NSW Prisons department sees network in 3D

Both McAlpin and Seaman were reluctant to discuss security issues that arose from the implementation, though McAlpin did say that they were “stringently observed along established government guidelines”.

Seaman says the implementation of the first few sites had gone ahead relatively seamlessly. “The Department had a good group of people working with us on the program. We offered options of training, service levels of support and the monitoring of their network – both their converged LAN and WAN voice and data environments. We are now providing much of the services that they had previously done themselves,” Seaman says.

Our expertise in PVQM (proactive voice quality management) was also a big advantage for us.

Seaman says the core of both the Henry Deane Building and the AC3 Data Centre facility, which was moved to an outsourced arrangement, had been engineered to include dual Nortel 8600 Ethernet Routing switches to provide maximum uptime and reliability.

“Each core switch is specified in fully redundant mode, with no single point of failure. If the worst was to happen, and a chassis was lost due to physical damage, controlled maintenance or operator error, the second chassis would be able to pick up the full load without the users or application being aware of the outage,” he says.

The 3D tender also included free customised technical training and plus free onsite Nortel skilled voice and data systems engineers for six weeks post change over.

Concurrent with the implementation of the VoIP solution was the relocation of the Department’s data centre. McAlpin said the relocation was a large and complex undertaking, yet on the whole there were few issues. “Some intermittent hardware problems tested the organisation’s ability to respond in a timely fashion, however, on the whole we have found the system to be robust,” she says.

Early benefits

Seaman says Correctional Services had already seen substantial benefits from the integration of voice and data over a single common IP network infrastructure. “Given the nature of the work the Department does, the full integration of both its data and voice networks, with connectivity from a single phone number, has allowed their mobile staff especially to work far more efficiently,” he says.

Eventually, the plan is to make such a facility available to all workers across all facilities, he adds.

By way of example, he cited a social worker going to visit an inmate at the holding cells at Sydney Central Police Station in the central Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, which forms part of the Department. “After visiting the inmate, they may have to go straight to court. They will then need access to communications within the courthouse environment. They may then have to go to a correctional facility such as Silverwater or Long Bay gaol. What they really need, therefore, is fully reliable mobile communication over a single, secure network”, something which he added the new network environment had been able to provide.

McAlpin agrees that the aspect of particular interest with the VoIP implementation was its ability to support an increasingly mobile workforce.

“The Department of Corrective Services is honouring its commitment to reduce reoffending behaviour. To achieve this, our officers need to provide support to offenders in both the correctional and community setting. The implementation of VoIP will assist in making officers more contactable, giving them a single telephone number independent of their location or the device that they will be communicating through,” she says.

McAlpin also says that the Department anticipated that, with the extended rollout of VoIP, it would see a marked drop in call costs. “Most of the Department’s calls are between the regional offices, goals, probation and parole offices and the head office.

Currently, with the exception of those sites already upgraded, all our calls are on the PSTN. In the future, all calls will be internal on the upgraded network, no longer incurring an additional cost to the Department.”