Timeframe
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Background
In May 2020, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) released its Connected Places Cyber Security Principles (CPCSP) guidance. It was designed to guide local authorities in appropriately managing the risks to their connected places.
By mid-2022 awareness within local authorities of the principles was low, with many Connected Places projects having not discovered the guidance or applied it. The UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) released an invitation to tender to industry, seeking proposals to engage local authorities across the UK to support them in their implementation of the principles through the development and “alpha testing” of resources.
Problem
DCMS requested an open call be advertised to attract local authorities across the UK to apply to the project. Local authorities should form a good spread of geography, size and maturity. The six selected local authorities would be split into three cohorts consisting of Governance, Supply Chain and Holistic.
Focus groups should be held to assess the local authorities’ exposure to the principles, their cyber capability and their specific requirements for support in implementing the principles. An “alpha testing” process should be conducted that applies agile methods to develop and iterate resources to support local authorities to implement the principles.
At the end of the project, reports and case studies are to be produced and the work presented in an appropriate forum.
Solution
Figure 1 – The team of organisations performing the Secure Connected Places research project
The open call selected the following six LAs: City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council; Dorset Council, Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council; Perth and Kinross Council, South London Partnership (consisting of the councils of the following London Boroughs: Croydon, Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Richmond upon Thames and Sutton); and Westminster City Council.
Figure 2 – The local authorities selected from the open call process.
Configured Things’ role in the project was the “Alpha Testing Lead” which had the following responsibilities:
- plan, organise and run focus groups and resource review workshops across the LAs
- lead the development and production of resources, project reporting and case studies
- run weekly reviews with the LAs to gather feedback which was fed back into the project backlog
This project is currently ongoing and will complete in March 2022.
About Configured Things
Configured Things is a Bristol based startup formed in 2018, spun out of Hewlett Packard Labs. We create products and solutions that address the challenges of managing systems and data across trust boundaries.We are alumni of the NCSC for Startups program, and retain a close working relationship with the NCSC and other government agencies.
If you would like to hear further about this work or our solutions generally, please contact: getconfigured@configuredthings.com
