Greater freedom for Cambridgeshire County Council workers

Greater freedom for Cambridgeshire County Council workers as Netilla-powered remote access catches on

The Challenge

Cambridge, U.K., is famed for Cambridge University, one of the worldís leading institutions of higher education. But beyond the university, Cambridge and its environs also make up a diverse county that serves a broad range of civic and citizen needs. The Cambridgeshire County Council, the countyís largest employer, provides services such as schools, roads and transport schemes, libraries and care for the most vulnerable in society.

Around half of its 466 million annual budget is spent on the education service and a further quarter on social care. The authority is highly regarded for its innovative approach to e-government and around 80% of its transactions are already available on-line.

In keeping with its e-government commitment, the Council recently began researching a solution for secure remote access ñ a system that would make it possible for its employees to access all of their critical work applications, files and data from their home PC using a standard Web browser. The Council began reviewing SSL (secure sockets layer) VPN (virtual private network) solutions from various vendors.

Rolling out such a secure remote access system would give its employees the function to work flexibly and efficiently, so that they could juggle their workloads with busy home and family lives. This would also help ensure compliance with the Flexible Working Act, a nationwide law that requires employers to provide their staff with reasonable means to work from home when necessary.

The Solution

Craig Hyde, implementation analyst for Cambridgeshire County Council, has been instrumental in analysing and finding the right secure remote access solution for the Council. After close scrutiny of a range of competitive products and running a pilot project for 6 months, they decided on the Netilla Security Platform from Netilla Networks.

The Netilla Security Platform is a high-performance SSL VPN platform that provides access to the broadest range of applications ñ including both server-based (legacy) applications and the rapidly growing number of Web-based applications. Netillaís V-Realms Client Identity Engine makes it easy to set up customized authentication and authorization profiles for different types of users within an organisation. For Cambridgeshire County Council, Netillaís native access to Windows Terminal Services (WTS) meant that it could deliver browser-based remote access to the core set of applications its employees used on a daily basis.

ìThe main reason for choosing Netilla is that it is an ideal secure black box solution, you configure it and away you go ñ itís simple for the users to use and if there are any problems they get resolved quickly,î said Hyde.

Cambridgeshire initially ran their pilot with 60 ìearly adopterî employees, and are now commencing the general roll out to a broader base of users. Out of 3,500 LAN-connected users, it is anticipated Netilla will be used by up to 1,100 users. The only prerequisites for the service are a Key Fob for security and a broadband connection.

Towards the end of the pilot period the Council carried out a questionnaire with 60 of the early adopters to find out whether they wanted to continue with the remote access from Netilla. There was an overwhelming hands-up. Hyde continued ñ ìIt is rare to introduce a new solution that doesnít draw some kind of criticism from some of the staff. ì

The Result

ìNetilla is fab!î ìSavings on phone bills and IT costs.î These are just a few comments made by Cambridgeshire staffers once theyíd seen how easy remote working can be with Netilla.

Secure remote access is now available to a broad range of council employees and councillors, including social workers, HR, accounting personnel, IT and senior management. ìItís never been easier for people to get at their applications remotely using Netilla, weíve set up a customised Netilla logon page and remote workers immediately get access to the same look and feel as their applications in the office,î Hyde explained.

For many of the workers, it has given them greater freedom in their jobs and contributed to their work/life balance. Many are now enjoying less frequent journeys to work and can stay at home and work when children are off sick, even catch up on work when they are sick themselves, at weekends or on annual leave.

In one recent case, one member of staff working away in Sweden was delighted to be able to continue working on her accounts as she was able to have access to the financial system, an Oracle back-end application. Whilst waiting in a lobby in Stockholm, she was able to approve four outstanding orders. This helped her keep on top of her work whilst away and also keep the Councilís suppliers happy too. In her words: ìa fab result and a thumbs up for Netillaî.

Other benefits the Council have found are the cost-savings associated with broadband connection using secure remote access, especially for established home workers. Users can route straight into existing Citrix applications using just their Web browser instead of an ICA client loaded onto their PC. Applications such as Outlook look and work just as they do in the office. The Councilís IT department now plans to build a dedicated WTS server to run all support requirements remotely, enabling them to amend accounts, change passwords, manage back-up and restores, and deal with faults or potential problems from any broadband or dialup location.

The Council also like the idea that no information except a small Java applet is downloaded onto remote computers. Using a thin client approach allows for all the processing to be done on the WTS server back in the data center. The result is that applications appear to be running on the local computer, but in fact remain safe inside the central office. This ìapplication-layer proxyî approach has strong security benefits, because it means that there is never a direct data stream from the remote PC straight into the data center.

One of the other key factors that encouraged Cambridgeshire County Council to implement Netilla was the ease with which it can be issued to additional remote workers; it literally takes just a few minutes to get them up and working. The admin team is able to provide access using Microsoft Active Directory, which means administering via a familiar interface and with minimal training. ìThis saves on training costs, administration and frees the IT guys to concentrate on other tasks in hand,î Hyde said.

Netillaís largest customer base in the U.S. has traditionally been the healthcare sector, but in the U.K., due to ambitious e-government targets to invest in new internet technologies, local government have been Netillaís leading vertical industry. However, Cambridgeshire County Council over the next couple of months will extend Netilla into the Cambridgeshire office of the government-run National Health Service (NHS) as 900 staff move out of the Council to work within the NHS. Staff will move from their council premises to the NHS buildings, which will involve needing access to established Council IT services and therefore sharing applications with the Council. As these records will be highly confidential and sensitive, the Council together with the NHS have chosen to use a dedicated line, which will not be used across the Internet; however, Netilla will still be used to provide secure remote access between the NHS and the Council.

During the pilot period, Cambridgeshire County Council have fed back a number of comments to Netillaís headquarters in the U.S. Hyde commented: ìWeíve built up a great relationship with Netilla over the year, giving them our thoughts on their product, and they have responded by coming up with a solution to most problems that we may have encountered. For example, last year Netilla didnít support a generic local printing function, which was a hindrance for home users. Six months later this functionality was incorporated using Adobe Acrobat viewer.î

ìIn conclusion, we are deploying Netilla throughout the Council and look forward to watching it develop with Cambridgeshire NHS, where we believe it will pick up momentum very quickly. Itís a great product that works well out of the box, itís quick, easy to use, administer and maintain, it does what we need it to do ñ provide secure, quick and simple remote access from anywhere, anytime.î