Swansea Council serves a lot of people and it employs a lot of people. It’s the governing body for one of the Principal Areas of Wales, covering Swansea, Gower, and the surrounding areas. In total, the organisation consists of 72 councillors representing 36 electoral wards. Swansea Council employs more than 11,000 people, including 5,000 employees based in area schools.

Swansea Council’s Digital First Vision

The Welsh public sector provides a diverse range of important services to the people and businesses in Wales - from requesting housing repairs and paying bills to providing licensing services, regulatory advice, and even branding opportunities to boost company awareness. However, all of these services must keep pace with the changing needs of the people of Wales. As such, the Welsh government is committed to delivering a Digital First plan to make the fullest possible use of the opportunities that technology offers to deliver valuable, efficient, and cost-effective services.

As a large government organisation, Swansea Council has also adopted a Digital First vision to help it enable responsive, consistent, and excellent public services through transformed digital delivery. The Swansea Council vision: To transform into a leaner digital business, ensuring the right council services are Digital First while being universally accessible, especially for the most vulnerable.

Embarking on the Journey to the Cloud

As one of the first steps to becoming a Digital First organisation, Swansea Council embarked on its journey to the cloud. Swansea Council had numerous reasons to make this move. First, moving to the cloud would enable flexible, mobile ways of working to empower its employees to deliver better outcomes for citizens. Second, it would build better resiliency so residents and businesses could withstand, adapt, and thrive in the face of unexpected circumstances. Lastly, migrating to the cloud would speed up the deployment of new technologies and improvements across the entire organisation. Taken together, this would lay the foundation for innovation and growth for Swansea Council and those it serves.

Swansea Council partnered with Optec to modernise its infrastructure by deploying FortiGate 1500 UTM Firewalls. This allowed the organisation to overcome key limitations in its existing infrastructure, like providing a fully supported firewall that covers the council’s entire network and improving the flexibility in deploying new services for residents and businesses.

Realising Greater Flexibility and Security

The move to cloud helped Swansea Council significantly improve its flexibility and scalability. When the pandemic hit, Swansea Council was able to quickly scale its remote working capabilities, moving from around 20% to 90% of employees working from home. The Council was also able to ensure uninterrupted services for residents, as its FortiClient for VPN enabled remote access to its Call Centre telephony platform.

In addition, Swansea Council also improved its off site connectivity by using FortiGate to add a vital layer of authentication and security to its GovRoam deployment and enhance control and security over staff roaming behaviour.

Swansea Council is already seeing tremendous impact and is well on the way to realising its Digital First vision, but there’s more to be done. The Council continues to work with Optec and Fortinet to bring security beyond the firewall. This includes creating a secure perimeter for its cloud environment using FortiGate HA and Azure and implementing FortiManager to provide centralised management and reporting.

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