The legacy barriers holding public services back
Across healthcare, education, local government, and central departments, many organisations are still held back by networks built for a far more static world. Traditional local area networks (LAN) and even wide area networks (WAN) were designed around fixed offices, predictable traffic patterns, and centralised systems – not the endlessly distributed, cloud-first environments public services now depend on. As demand grows, the limitations of these architectures are becoming increasingly visible.
Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)-based connectivity in particular introduces rigid, costly delivery models that can’t flex with new clinical sites, multidisciplinary teams, or remote working patterns. Visibility across these estates is often patchy, leaving IT teams to firefight performance issues without end-to-end insight. Interoperability also becomes a constant challenge, with systems struggling to communicate smoothly across outdated infrastructure, and performance bottlenecks slow down service delivery, impacting everything from clinical workflows to citizen engagement. And without strong segmentation or identity-based access, sensitive systems remain more vulnerable than many organisations realise.
These constraints aren’t minor obstacles, but structural roadblocks to the very outcomes the framework aims to accelerate. Unless the network evolves, organisations risk investing in new technologies only to run them on foundations that cannot support them.
Why networks are the true enablers of framework success
The most transformative digital workplaces aren’t simply collections of modern tools. They are integrated environments in which data can move securely and efficiently across locations, departments, and cloud platforms. This level of fluidity only happens when the network is designed to handle continual change, rapid scaling, and high-volume workloads without compromising performance or security.
A framework-ready network must therefore be agile enough to support diverse service models, resilient enough to avoid downtime in critical environments, secure enough to protect the rising volume of distributed data, and flexible enough to integrate smoothly with whatever technologies organisations procure next. It needs to support new collaboration platforms as easily as new clinical systems, and new cloud workloads as easily as new operational sites. Crucially, it must deliver all of this without creating additional complexity for already stretched IT teams.
This is why the network sits at the heart of transformation under the framework. It enables interoperability, enhances performance, protects sensitive information, and underpins every form of digital innovation. Without a modern network foundation, procurement becomes a gamble rather than a progression. And in such a mission-critical setting, the stakes are simply too high to gamble so confidently.
What a future-fit public sector network needs to deliver
To translate the advantages of Digital Workplace Solutions 2 into real-world outcomes, organisations need networks that are software defined, automated, secure by design, cloud integrated, and built for mobility and scale. This shift is already underway across forward-thinking NHS trusts and public bodies, with the architectures that underpin it sharing three core components: SD-WAN, SD-Access, and zero trust.
Here’s what each of these elements brings to the table:
SD-WAN: connecting care, collaboration, and cloud
SD-WAN in healthcare delivers a step change in how public services connect distributed sites, staff, systems, and cloud environments. Rather than relying on rigid and costly MPLS connections, it dynamically routes traffic using the best available path – whether that’s MPLS, broadband, 5G, or LTE – ensuring optimum performance across the entire estate.
But its value extends far beyond routing efficiency. For organisations handling sensitive patient or citizen data, secure SD-WAN brings advanced threat protection that is essential in today’s threat landscape too. Behaviour-based detection, real-time threat intelligence, machine-learning analysis, encrypted overlays, and automated remediation all play a role in preventing breaches and minimising the impact of attempted attacks – now a non-negotiable priority for modern public services.
Equally important is the way SD-WAN enables innovation. A centralised, software-defined architecture gives IT teams complete visibility and consistent policy enforcement, whether they oversee five sites or 50. It also provides the agility and flexibility required to adopt cloud services, layer in new digital tools, or support emerging technologies such as AI and IoT – all while maintaining reliable performance for critical applications.
SD-Access: bringing secure control to fragmented estates
While SD-WAN optimises the connectivity between locations, SD-Access transforms the network within hospitals, campuses, and government buildings. Powered by Cisco’s Digital Network Architecture (DNA), it removes the complexity of traditional virtual LAN (VLAN) management and replaces it with centrally orchestrated, identity-based access and automated provisioning.
This not only makes it easier for users and devices to move securely across sites without reconfiguration – a key requirement in environments where mobility and responsiveness matter – but also strengthens security through granular segmentation and consistent policy enforcement, giving IT teams far tighter control over access to sensitive systems.
We’ve witnessed the benefits of this technology firsthand with clients such as Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, where EDNX implemented SD-Access to replace legacy LAN infrastructure with a unified, automated environment. The shift allowed the trust to standardise management across multiple sites, reduce manual configuration effort, and give clinicians faster, more reliable access to the applications they depend on. The result was both operational efficiency and a more robust foundation for future digital services.
Zero trust, automation, and cloud-first security
As public sector organisations increase their use of cloud applications and hybrid working becomes more entrenched, traditional perimeter-based security models are no longer enough. Zero trust changes the security posture entirely by treating every user, device, and connection as untrusted until verified, irrespective of location.
In practice, this means consistent identity verification, continuous monitoring, and strict access controls enforced through the network itself. When combined with microsegmentation and automation, it slows or stops lateral movement, reduces the blast radius of attacks, and supports compliance with increasingly demanding regulatory standards.
This is where Cisco ACI becomes critical in the data centre too. By extending zero trust principles into application and workload environments, ACI delivers policy-driven segmentation, automated enforcement, unified visibility, and seamless integration with cloud platforms. This level of end-to-end security and consistency across campus, WAN, and data centre infrastructure is something legacy infrastructure simply can’t achieve.
Closing the gap from framework to future
The Digital Workplace Solutions 2 framework presents a major opportunity for the public sector to modernise at pace – but success depends on what happens beneath the surface. A strong network is not an optional component or a background consideration. It is the engine that powers everything organisations hope to achieve through the framework: better collaboration, integrated services, secure data flow, scalable digital operations, and a consistent user experience.
When organisations prioritise the network as the foundation of their digital workplace strategy, procurement stops being about acquiring new technology and becomes a pathway to achieving meaningful change. And when they adopt architectures that are software defined, cloud integrated, and relentlessly secure by design, they give themselves the conditions in which innovation can thrive rather than struggle.
