The Government in Opportunities Excellence in Public Procurement Awards aims to recognise excellence within procurement, and the benefits to the wider business and social community that smart, effective and sustainable purchasing can deliver.

The 2009 GO Awards will be presented at National Public Procurement Practitioners Day (N3PD), held at the Institution of Civil Engineers, London on 4 June 2009.

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Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is essential to any company, as being prepared for a crisis can make a fundamental difference between chaos and a structured return to business. There are two key products underpinning Flare, namely Escalate and areyousafe, which will help businesses maintain secure and reliable messaging communications.

Escalate is an event notification system that automatically forwards SMS text messages to members of a predefined fallback list. It has been purposely designed for mission critical messaging, and its real time reporting tools make it easy and quick to analyse each step of the escalation. If a message such as an alert or a callout request is not received or acknowledged within a pre-determined time, it can be escalated to a series of colleagues until it is answered or delivered. If no one responds, the message returns to the administrator. The system is easy-to-use and needs no additional software. It is web based, therefore administrators can log on and monitor an escalating situation from anywhere.

areyousafe is a real time staff check in and acknowledgement service. Developed to satisfy the exacting demands of disaster recovery, areyousafe provides a quick intuitive tool to help HR administrators and Business Continuity Officers review their staff’s safety.

Dan Wong, Business Continuity Product Marketing Manager for PageOne, said, “A resilient communications system is crucial for any Business Continuity Plan. When it comes to staff safety companies need to be prepared – they need a robust, quick and user-friendly way of finding out employees’ status. PageOne has recognised that BCM has emerged as a core element of business strategy, and Flare products meet the requirements. Its secure web-based messaging service, escalation products and unique IVR platform should make it the system of choice for organisations across the UK.”

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At a time when rapid emergency response is absolutely vital, Britain’s biggest earthquake in 25 years has only re-emphasised that despite the digital revolution, there is a need for robust, resilient and effective methods of communication – paging;

• Flooded with calls, police and ambulances across the country were called out and directed via a paging network to damaged homes and tremor-related incidents.
• The British Red Cross volunteers were instantly alerted and called out via paging technology to provide practical and emotional support to distressed citizens with damaged homes and cars.

Prompt and well planned emergency response, from the government and public sector is integral to any kind of disaster relief. Methods of communicating and coercing aid need to be dependable, and often the more glamorous modern day technology will not live up to it. Landlines can go down, mobile signal can be limited and networks can be overloaded. This does not happen with paging.

Paging has yet again proved itself to be a powerful, invaluable and extremely robust service when notifying rescue teams or organising mass evacuation. There is no doubt that paging systems have saved lives. For resilient, reliable infrastructure in a crisis, there really is only one vehicle you can rely on – paging.

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PageOne’s solution has enhanced ArmyNET’s communications channels providing a simple way to add messaging through their existing internet portal. PageOne has enabled the Army, for the first time, to send text messages in bulk. Users can now access texting accounts on the ArmyNET portal where messages can be quickly written and sent to hundreds of mobile phones at the touch of a button. PageOne continues to work with ArmyNET to deliver increased functionality and regular improvements to the service. Chris Jones, PageOne’s Chief Executive Officer said, “The GO awards are a prestigious acknowledgement for suppliers operating in the public sector. PageOne is excited to have won the ‘Best Service’ award for our hard work with ArmyNET. This achievement is a resounding recognition of the PageOne team’s commitment and dedication to providing the best possible service for each and every customer.” The 2007 GO Awards gala, was held in conjunction with the National Public Procurement Practitioners Day (N3PD) on Wednesday 6th June 2007 at the Institution of Civil Engineers, One Great George Street, London.

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The report stated: “Responders must not rely on mobile phones for critical functions in a crisis. Emergency responders need to have dedicated communications that will work in an emergency.” Paging was referred to more than 6 times within the report. The use of paging within a robust, multi-channel communication strategy was highlighted as one of the key lessons to be learnt from the events on July 7th.

Additional points raised (with comments from PageOne) include:

Rely less on single source communication channels like mobile phone networks that become inundated during emergencies. (When mobile phone networks were overwhelmed on 7/7, PageOne’s messaging proved itself a robust and reliable way for users to keep in touch.)

Paging should be used so long as it is truly independent of other networks. (PageOne is the UK’s largest independent paging provider and has invested several million pounds over the last five years modernising and developing its paging and messaging infrastructure to provide a highly resilient communication solution designed to operate reliably under extreme disaster scenarios)

Paging can enable messages to get through when mobile phone networks are congested. The City of London Police successfully used its pager alert scheme on 7 July to provide key business personnel with incident progress information. (PageOne operates [in conjunction with its partner Vocal Ltd] the City of London Alert Scheme that now has in excess of 2,000 members. It was originally set up as the City of London Bomb Watch Scheme in 1998 to alert businesses to a range of issues from localised crime through to business continuity situations.)

With the NHS Emergency Planners Exhibition taking place on Wednesday 27th September 2006, PageOne welcomes the findings of the report and its reiteration that paging must continue to play a very important role in providing real time information to many organisations in both emergency and day to day situations.

The report goes on to add: “Very soon after 7th July, LAS (London Ambulance Service) purchased pagers to alert and inform key roles without relying on mobile phones.” PageOne provides this service to the LAS, along with its critical messaging systems to many of the train operating companies into London, London Underground, most London hospitals, including both the North and South London Strategic Health Authorities.

PageOne’s critical messaging systems provide paging, sms and email distribution for all real time applications. A PDF copy of the full London Regional Resilience Report is available upon request. Paging services are mentioned on pages 7, 20, 27,37,38 and 39.

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