The Hampshire Public Services Network (HPSN) was the first PSN, launched in 1999, followed closely by Kent County Councils partnerships with the KPSN.
This would create influence, economies of scale and a commonality of standards for secure and easy inter-connection between public service organisations.
Under this approach networks would be arranged by data type and business functions such as Criminal Justice, Health and Social Care, Defence and Intelligence or Public Finance rather than solely on established departmental boundaries.
[4] Their report set out the architectural and commercial principles as well as anticipated security, service management, governance and transition arrangements.
[6] In 2010 Virgin Media Business,[7] BT,[8] Cable & Wireless and Global Crossing signed Deeds of Undertaking (DoU)[9] and subsequently achieved accreditation for providing GCN and IP VPN services.
The blog post confirmed that organisations that need to access services that are only available on the PSN would still need to connect to it for the time being and continue to meet its assurance requirements.
In a blog post published on 16 March 2017, Government Digital Service (GDS) set out its plans for PSN assurance.
It explained that the TLN agreed that – as one of the only recognised, externally accredited, cross-government common assurance standards – it 'needs to live on far beyond the end of the physical PSN network'.
[17] The Cabinet Office has set up a programme called Future Networks for Government (FN4G) to help organisations move away from the PSN.