>> Hello.
>> Hello.
>> Welcome to the Full Service Workshop number five,
a case for modernization.
I'm Bill Kinter.
I'm with the transition coordination center,
and I will be your coordinator for today's workshop.
Go to the next slide, please.
So this session is being recorded, and we want people
to know, if you want to download the slides in advance,
if you see the Adobe Connect files pod, you can click
on the presentation name,
and then click the download files button.
And you can then have the presentation locally there,
so you can take notes or whatever you would like.
We will also make the slides available after the session.
So we want this workshop to be as interactive as possible.
This is a workshop format, not a college lecture format.
So we want to make sure that everyone feels free
to be interactive, but because we do have a large group here
today, we would like you to submit questions in the Q&A pod.
And if you question pertains to a particular slide,
please reference the slide number
when you type in your question.
I will make sure that we pause periodically throughout the
workshop to address questions and facilitate discussion.
And finally, we ask you
to please make sure you mute your phone unless you're looking
to ask a question.
Go to the next slide, please.
So we've assembled a panel of subject matter experts here
to address your questions.
You can see who they are, for those that participated in some
of the past Full Service workshops.
There are definitely familiar names here.
Can you go to the next slide?
Okay, we have someone we need in mute, please.
You can either do that locally, or star six.
Okay, the agenda today we're going to present on the case
for modernizing using IP, then talk about the benefits
of transformation to IPVS.
Going to talk about an enterprise plan,
and how that should be possible for your agency.
I'm going to address dealing with islands of TDM and voice.
What that relates to is, as you move toward voice,
we'll probably have a period of time
where you'll have both TDM and voice over IP.
And we will talk about, from an acquisition
or solicitation standpoint,
a possible approach moving forward.
I am going to conclude this part with questions you may have.
We have somebody who definitely needs to mute.
>> Yes, sir, you got water, too.
>> If you're listening to the full service workshop,
please put your phone on mute.
>> And then, finally, at the end, after questions,
we have Ken Palmer here, and for those that want to stay on,
we want to give an update on inventory report 24.
So with that, I will turn it over to Ray Cwenar, the director
of the transition and service delivery division
for some opening remarks, along with some course objectives.
>> Okay, thank you, Bill.
I want to welcome everyone to our first full-service workshop,
and as Bill said, my name's Ray Cwenar.
I'm the director of transition service delivery here
at the GSA Office of Telecommunications Services.
I'm pleased to note that our workshops have been
well-attended in the past.
Workshops we have done we have approximately 150 participants
in each section.
All of us at GSA do appreciate the dedication
and effort our agencies are working towards
in time and with the budget.
Today's workshop will focus on information technology,
modernization with particular emphasis
on transforming legacy services to IP-based solutions.
This session is a good follow-up session to the session
that we had last time, where we talked about different IP,
voiceover IP services.
More or less a follow-on to that.
Completion of this workshop, participants will be able
to identify cost elements and tradeoffs between voice over IP,
legacy voice solutions, or TDM, describe the benefits
of modernizing of voice services,
and explain the decision making
for adoption an enterprise model, understanding
and understand the practical voice solution approaches
that can be applied.
>> I apologize to interrupt, but you're breaking up I'm not sure
if it's just me, or not.
>> It is not just you.
>> We're all hearing it.
>> We've got static on the line.
We can't figure out exactly which line it's coming from.
So what we'll have to do is mute everybody,
see if that'll turn it off,
and then we'll go to the Q&A live part.
Then we will, we'll unmute.
>> I can tell you that I got static when I dialed
in through my computer, and when I dialed in through my landline.
So I was thinking it was probably your connection, GSA.
>> Just drop and then reconnect.
Try that?
>> So what we can do is, I can drop real quick,
or we can try and work through it.
>> Caroline, is that any better?
>> It got better.
>> Yeah, that's much better.
>> Okay, great.
>> Thank you.
>> Excellent.
Thank you.
>> All right, that's all right, so this is Ray.
If I could finish up.
We do have three speakers today, but one further remark.
Voice transformation is one
of the many IT modernization opportunities provided
by the EIS transition.
As you know, the EIS contract serves as an integral part
of the administration's government-wide IT modernization
plan, and EIS is acknowledged
as a vehicle the government will use
to implement IT modernization.
By pursuing voice transformation,
agencies we'll achieve many of the administration's goal
of IT modernization, including replacing -- replace --
the replacement of obsolete sun-setting PSTN technology,
migration to a cloud, commercial cloud services,
and consolidating acquisitions for voice services
on a single-contract vehicle.
So with that, we will now get into the heart of the briefing,
and let me introduce Javad.
And Javad, I'll ask you to just introduce yourself to the group,
and then you can take it from there.
