The Govroam Companion

The Govroam Companion app is a tool to help users of govroam find other participating public sector venues where they can connect to the Internet.

What is govroam?

In an ever more collaborative public sector, staff need to connect to the internet and to resources at their home organisation, in multiple locations, using any device – whether they’re managers, members of the emergency services, or people in multidisciplinary teams. Govroam, from Jisc, can make this happen seamlessly. With govroam, your staff can access the govroam network provided by any participating organisation, using a single, securely authenticated sign-on managed by your organisation – so they only need to log in once to ‘just connect’. Meanwhile, visiting staff from other participating organisations can access your govroam-enabled guest network in the same way, using their own sign-on credentials, reducing the time you spend managing guest accounts. Govroam is easy to use – and a step forward in enabling mobile collaboration across the public sector.

Govroam means you can:

· Offer easy-to-use internet access across multiple

· Support public sector collaboration and integration, such as that between health and social care

· Assists in the process of estate rationalisation, as govroam can act as a standard for wireless networking in multi-department public-sector buildings

· Can be part of your disaster recovery planning, as staff can ‘just connect’ on alternative public-sector sites.

· Improve the scope of your ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) policy..

· Authenticate users securely through a single, authenticated sign-on, managed by the user’s own organisation.

· Save time on guest account management

Unlike other anonymous systems, every device that authenticates through govroam is tied to a real government worker. This strong accountability means:

· Support issues can easily be tied to a specific device/user and resolved

· Security issues, such as a virus outbreak, can be mitigated by identifying, monitoring and controlling specific devices based on identity

· Rogue behaviour can be tied to individuals, and access revoked.

The Govroam Companion App

The app helps users find venues that offer govroam connectivity that is appropriate for their use (i.e. a health worker can filter results to display only NHS venues), and provides an overview of the scope of the national govroam federation as it grows. The data it displays is added by the technical administrators of govroam at the various participating organisations. If your local govroam instance is not represented, please contact your admin to ask them to update the app database via Jisc.

Disclaimer: The govroam service is targeted at publicly funded organisations, but is not directly supported or funded by the UK central government. The information about govroam venues contained within the app is provided and managed by our member organisations (many of whom are UK Local Authorities) and has no integration with any UK central government data sources

A full list of our member organisations can be found here: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/govroam/participating-organisations