Select Committee on Information Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence


APPENDIX 1

Memorandum by the Parliamentary Communications Directorate


FUTURE SUPPORT OPTIONS FOR MEMBERS CONNECTING TO THE PDVN

  As members increase their use of office technology their system environments are becoming more diverse. This is proving difficult for PCD to support with their current resource. PCD's remit is to support members as far as the network interface card in their machines or to the Customer side of their modem. It does not include any applications support beyond the basic email and calendaring functions of Outlook and the ability to connect to the intranet and internet.

  This is becoming an increasingly untenable situation. In general, Members and their staff do not have the skills to manage their IT environment as "corporate" users of a network. The transitory nature of their staff, in many cases, and the ease with which applications may be obtained from the internet to try, creates an environment where PCD cannot reliably have sufficient knowledge to support even their simple remit.

  This lack of support and the difficulty of diagnosing the problems when they occur are probably limiting the take up on PDVN facilities by Members. This in turn prevents Parliament from moving forward on a broad front to maximise the use of, and benefits that could accrue from all Members being accessible via the system.

  There are realistically two choices that would relieve the situation:

    —  More closely and potentially more restrictively define the service available.

    —  Move to a more corporate style of support similar to that provided to Members of the House of Lords and staff of the Departments of the House.

  The choice is not an easy one. The former would limit further the take up of PDVN and may even lose some of its current customers. The latter would involve as yet unquantified expense and could probably only be accomplished if the House resolved to supply equipment to Members and staff. The cost of supply and the support of the hardware have been a subject of a previous paper and is subject to SSRB recommendations. That paper did not cover the cost of developing a support service for the software.

  Members are asked to consider which of these situations will best serve their use of the PDVN. The options are:

    —  Retain the status quo with regard to Members service and accept that there is likely to be some basic software configuration that all users must use.

      —  If the system in use by the Member has had additions made to it after the PDVN connection has been installed, the user would be asked to reverse those additions prior to calling PCD for help. This could possibly be by the use of a restore disk similar to that used by commercial suppliers such as IBM, Toshiba and Tiny. If this is not done PCD will reserve the right to require it to be done to enable them to work on the problem. This would be a user responsibility to complete before PCD could begin work.

      —  The outcome of this is that if this configuration is not used only a very basic service via a "thin client" will be provided. The facilities provided by that service would not be enhanced if they required other than the "thin client's" facilities.

      —  The platform would be enhanced and developed to take advantage of future software developments, such as remote synchronisation.

      —  The platform would incur the members in additional cost, as all systems on the network would have to reflect the then current cable systems in specification. A remote PC would in effect be equivalent in facility to one connected within the Parliamentary estate.

    —  Investigate the possibility of corporate support service that would relieve those Members who are not computer literate from the task of maintaining their machines. This could be in the form of an in-house or externally supplied service.

  Neither of these options is ideal. The first limits the service from and use of the PDVN by Members. The second has significant cost implications for Parliament. A halfway house has been tried with the availability of the GCAT service. This has provide less than satisfactory in practice. If schemes like the £1 per day lease from IBM implemented by the Labour party gain acceptance, and are replicated in other Parties this will go someway to resolving the diversity of systems that are the root of the problem. It will not remove it. Users will still add software and that software will still impact their ability to use the corporate system in Parliament, PDVN.

  PCD would appreciate some guidance from the Committee on behalf of Members as to the level of restriction on add-ons to PCs that would be considered tolerable. Other suggestions that would deliver the service required giving greater penetration of PDVN usage would also be appreciated.

  The attached annex is somewhat technical and deals with a possible scenario that could be put in place to deliver a two-track approach to the provision of service. It should be noted that the use of Windows Terminal Server (WTS) has cost implications and could not provide the remote synchronisation service that is considered an essential advance on current arrangements.

7 February 2000


 
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