Telecommunications

The telecommunications functional area was last assessed in October 2001. There were no open items from the 2001 review. Our self-assessment team identified areas of opportunity for enhanced performance and will address those areas in the following report.

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is dedicated to experimental and theoretical research in elementary particle physics and in those fields that make use of its synchrotron radiation facilities, including biology, chemistry, geology, material science and electrical engineering. This includes the development of new techniques in 1) particle acceleration and detection and 2) synchrotron radiation sources and associated instrumentation. Stanford University operates the center as a national user facility for the Department of Energy.

The Telephone Services functional area manages telephone services as a corporate resource to improve the quality of its services, to add value to scientific programs and customer services, and as a tool to improve work processes. Telephone service will be made available to the community, the public, industrial partners, and others, as appropriate. The focus this year was on negotiating new arrangements to replace our previous multi-year contract for telephone services, supporting the opening of the new Research Office Building with new telephones and cabling, providing more users with improved features such as message waiting lamp phones, and improving our utilization of administrative tools.

This report represents the results of the telecommunications functional area self-assessment, an ongoing process begun as part of the Business Management Oversight pilot established by DOE in March 1995 and continued by executive order as part of DOE performance-based management. Assessment material was collected over the past year, followed by a process of validation of findings, analysis and report writing. The telecommunications functional area self-assessment is based on and measured against performance activities currently agreed to between SLAC and DOE/OAK in order to address customer satisfaction, cost efficiency, and contract compliance.

Entering FY 2002, SLAC had a multi-year service subcontract with Nextira to provide the majority of telecommunications services including video conferencing and voice mail services currently in use. The subcontract period began in July 1988 and ended in June 2002. This service included Nextira owned switching equipment, the telephone cable plant and a dedicated technician. SLAC paid for a majority of the Nextira-provided phone service on a guaranteed fixed price per-line per-month basis for the life of the contract, with the exceptions of the voice mail and video conferencing systems that SLAC owns.

During FY 2001, Nextira agreed that at the end of the lease, ownership of the PBX would be transferred to SLAC with no additional charge or buyout. We decided not to replace our PBX at this time. During FY 2002, SLAC issued an RFP for telephone services required to maintain the SLAC-owned system at the end of the lease. During the RFP process, we considered all major vendors that were qualified to service our equipment. We determined that Nextira was the best vendor for reasons of cost and overall qualifications. In June 2002, we entered into a new maintenance-only contract with Nextira, based on a fixed monthly cost for the life of the contract. This contract covers an initial period of two years, with three one-year renewal options.

SLAC has month-to-month agreements with other telecommunications service providers for traffic carrier services, radio and paging services, and cellular phone service, which are renewed on a fiscal year basis. These vendors include Pacific Bell, for local calling and network access, ISDN and measured business lines; PowerNet Global, AT&T and FTS2001, for long distance calling; Verizon, for wide area paging service; Motorola and GE Erickson, for mobile radio services; and AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless, for cellular phone service. Carrier services are based on current CPUC tariff and federal government rates and paging and radio services using a negotiated rate structure.

The SLAC telephone system includes a 4,450-port digital electronic switching system and a cable plant that is adequate to the system but is stretched and old. The cable plant is based on twisted pair copper technology with surge protectors, both within and between buildings. The switch is capable of supporting advanced and digital technologies such as Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN). The system includes direct inward dial service, voice mail, government and public network access, paging access and video conferencing. The system supports a majority of mass-market, single-line instruments (3750 ports) and some proprietary multi-line instruments (350 ports) to provide secretarial type functions. The remaining 350 ports are used for trunks. The system provides alarm circuits, emergency communications, and back up power capability.

Improvements to the PBX this year included the addition of a network loop, which provides us significantly more capacity to add new telephones, and the addition of several hundred lines. We also implemented a software patch required to utilize the Meridian Administration Tools (MAT) and sent the System Administrator to training so that we could better utilize the MAT capabilities. Overall we have found the capabilities offered in MAT somewhat disappointing as we had already implemented many comparable functions through other means. During the past year we also acquired a new call data buffer to replace our no-longer-maintained VAX system. We have tested the system and are fine-tuning the software before it goes into production.

The system is managed in partnership with Telecommunications Staff and user representatives called Area Telecommunications Office Motivators (ATOMs). ATOMs were appointed by group leaders in 1987 to represent a group or geographical area of from 15-200 phones and/or users. They interface with the Telecommunications staff using user-driven on-line tools developed by Telecommunications to activate services and identify order status. Lead-times to complete requests for changes are from one to four weeks, depending on type of request.

