According to an old saying, the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly fine. But what if God had a super-fast, efficient and easy-to-manage Wi-Fi? We don’t know about that. But we do know that such setup serves the Belgium’s Federal Justice Service very well!
The Federal Public Service Justice, or FPS Justice in short (Dutch: FOD Justitie, French: SPF Justice, German: FÖD Justiz), is a Federal Public Service of Belgium responsible for legal order in the country. Whether you’d like to legalize a document, seek legal advice or pay your speeding ticket, this is the place you need to go.
The organization provides both administrative and operational support for legislation, courts, prison system, as well as the victim support. To this end, FPS Justice is hiring approximately 23.000 employees, of whom 11.000 work for the judiciary and 10.000 for the prison system.
FPS Justice was created by Royal Order on May 23, 2001, as part of the plans to modernize Belgium’s federal administration. Today, 20 years later, the story of modernization has come full circle, as the need for a scalable and reliable network solution has never been more apparent.
The challenge
Technology and IT in general have become crucial work instruments today, and the FPS Justice is no exception. “Digitizing the justice system securely and at speed has been a long-standing objective of the Belgian government to both modernize and improve services”, explains Jimmy De Laet, ICT Infrastructure director at FPS Justice. “We choose not to do this with a big bang. Instead, we prefer a systematic approach to make improvements and finally come up with a complete digital story”, he adds.
So, one of the government’s ambitions is to fully digitize. This involves the digital services for citizens, digital communication with partners such as police, lawyers and local communities. For example, approximately 90% of the criminal law chain has recently switched to MaCH, an application for central file management. The civil side has now also started to do this for the labor courts and the corporate courts. The prison system has been using a similar central application for detention management: Sidis.
Crucial here, and this is one of the biggest challenges, is the fact that you need a good and high-performing network to work fully digitally. The existing network was totally outdated, not only the courthouses but also in the prisons. If that wasn’t enough, the FPS Justice’s services are spread across around 240 buildings in Belgium. For the justice to be delivered smoothly, it is important that all services are interconnected for the applications to be able to exchange information.
That is why FPS Justice looked for a reliable partner to help them renew the network equipment on site and find a solution to simplify complex network management and increase operational efficiency and security. This is when the long-standing duo: Orange Cyberdefense, Europe's leading security services provider and Extreme Networks, one of the CRN’s Hottest IT Infrastructure and Cloud Companies of 2020, came into play.
The solution
A public tender – mandatory for government assignments of this caliber – asked for a scalable and stable network. One of the criteria for the solution was to prepare the new network for new technologies such as video conferencing, Voice over IP, NAC and other wireless applications.
Why was Orange Cyberdefense selected? “Up to that point, this partner was unknown to us”, admits Chris Van Regemorter, ICT Project Manager at FPS Justice. “Still, they had a strong offer, and both in price and quality Orange Cyberdefense appeared to be the best on the market at the time”. The collaboration went very smoothly from the very beginning. The client especially appreciated the flexibility of the partner and the network engineers as an added value. “As they were very flexible in their hours, they could immediately respond to changes in the schedule of court hearings”, Chris Van Regemorter goes on to add.
The solution of Extreme Networks was chosen to replace the old switches. Engineers from both FPS Justice and Orange Cyberdefense also agreed that they needed an SPB protocol based solution in order to enable the client’s telecom team to bundle lines and simplify network management. “In a large building such as the Palace of Justice in Antwerp, for example, we have a main and backup line from our provider. Thanks to the contribution of Orange Cyberdefense, we were able to bundle these, which gave us a greater capacity and we can now use the full bandwidth”, explains Chris Van Regemorter.
From this point forward, the choice was clear: ExtremeSwitching, ExtremeRouting and Extreme Fabric Connect.
Digitizing the justice system securely and at speed has been a long-standing objective of the Belgian government to both modernize and improve services.
Jimmy De Laet, ICT Infrastructure director at FPS Justice
A new brand of Justice
Some of the most noticeable wins include the increased network capacity, speed and performance. The new setup offers 20 times faster Wi-Fi connectivity across 240 buildings. ExtremeSwitching and ExtremeRouting technologies have given FPS Justice a robust and reliable network with increased bandwidth that absorbs speed mismatches and handles microbursts while offering high performance.
