Novell joins up two arms of government

Novell has provided the central infrastructure for a new system to link all users in two government departments - but keep them at arm's length.

The system, scheduled to go live at the end of the month, provides an open platform for computer users in John Prescott's Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) and the Department for Transport (DfT) which will enable them to access each other and their relevant databases with a single sign-on.

The project is part of the departments' CII (Corporate information Infrastructure Project), a spin-off of the general 'joined-up government' initiatives.

An ODPM spokesman said: "This will allow us to pass certain people information automatically between systems and generate automatic email notifications to interested parties. We can also allow other government departments, with the appropriate access right, to use the staff directory."

The project began as an installation for the Department of Transport, Local Government and Regions, but when it was carved up, with a bit added from the Cabinet Office, the transport department was left on its own.

However, both departments decided that they wanted the system as most of the hard work on procurement had already been done. The system was required to link a number of legacy systems including Netware, Windows, Solaris and Linux.

Novell and partner systems house ANS provided an XML and LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) based system to allow securely controlled access to the departmental legacy-based databases and an efficient email controller.

This will control access to databases and the email system to relevant users of the system. There are around 3,000 ODPM users and 1,800 in the DfT. The new platform will allow for further expansion and any type of new system.

System cost is commercially confidential according to the ODPM.