Telecommunications

Introduction/Background

Date of last assessment: October 2000

The telecommunications functional area received the following ratings in the FY 2000 Annual Appraisal: 

1.1.a.5 Emergency communications system as defined on 4/3/96 is operating as specified and meeting customer's needs (CSS and content analysis) - Outstanding

1.1.b.4 Phone orders are processed in a timely fashion and meeting customer needs (CSS and order analysis) - Outstanding

1.1.b.5 Phone repairs are completed in a timely fashion and meeting customer needs (CSS and order analysis) - Excellent

Our self-assessment team identified areas of opportunity for enhanced performance and will address those areas in the following report. 

There were no open items from the 2000 review. 

Departmental Overview

Laboratory Mission

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. 

 

Organizational Missions

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 completing a telephone switch upgrade; transitioning network services to new vendors; researching and analyzing options for a switch replacement or contract re-negotiation; and reducing hardware order completion times.

 Identification of Self-Assessment Report Staff

Names, titles, affiliations of participants

Les Cottrell, Assistant Director, SLAC Computing Services

David Howard, Telecommunications Manager, SLAC Computing Services

Brenda Eberle, Telecommunications Analyst, SLAC Computing Services

Fred Hooker, Network Operations Supervisor, SLAC Computing Services

Status of Systems

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. 

SLAC has 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 will end in June 2002.  This service includes Nextira owned switching equipment, the telephone cable plant and a dedicated technician.  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.  

The Nextira-supplied telephone system includes a 4,150-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 more advanced and expensive 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 (3500 ports) and some proprietary multi-line instruments (300 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. 

In October 2001, we completed a PBX upgrade that brought our switch hardware and software to current levels.  The upgrade included hardware to support ISDN PRI's for our local and FTS2001 traffic, improvements to our system management tools, and support for additional digital telephones and analog message waiting lamp telephones.  The upgrade was planned to minimize the impact on our user community.  It was negotiated and completed at no additional cost to the contract. 

SLAC pays 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.  Carrier services are based on current CPUC tariff and federal government rates and paging and radio services using a negotiated rate structure. 

During the past year, we have negotiated with Nextira to clarify the status of the PBX at the end of the lease in June 2002.  Nextira has agreed that SLAC will own the switch, with no additional charge or buy out.  We have developed a procurement schedule, completed the second draft of specifications and RFP, and prepared a comprehensive list of vendors for cable and telephone services required to maintain the SLAC-owned system at the end of the lease. 

During the past year we have completed the conversion of our paper cable records to an electronic spreadsheet.  Incomplete and inaccurate information in the records is gradually being corrected as errors are found.  We estimate that we have improved the accuracy of the records by ten percent over the past six months. 

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. 

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. 

Discussion of Individual Performance Objectives

2000 Telephone Services Self-Assessment

Services: We obtained traffic studies through Williams Communications (now Nextira) to review our trunk requirements, before and after the PBX upgrade in October 2000.  In November 2000, we replaced our DID trunks and local outgoing trunks with four ISDN PRI's.  This provides us with some additional economy of scale with respect to the total number of trunks needed to support our traffic.  In addition, we are able to provide our users calling party identification on digital display phones.  At the time of the upgrade, we conducted a complete review of our PBX routing information.  This included the elimination of routes that were no longer needed and verification that all calls are routed as intended.  We also recovered facilities and deleted definitions for trunks that were disconnected following the upgrade. 

Our transition of FTS2000 voice services to FTS2001 was completed in November 2000, about a week after our PBX upgrade.  Bringing these services directly into the PBX, rather than through the Teleos hub, significantly improves the reliability and serviceability of the connections.  Our transition of FTS2000 videoconference services to FTS2001 was completed in May 2001.  The FTS2000 ISDN PRI’s for voice and videoconference services were disconnected following the transition of each service to FTS2001. 

We have recently developed a program to analyze our usage of Intra-LATA telephone services, based on CDR data.  We expect that this will allow us to better evaluate our use of local telephone services and the available alternatives. 

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 2000 survey.  Twenty out of sixty ATOMs chose to participate in the survey. 

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

Our goal is to complete most software orders in one week or less.   

The following table shows selected measurements for software orders. 

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 are shown by the blue line and labels on the right axis. 

Ninety-three percent of software orders are completed within one week.  In 2000, eighty-six percent of orders were completed within one week.  There has been a small improvement in processing times for most software orders.  This is most clear when comparing the times required to complete eighty or ninety percent of the orders.  For example, the time required to complete ninety percent of orders dropped from nine days, in 2000, to five days, in 2001.  This was accomplished in spite of the need to find and train a new system administrator in March 2001. 

 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 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.

Eighty-six percent of hardware orders are completed within four weeks.  This 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. 

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 percent of ATOMs rated performance as acceptable or better.  

ATOMs were also asked to indicate whether they agreed with the statement "Hardware orders are completed in a reasonable length of time."  Sixty-five percent of ATOMs rated performance as acceptable or better. 

We have continued to focus on improving our hardware order completion times.  We performed weekly order analysis, prioritization for hardware orders that are open in excess of fourteen days, and escalation of issues causing delays in order completion.  

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.  In 2000, we collected data only from SPRS.  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.  This year we experimented with using a spreadsheet to collect information on voice requests.  Currently, the system administrator and technician are entering all such requests into SPRS for tracking purposes.  Although this requires additional administrative overhead, we believe that it will provide more reliable information on repair completion times as well as the causes and resolutions of telephone problems. 

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. 

Our goal is to complete most repairs in one business day or less. 

The table below shows selected measurements for repair requests. 

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-five percent of repairs are completed in one day or less.  This is a significant improvement from 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).  Eighty-five percent of the ATOMs rated performance as acceptable or better.

 
2001 Emergency Communications Self-Assessment

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.  That is 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 eight 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 has been taken over by SLAC’s SCS Helpdesk personnel.  Following each test, users verbally communicate the quality of the tests results to the wireless analyst.  If there were any portable/base station/mobile unit problems, the Helpdesk 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 user's 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.  

Contract compliance: 

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. 

Objectives/Goals for FY 2002

1. Implement a PBX software patch required to utilize the Meridian Administration Tools. Send the new System Administrator to training. Implement new procedures to take advantage of new administrative capabilities.

2. Implement a new call data buffer to replace the no-longer-maintained VAX system.

3. Issue the RFP, select a vendor, and finalize the contract for cable and telephone services.

4. Support the opening of the new Research Office building with new telephones and cabling.

5. Continue to increase the number of telephones and PBX ports with message waiting lamp support and slowly phase out equipment that does not support this function.

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For Questions or comments, Please contact Ziba Mahdavi, Last Updated 10/24/00