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Manage GovWifi

This guidance explains how to manage GovWifi for your organisation once you’ve installed it.

View and update your site configuration

You can view and update your configuration in GovWifi admin.

To make sure your users know they can use GovWifi, you should advertise the service.

You can use our poster. It includes information on how your users can connect to GovWifi.

Support GovWifi users in your buildings

While we provide support information for users on our GovWifi site, your organisation must support GovWifi users who cannot solve their own issues.

You can decide how to do this. The only requirement is that users have a clear route to a human who can help them. This may be an email address or phone number included on your GovWifi advertisements.

Organisations use different support models including onsite and remote support desks managed by in-house or outsourced teams.

Your users include anyone who needs to use GovWifi in your buildings. Depending on your organisation, this could include members of the public and public sector staff on devices managed by other organisations.

You may also need to proactively contact GovWifi users in your building, for example, if they’re likely to experience disruption to the service because of work we’re doing. We’ll tell you when this is necessary and will let you know in advance. Again, it’s up to your organisation to plan how best to do this.

Manage acceptable use

You’re responsible for setting your own acceptable use policy and managing filtering and firewall controls.

There are a couple of things you can do if you have concerns about a user on your network - for example, if they’re breaching your acceptable use policy or have malware on their device.

Request a user’s contact details

You can ask us for the contact details of users if you need to get in touch with them. We’ll have either their email address or phone number, depending how they signed up to GovWifi.

For us to provide this information:

  • the request must come from a person who is a team member on the organisation’s GovWifi admin account, and we may get in touch to check that the request definitely came from that person
  • your organisation must have signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) (sign in required) which sets out the terms that we can share personal data under

Block users

If necessary, you can stop someone using your network by blocking their device’s MAC address.

Bear in mind that this does not stop that user from connecting to your network on a different device.

In serious cases, we can block someone from using GovWifi in any building. Contact us if you think this is necessary.

Monitor and log traffic

You’re responsible for traffic monitoring and logging.

You can view logs for specific users (sign in required). This can help you troubleshoot problems and help you investigate malicious use.

Look out for updates from the GovWifi team

You can expect the following communications from the GovWifi team:

  • updates on significant changes to the service - we’ll usually ask for your feedback so please help out where you can
  • updates on significant changes to our privacy policy
  • requests for you to take part in user research. This is so we can improve the service so it meets your needs.

All communications will go to the ‘service email’ provided when setting up your GovWifi admin account. Where necessary, some will also go to individual admin users. You need to sign up separately for incident alerts on our status page.

Stop using GovWifi

If your organisation wants to stop using GovWifi, contact us.