one shared service, or six or seven hubs, could be formed?”

Littleavon and his colleagues are also keen that other central government departments get on board and that Government Connect does not become a “private network for DWP”. Some departments are deeply involved, such as DCSF, CLG and the Ministry of Justice, but Littleavon admits that – following the slow growth of acceptance among local authorities – “the pennies are equally slow to drop” in Whitehall. “It’s a big organisational and cultural change; it doesn’t happen overnight,” he says.

For all that, Littleavon is optimistic that Government Connect has overcome the worst of the opposition and is now on the home straight, ready to pick up more and more network users between now and payday in 2011. He reports that DWP permanent secretary Leigh Lewis has already suggested putting GCSx on the agenda for the weekly Wednesday morning meeting of permanent secretaries. That, says Littleavon, “is an acknowledgement that we have moved out of the controversial stage and into relatively safe territory.”

What GCSx can and will do

Youth justice
In the past, when a young offender passed between the courts, custodial authorities, youth services and care services, they were accompanied by a ‘yellow envelope’ which held personal details about their care needs. Now, instead of the yellow envelope arriving with the individual – a system that gives professionals no time to plan ahead – the information can be securely emailed via GCSx.

Policing
Local authority trading standards officers regularly use the police’s Joint Asset Recovery Database (JARD) and Money Web systems when they are investigating criminals. The current arrangement involves trading standards officers visiting the local police station and using an officer’s log-in to get the information they need. In the future, they will have their own log-in to the systems and will be able to access data from their own desks via GCSx.

Health
One of the major complaints of local authorities expected to sign up to GCSx was that at the same time, the NHS was asking them to sign up to its own N3 secure network, with all the associated costs that would entail. The DWP and the NHS are still in negotiations about combining N3 and GCSx, but the NHS ruled this year that ‘patient-identifiable’ data, such as care instructions for an elderly patient who is leaving hospital and will need social services support, can be shared via the GCSx network.

Schools
DCSF is one of the three lead departments working on GCSx because of the large amount of information that is sent between the department and local authorities and to individual schools across the country. One system currently being trialled by DCSF is the Employee Authentication Service (EAS), which will provide tougher checks on local authority staff hoping to access central government data.

Benefits
Housing and council tax benefits – which are paid by local authorities but require information from DWP and HM Revenue and Customs – provide one of the biggest uses for GCSx so far. The network has already proved very useful for one project, which makes it easier for claimants to come in and out of work without losing out financially or getting tied up in bureaucracy. Government Connect says processing times and overpayments have been reduced because information about changes of circumstances is shared with partners the day it is reported to Jobcentre Plus.