Driving Standards Agency updates WAN with MDNX

The Driving Standards Agency (DSA) is set to update its wide area network (WAN) to bring stronger connections to its centres across the UK.

The government agency – run by the department for transport – is responsible for promoting and improving road safety across the country, as well as training drivers and conducting over two million driving tests every year.

However, the DSA has been struggling with the infrastructure running between its headquarters’ datacentre in Nottingham and its 315 driving test centres.

After the DSA joined up to the Public Services Network (PSN) – a public sector scheme for sharing network infrastructure between services such as police, hospitals and schools – the technology in place was declared “end of life” and needed updating with a PSN-compatible solution.

After going out to tender, the DSA chose MDNX’s PSN-compliant WAN service, providing an IL2 solution along with an IL3 gateway to the datacentre. It is built to last, with the ability to add or remove centres depending on the department’s plans, and the DSA praised the ability to switch over to the network without the systems going down.

Brian Hogg, head of ICT contract management at the DSA, said: “MDNX provided a comprehensive solution that met all our technical requirements, with a detailed, proactive service programme covering mobilisation, implementation and transition to the new network; assuring us of their ability to deliver all aspects of our requirement successfully.”

“This new more up to date network system will provide DSA with faster network connections to its driving test centres thereby improving the usability and availability of online services to our staff.”

Our integration is a great fit for [the DSA's] requirement

Isy Bizaoui, MDNX

As well as staff being able to log onto systems faster and having better access to shared folders, the solution also offers new monitoring tools to keep track of network performance and identify any issues that need to be fixed in real time.  

“The DSA have many locations, spread out over a wide geographical area, and this poses its own distinct challenges,” said Isy Bizaoui, managing director of the public sector division at MDNX. “Our integration approach is a great fit for their requirement, as it enables us to design the best technology and most cost-effective solution for each DTC location.”

The solution also focused on cost, as is important with any public sector deployment, re-using existing infrastructure where it could and choosing low-power new technologies for on-going savings.  

The initial trial of the technology is beginning next week but the DSA expects the whole system to be up and running live within six weeks.