Thank you.
>> Thank you, Ray.
This is Javad Boroumand.
I'm with TOA support.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My portion of the presentation is going to cover some
of the concerns that we have heard from you all
on the challenges associated
with transforming voice services.
And hopefully this presentation will address some
of these concerns, and show that they may not be as big
of a concern as some may think,
and that there are some legitimate solutions
that can help modernization happen faster,
and perhaps even from day one.
So, but Ray, I'm sorry, I'm not seeing anything
on the screen for a slide.
>> Yeah, we just, we're reconnecting here.
Sorry.
>> Okay. So I'm going to just try, should I pause,
or should I move forward?
Oh, here we go.
I think it's just getting back online now.
Okay. Here we go.
So the concerns I just referred to, we can generally say
that there is one primary concern, and that has to do
with cost, specifically the prohibitive cost
of the up-front items, including inside wiring, handsets,
LAN switches, routers, and so forth, a heavy lift that needs
to happen at the beginning, both from a cost perspective,
and also in terms of the transition schedule and effort.
Two other concerns that come up frequently are
in transformation, especially modernizing voice,
is often equated to delays in EIS transition,
especially with the March 2020 date looming.
And so a number of agencies are looking or have been looking,
up to recently, to do like-for-like transition,
and then look at that full transformation afterwards.
And again, I don't think that's necessarily needs to happen,
as we show in some of the arguments in this presentation.
And finally, a common situation with many agencies is
that the voice services decision-making
and governance are very decentralized
across many sub-agencies, and in some cases, sub-sub-agencies.
And therefore, to get everyone on the same page and come
up with an enterprise-level strategy and plan is difficult,
regardless of the delays that that --
or the date for the transition.
So these are the three common concerns that we hear,
and I'm going to spend a good chunk of time on the first one.
And then, we'll touch on the second and third ones as well.
Next slide.
So this slide is meant to show you on the left that,
generally speaking, I'm sorry, one more thing,
if you can go back to the previous slide.
I missed one item, the disclaimer on the bottom.
There are always cases, and in particular, the two cases I have
in here, where the TDM services are used
for specialized devices, for telemetry, alarms,
sensors, data in general.
And the case where there are agency-specific security
requirements beyond what's included in the TIC 2.0
that may prevent any particular agency or sub-agency
for a particular site from being, well you know,
from what we have developed in this presentation
to be applicable to that.
Now, we think that that may not be the case, even if some
of these requirements do exist,
and there are ways to mitigate that.
But I just want to put this out there,
because almost every agency has these special requirements.
And I want to make sure we're really talking
about the typical case of voice usage, in terms of offices
and regular normal business operations,
and not any of these specific requirements.
Next slide.
So on the left, you see three buckets
of current TDM services within the agencies.
On the top, and usually, they go by the size of the site.
So larger sites have already agency PBXs, and they use PRIs.
You go to the smaller sites, the medium-rate sites,
they may have a shared PBX through GSA full service,
and then all the way through smaller sites
that have individual TDM circuits, in terms of POTS,
Centrex, BRIs and so forth.
The way these map into the EIS services, and by the way,
this slide is not meant to be a comprehensive view
of everything that's possible under EIS.
But it specifically highlights the fact
that there are IPVS solutions
that these legacy services map to, but there are also,
but they may not map in every situation.
In particular, the smaller the sites get, even if you look
at something like an IPVS-hosted service,
there is a fixed cost associated with the circuit,
with the Ethernet circuit that you bring in.
So based on the size, based on the number of the phone lines
on that site, they may or may not fit, in terms of the,
what we call the five-year model that we have developed
for transition, or for transformation.
Meaning that, within a five-year period,
you can recover the cost, and of course,
you can look at it differently.
But the five years will be a state, in terms of the period
that we want to answer the question that's below the
dotted line.
For how small of the site,
I still can apply IPVS hosted voice solution,
and still recover that initial up-front cost,
including inside wiring and so forth.
And of course, if I don't, if it doesn't fit, then you can go
with CSVS, which is still available,
although at higher cost per unit, and, or you can go
to wireless solutions.
In this case, this meant a wireless cellular solution,
and so, and of course, there's also other options in terms
of innovative ways of getting access arrangement beyond your
traditional Ethernet, in terms of fixed wireless and so forth,
and that's included on the right side.
So the walk-away from this is that I have a lot
of options for my large sites.
In fact, every possible IPVS option is available
for the good price of an agency PBX.
You go down the list, your options become more limited.
And so, the question is, and of course, that has to do strictly
with economics of the sites, and the number of phone lines,
and how that translates into the various components of the IPVS
that you have to purchase.
Next slide.
>> So, Javad, before we go to the next slide,
we have a participant that has some concerns
with the assumptions.