From the user perspective, our largest project this year was to support the opening of the Research Office Building (ROB) with the installation of approximately 250 new telephones and cabling. This was completed on schedule in January 2002. The project was managed and completed with existing personnel, without the purchase of outside installation services. Following the move of users into the ROB, we successfully managed a series of large moves, as users filled spaces vacated during earlier moves. These activities resulted in a substantial increase in the workload for Telecommunications. However, the dedication and hard work of key personnel allowed us to perform extremely well in regards to both order timeliness and user expectations.

The activities of the Telecommunications functional area include, but are not limited to, providing wired and wireless telephone, radio, paging, and video conferencing services. This year the areas of telephone services and emergency communications were assessed.

Services: We have not made any major changes to our trunking or service providers during the past year. We have continued to monitor performance and service levels on our Pacific Bell and FTS2001 ISDN PRI’s. We have not had any service outages of significant duration. We took advantage of recent downtime, negotiated with our users for a PBX expansion, to also test backup capabilities on our Pacific Bell trunks.

We have made some minor changes to our routing of 911 calls, in order to improve the information transmitted to the Palo Alto emergency dispatch center. We have begun planning to modernize our 911 networking and fully implement Enhanced 911 Emergency Services.

Telephone Orders Meet Customer Needs: During the 1998 fiscal year, we replaced our previous telephone order system that ran on VM with the new SLAC Phone Request System (SPRS), based on the commercial Remedy application, with Web interfaces for users. During the past year we have continued to make improvements to the system as needed. We have transitioned to a largely paperless workflow for tracking orders within the Telecommunications group. The new system was well received by the ATOMs (Area Telecommunications Office Motivators), who submit orders for their departments. And the ATOMs have reported that the system continues to become easier to use as they gain more experience with it.

In addition to the objective data collected from the SLAC Phone Request System, we used the services of a consultant from outside our department to request anonymous feedback from the ATOMs through a short survey. We requested responses to five questions, which were the same as questions used in our fiscal year 2001 survey. Twenty-five out of sixty-seven ATOMs chose to participate in the survey.

For analysis purposes, we divide the orders into two types: software and hardware.

The following table shows selected measurements for software orders. The times for order closure are adjusted to exclude weekends, so “days” are actually “business days.”

# of Days	Percent Completed
0	13.4%
1	33.7%
2	51.4%
3	69.9%
4	76.7%
5	85.7%
6	90.4%

The following graph shows the number of software orders completed in a specific number of days with the green bars and labels on the left axis. The cumulative percentage of orders completed within a time period is shown by the blue line and labels on the right axis.

Eighty-six percent of software orders are completed within one week. In 2001, ninety-three percent of orders were completed within one week. In 2000, eighty-six percent of software orders were completed within one week. There was a 74 percent increase in software orders processed in 2002 compared to 2000, and a 43 percent increase in software orders processed in 2002 compared to 2001. Given the large increase in orders processed, we have performed remarkably well in meeting our performance objectives, with no increase in Telecommunications personnel.

Our goal is to complete most hardware orders within one month. Some orders can stay in the system for much longer for reasons that are largely beyond our control. Examples include waiting for access to tunnels and waiting for users to complete construction or install conduit. In addition, we have a single technician available to handle both hardware orders and repairs. Because repairs generally receive higher priority than new orders, work on hardware orders can be delayed for several days while other problems are resolved. For these reasons, we believe it is realistic to expect hardware orders to take somewhat longer than other types.

The following table shows selected measurements for hardware orders. The times to order closure are adjusted to exclude weekends. So “days” are actually “business days” and the rows of the table show orders closed in one week, two weeks, and so forth, through one month.

# of Days	Percent
5	20.1%
10	56.4%
15	67.8%
20	76.5%
23	80%

The following graph shows the number of hardware orders completed in a specific number of days, charted with bars, using the right axis. The blue line shows the cumulative percentage of orders completed, with percentages on the left axis.

The spikes in activity at five and ten days are due to several large projects including the move of users into the new Research Office Building and several subsequent moves of user groups into space vacated by the users in the first move. This resulted in hundreds of moves scheduled to happen on particular days in order to meet user schedules.

