Performance Improvement in the Public Sector
The challenge
Credera (formerly DMW) were selected by NHS Digital to be their partner for Europe’s largest network transition of its kind: the migration of approximately 14,500 connectivity services from a centrally managed, legacy network to a new disaggregated, multi-supplier marketplace.
NHS Digital identified the need for a Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) to bring together modern, value-for-money network services to health organisations in England.
The HSCN programme was enormous in scale and ambition. The programme aimed to facilitate devolved responsibility for procuring network services by creating a marketplace of competitive TelCo service providers, delivering central services that provide an integrated and secure network capability, and leading the procurement and replacement of access connectivity for approximately 950 organisations, supporting the timely exit from the legacy ‘N3’ contract.
The key to success was to strike a balance between central design and security with the ability for each organisation to buy services most appropriate for their needs from a range of suppliers, while still achieving economies of scale and value-for-money.
How we helped
As NHS Digital’s migration partner, we:
- Defined the approach and strategy to be followed by the programme to enable end users to understand and buy new services;
Managed the delivery of core projects to establish the HSCN solution and establish key central services needed to operate and manage the network; - Supported the establishment of a new supplier marketplace which now has 21 TelCo service providers offering compliant and competitively priced network connections;
- Defined and documented migration processes to fast-track transition;
- Managed a challenging incumbent service provider who were exiting their contract and provided essential migration support;
- Successfully renegotiated transitional services (saving ~£5M);
- Worked with end customers (with over 14,500 services) to support and track them through their migration journey from procurement, to migration and cease their legacy service;
- Provided management, technical guidance and troubleshooted support directly to customers and suppliers to enable them to quickly resolve a vast range of issues;
- Managed special projects and work packages to deal with the programme’s challenges and prevent risks from materialising;
- Provided programme-wide management information and reporting, in support of operational decisions and strategic planning.
The results
By October 2020, all migrations had completed to allow the legacy N3 network to be terminated, saving the NHS £75 million annually. Like-for-like services are now, on average, 70% cheaper than they were on N3, enabling sites to upgrade to faster, more reliable fibre services.
The speed and reliability of these connections improves the NHS’s ability to share accurate life-saving information quickly across different sites, as well as assisting with the NHS’s ongoing digital transformation journey.
Worth highlighting specifically is that we:
- Supported the creation of a competitive TelCo supplier marketplace where health and social care organisations are able to buy value-for-money network services at significantly lower costs than have been historically available saving the NHS and taxpayers alike;
- Effectively worked with ~950 organisations, ranging from NHS Foundation Trusts to Clinical Commissioning Groups which cover thousands of GP sites, to procure and migrate to replacement network services enabling future digital transformation vital to deliver modern healthcare to UK citizens;
- Generated an insightful management information platform that is the basis of all NHS Digital programme management and informs NHS Digital, NHS England and Cabinet Office strategy and decision making.
View the Credera profile in the MCA Members Directory.