THE backup feed for Herefordshire Council’s community network internet service has been “nowhere near adequate” to cope with outages.

Behind the scenes, the council had to sign off on a new contract  - worth £22,628 over three years - to boost its internet backup capability.

The decision was taken at chief officer level to award that contract to public sector network specialist Updata.

As the award is below the threshold for the purpose of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 – which dictate amounts at which procurement processes must apply - it can proceed without reference to a committee at only a minimal risk of challenge.

This new contract will increase capability from 30MB to 100MB and represents a saving on the current contract.

The cost of the current contract with service provider Claranet is £16,680 a year or £50,040 over three years if it was to continue.

Updata offers a three year contract at £22,628 – representing a saving of £27,412 over three years.

As Updata already has a separate IT related contract with the council, the back-up offer can be engineered to fit with the community network’s existing infrastructure, reducing the need for additional configuration work and costs that would arise if another provider was chosen.

The value of the three year contract required two quotes under £25,000 which were received from both Updata and Claranet.

When the network was first implemented, a 30MB backup worked for a system then used only by the council and schools.

Now, network users include the likes of Wye Valley NHS Trust, Herefordshire Clinical Commissioning Group and 2gether NHS Trust.

The council acknowledges “numerous” outages of the primary feed  - either for scheduled maintenance or service failure - which have reduced connectivity to speeds so slow as to be unusable.

As such, the council concedes that 30MB is now “nowhere near adequate” backup capacity.

Further investment in technology is planned in all of the organisations within the community network, placing an even greater on-going reliance on internet services, making a fit for purpose backup circuit essential.

The council itself plans a future move of its data centre from a base at Thorn Office Centre, Rotherwas.

 * Herefordshire Council is also looking to renew the contract for its main internet feed.

Another decision taken at chief officer level approves the procurement of a contract renewal with present provider JA.net.

At £27,048 for 12 months  the sum represents the same figure cost as 2014.

But the decision requires an exemption from the council’s contract procedure rules.

The council maintains that there are no alternative options for the bundle of services that JA.net provides.

Some schools have signed up to the Community Network on the basis that JA.net services will continue to be provided.

The option of removing JA.net services entirely risks other schools exiting the network and looking for a refund.

JA.net is a private British government funded computer network providing services to education and research.

A large proportion of education and government services are connected to JA.net across 20 metropolitan networks UK wide.

This is used between and by schools and local government as an Internet service provider which has traditionally been a fairly inexpensive and secure.

Herefordshire Council and schools that purchase their network from Herefordshire Council, as well as the other community network partners, use JA.net as a relatively inexpensive and secure provider.

The advantage of JA.net lies in the number of services wrapped up within the overall service charge - which cannot be purchased through another competing service provider.

Amongst these is a video conferencing suite that schools use as well as access to specific education content.

The council says an alternative provider could not be sought within the cost offered to provide like for like services.

Also, if the council  HC were not to contract with JA.net for internet, it would have to purchase domain names from an alternative supplier.

Under the rules of administrative law, the council could be legally challenged for a failure to follow its own process.

Any deviation from process must be properly justified.

Under the Council’s own contract t procedure rules, three quotes should be sought to procure this service.

However, the council says that as a single supplier only is able to provide such a specific service, a waiver to those contract procedure rules is being sought – to cover a three year period.

It is assumed that council officers will seek “appropriate advice” regarding related contractual terms.