Such technological leap opens up a number of new functionalities. For example, Wi-Fi is now offered in the large courthouses and in the buildings of the central administration. The intention is to expand that wireless network even further in the coming years.
Another very important aspect, especially during the pandemic, is the possibility for high-performing video conferencing. Jimmy De Laet: “On the one hand, court hearings can now be held and followed remotely. On the other hand, detainees have the opportunity to have family visits through video conferencing. And you cannot have video conferencing without a good network and decent switch equipment.”
The new solution also enables over 23,000 employees and thousands of users, such as citizens and the police, to securely exchange information and access critical applications, improving operational efficiency. “For the users themselves, there may not be a measurable difference. But it is only because of the improvements to the network that applications such as MaCH and Sidis can be properly used in the field”, explains Jimmy De Laet.
"In a large building such as the Palace of Justice in Antwerp, for example, we have a main and backup line from our provider. Thanks to the contribution of Orange Cyberdefense, we were able to bundle these, which gave us a greater capacity and we can now use the full bandwidth." photo: Orange Cyberdefense.
Innovation is in our Fabric
And speaking of feeling a difference, we cannot fail to mention the facilitated network management and enhanced operational efficiency.
Extreme Fabric Connect provides FPS Justice with a simplified, agile, and resilient infrastructure that makes network configuration and the deployment of new network devices and services much faster and easier for its IT team. Furthermore, it reduces both the risk of human error and the time for maintenance windows thanks to its ability to set and forget the network core during updates.
The implemented solution helped to reduce the number of engineers required to manage the distributed network from 3 to 1, allowing the wider IT team to focus on other high value tasks. It also allows for the logical separation of consumer IoT devices from the justice system’s corporate technologies and assets to help reduce risk and keep the network secure.
Extreme Fabric Connect creates a self-healing autonomic networking architecture that allows FPS Justice to perform upgrades and sub-second recovery of real time traffic without any degradation of service or performance. “We used to sit on the defendant’s bench with our telecom team. Now we have been acquitted on all counts”, Chris Van Regemorter admits with a smile on his face. “Thanks to Extreme Networks and Orange Cyberdefense Belgium arming us with a new network and 24/7 technical support, we have been able to meet this objective to improve information-sharing and offer new digital services. Our new network is truly a game changer for the way our justice system operates”, adds Jimmy De Laet.
We used to sit on the defendant’s bench with our telecom team. Now we have been acquitted on all counts.
Chris Van Regemorter, ICT Project Manager at FPS Justice
About the future
The renewal of the network is the priority for the near future. “An upgrade of the network in 240 buildings is not something you can do overnight. The switch to the new equipment of Extreme Networks is an operation that will continue in the coming years – in collaboration with Orange Cyberdefense. It will always be necessary to further optimize and improve the network. And to expand as digitization will only continue and the network requirements will only get bigger and bigger”, says Jimmy De Laet.
“As Europe's leading security services provider, we strive to build a safer digital society when supporting businesses across the world. In any digitalization project it is crucial to make sure the network itself not only offers reliable connectivity but resilience against any potential security threat”, explains Emmanuel David, Technical Director at Orange Cyberdefense Belgium. “We are therefore proud to have collaborated with Extreme Networks to deploy a network which achieves just that by avoiding human errors and separating traffic flows where required”, he adds.
“We are proud to refresh FPS Justice’s network and support the digitization of its services alongside our long-standing partner, Orange Cyberdefense Belgium. From achieving better security to delivering 20 times faster connectivity across all its 240 buildings, the FPS now has an advanced, reliable, and future-proof network that is ready to help make the Belgian justice system as effective and efficient as possible”, sums up Henk Bretveld, Country Manager Benelux at Extreme Networks.
The FPS Justice will continue to standardize and modernize its network infrastructure. After an increase in bandwidth, the focus will probably shift towards extra security and inventory of the network.