Eighty percent of hardware orders were completed within one month. This is slightly less than in 2001 when eighty-six percent of hardware orders were completed within four weeks. But it still represents a significant improvement over 2000, when sixty-one percent of hardware orders were completed within thirty days. The median time to complete hardware orders has dropped from 21 days in 2000, to 12 days in 2001, to 10 days in 2002.

Similarly to software orders, we have processed significantly more hardware orders this past year compared to the previous years. Hardware orders in 2002 were up 40 percent over those processed in 2000 and 64 percent over those processed in 2001. In addition to a number of large projects, we have also experienced an increase in the number of hardware orders to provide message waiting lamp phones to users requesting them.

ATOMs were asked to indicate whether they agreed with the statement "Software orders are completed in a reasonable length of time." They were given a five-point scale (strongly disagree, disagree, acceptable, agree, and strongly agree). Ninety-six percent of ATOMs rated performance as acceptable or better. This is a slight improvement over the ninety percent of ATOMs who rated performance at this level in 2001.

ATOMs were also asked to indicate whether they agreed with the statement "Hardware orders are completed in a reasonable length of time." Eighty-seven percent of ATOMs rated performance as acceptable or better. This is a significant improvement over the sixty-five percent of ATOMs who rated performance at this level in 2001.

Telephone Repairs Meet Customer Needs: Any person at SLAC can request a telephone repair either by using a Web-based form in the SLAC Phone Request System (SPRS) described above, or by leaving a voice message on the phone repair line. We have seen a gradual increase in the number of requests received through SPRS, but this is still less than half our total number of repair requests. Currently, the system administrator and technician are entering most telephone requests into SPRS for tracking purposes. However, there are still many requests, such as resetting voicemail passwords, which are not entered because the time required to enter and close out the requests is longer than the time required to correct a problem.

Due to the difficulties involved in obtaining a representative sample of all telephone users at SLAC, we relied upon the ATOMs to provide subjective feedback on behalf of all their users through the survey described above.

# of Days	Percent Completed
1	82.2%
2	86.5%
6	90.8%

The chart below shows the number of repairs completed in a given number of days, using the green bars and right axis. The blue line, with labels along the left axis, shows the cumulative percent of orders completed.

The data collected indicate that over eighty-two percent of repairs are completed in one day or less. This is slightly less than the eight-five percent of repairs completed in one day or less in 2001, but it is a significant improvement over 2000, when forty-six percent of repairs were completed in a comparable time.

ATOMs were asked to indicate whether they agreed with the statement "Repairs are completed in a timely fashion." They were given a five-point scale (strongly disagree, disagree, acceptable, agree, and strongly agree). One hundred percent of the ATOMs rated performance as acceptable or better, compared to eighty-five percent of ATOMs who rated performance at this level in 2001.

It is the responsibility of each person in the emergency organization to determine what communications resources they need to fulfill their responsibilities. Beyond the role of the Emergency Communications Manager in restoring telecommunications services and allocating alternate resources in an actual emergency, we provide services to the emergency organization in the same manner as we do to other users. We help users to clarify their actual communications needs, provide information about available alternatives, provide services where appropriate, and refer users to other resources for products and services we do not provide.

During the past year, tests of the emergency communications systems were conducted ten times. SLAC’s Emergency Coordinator indicated that his primary concern in regards to the emergency communications tests is to test the wireless systems on a regular basis. The responsibility for running these tests continues to be done by SLAC’s SCS Help Desk personnel. Following each test, users verbally communicate the quality of the tests results to Help Desk personnel. If there were any portable/base station/mobile unit problems, the Help Desk personnel would have gotten the necessary repairs done. No problems with emergency wireless equipment were reported.

In addition, during the past year, preventive maintenance was done by SLAC's wireless communications analyst on all emergency wireless equipment. The wireless analyst conducted tests to ensure each emergency wireless portable/base station/mobile transmit frequency, output power level, and receiver sensitivity were within specification. During this past year, no emergency wireless equipment had to be repaired.

The Emergency Coordinator indicated the current emergency communications system continues to meet the users’ needs. There is also support for continuing the wireless tests and preventative maintenance. We plan to continue support for the wireless tests and preventative maintenance for this area.

Our assessment team found the telecommunications functional area to be in compliance with laws, regulations and, terms and conditions of the current DOE contract. The telecommunications functional area assessment team found no fraud, waste, or abuse issues.

Index

Telecommunications

Introduction/Background