‘How do we ensure that our employees and visitors can easily use Wi-Fi?’ This is a question many municipalities are facing. This is also true in West Brabant, where Equalit supports various municipalities with digital solutions. We speak with Richard Bastiaansen, who is responsible for network management at Equalit, and specifically for Wi-Fi.

What does Equalit do for customers?

‘The core business of our team within Equalit is the data security of the residents of our participating municipalities. We work for eleven municipalities and a sheltered employment organization. This also includes municipal services such as recycling centers, sports parks, libraries, and so on. In total, we manage over 3,000 workstations.

Until recently, every municipality had its own Wi-Fi solution for which we handled management and maintenance. We provided custom work for every participant,’ Richard explains. ‘From a management and technical perspective, that isn’t ideal and it also makes it harder to guarantee security.’

What makes it so complex to guarantee digital security?

Richard gives an example: ‘Someone who worked at Municipality A and left their job still knew the password to log in. It’s not the intention for former employees to be able to connect to the Wi-Fi network once they have left the service.

So we had several reasons to look for a different solution: security had to be improved and we wanted more consistency and simplicity in our own management. The security officers of most municipalities therefore immediately supported our plan to switch to govroam and publicroam.’

How did you end up with govroam and publicroam?

‘We were already familiar with govroam and several municipalities were already working with it. Furthermore, our research showed that the security of these apps is really solid, the ease of use is high, and the management workload would decrease compared to the old solution. Although we were also asked to see if we could build our own solution, this combination of benefits was so clear that we decided against it.’

What are the reactions from users?

‘Well, how much time do you have?’ Richard laughs. ‘Just kidding. We hear very little… but in our profession, that’s actually a good thing! We rarely get a compliment. That’s because we only get called when something goes wrong.

I do know first-hand that the implementation went smoothly. We first ran a Proof of Concept (POC) within Equalit as a test. We resolved the initial issues that surfaced then and refined a few things. We then started the rollout to our participants.

The rollout consisted of just a few steps:

• Someone from Equalit went to the locations to disable the old Wi-Fi networks and stayed for half a day to answer any questions.
• Equalit went to locations to provide explanations;
• Next, Equalit turned on the new Wi-Fi networks and let the old Wi-Fi networks run for another two or three weeks;

Besides govroam and publicroam, you also offer Equalitroam. Why?

‘In fact, Equalitroam is a Wi-Fi network, just like govroam and publicroam. We came up with this version specifically for our participating municipalities. All devices issued by the municipalities to employees are connected to Equalitroam and are fully managed by us. Are you a new employee? Then you get a device that connects to Wi-Fi completely automatically.

All in all, we have moved forward on several fronts thanks to these developments:

The three networks offer a high level of security. This is very important for our participants who have an exemplary role in the field of secure data management; The management burden has become much lower, giving us more time for other IT projects.

Oh yes, I almost forgot about the national coverage. That is nice for our participating municipalities – who can use govroam or publicroam at participating locations throughout the Netherlands – but I also find it very handy myself. If I visit a neighboring municipality for a seminar, for example, I’m always happy when they offer publicroam and govroam!’