Steve Holder, if you want to come off mute,
would you like to ask a question of Javad?
Steve, if you're talking, we're not hearing you.
Okay, well, maybe we'll catch up with him in another slide or so.
So why don't you go ahead and continue?
>> Sure. So this actually, well this slide captures and works
on the things I've already said, that larger sites,
more flexibility, and of course,
the cost saving can be realized immediately
if agency keeps the legacy PBX at the site,
and just goes to SIP trunking.
The prices for the PRI access
under EIS are significantly higher
than the previous contracts, on average, around 30% plus.
And so that could be just a main motivator.
If nothing else, you know, keep your old wiring,
keep your old phones, existing PBX,
and just migrate to SIP trunking.
And again, I say this with the disclaimer in mind,
that there are always security, other requirements
that may prevent you from doing that.
I have heard from agencies that we can't go to SIP.
It has to be PRIs.
But those security, but those special circumstances apply,
and there even may be some vendor solutions
that could mitigate those situations
that you still can buy.
You know, pay SIP trunks prices,
but actually hand off to you as PRIs.
But it's an easier problem.
The first bullet is an easier problem.
Savings are immediate.
You have the economies of scale to deal with it.
If you want to go ahead and do a full transformation,
including your inside wiring, and get the IP phones,
and get the everything you know,
everything in the modern LAN, sure.
That can also be modeled, but you don't have to.
At the least, you can get rid of the PRIs, go to SIP,
realize the immediate savings, and then you can work the rest
of the problem as you move beyond the transition.
However, when we switch to the smaller site,
becomes a little bit more difficult.
And that's where we have developed this so-called cost
of ownership model, to show
at what point the dotted line you saw in the previous slide.
At what point the IPVS solution,
in particular the hosted voice solution,
will not make sense for a site anymore.
And you either have to stay
with legacy services, or do something else.
Based on, and I'll show you some numbers in a few minutes.
Based on what we have done so far in the model, we're showing
that you can go down to sites with as little as five to,
I'm sorry, eight to 15 phone lines.
And of course, the variance between agencies can depend
on the location, and for it to still make sense for you
to use to switch to IPVS.
For that site, and that site alone.
It should be very clear I'm not talking
about doing an enterprise approach, and in some sites,
you lose money, and some sites, you gain, you know, money.
And therefore, at the, you know,
when you combine all together, it makes sense.
No, we're talking an individual site,
and this becomes pretty critical as we talk
about the enterprise approach later on.
So, on a site-by-site analysis, based on the location,
the answer is, so far and of course,
we haven't analyzed all locations.
You know, we have 63,000 NSCs in the government,
and probably more now.
It has grown in the past couple of years, so,
but based on analysis we have done so far, the number,
the number, the worst case has been 15,
and the best case has been eight.
Next slide.
>> This is Steve Holder at USGS.
Can you hear me now?
>> Yes, yes, we can hear you.
>> Yes, we can.
>> Okay. Okay, I got my problem fixed.
My biggest problem was with your first bullet on page five is,
you know, I've been doing PBXs for 18 years, and, you know,
the phone on the desk has no bearing on the type
of phone system you have.
I mean, my phone system, I can do digital, analog, or IP,
and most of what we've got across our bureau do.
So the cost for having to rewire and buy new phones and all that,
I strongly disagree with.
That, you know, that may be the case in some places,
and probably not in others, and the other thing is, is the phone
on the desk as long as there's a phone system/PBX in the middle,
it doesn't matter what kind of trunks you bring into the PBX,
as long as it can handle them.
And the phone on the desk doesn't matter.
I mean, I can put a princess phone on every desk,
and whether I've got SIP trunks, or PRIs, it doesn't matter.
So I think you've got, and then, you know,
I'm not sure why you think everybody has to re-cable
and run out and buy new phones.
So I'm not sure what your logic is for that statement.
>> No, we're not making that statement at all.
In fact, I was just saying that if you have the PBX today,
and in a larger site, you don't have to do that at all.
>> Right, on page five, your very first,
your very first bullet talks about the prohibitive cost
of having to re-cable and buy new phones, which, you know,
what I'm, what I'm refuting.
>> Right, but that's a, but that's the
across all sizes of sites.
You go to a smaller site that doesn't have the PBX,
that's an entirely different situation.
Or has a PBX that's under a shared full-service PBX,
and therefore, we have to look to these solutions.
So whether it's POTS lines, BRIs, Centrex, or GSA-owned,
shared, multi-tenant PBX solution,
that's where this problem comes in.
With the larger sites, because you have that economies
of scale I mentioned, you can, you know,
if you want to negotiate PRIs, and stay on that,
that's perfectly fine.
If PRIs are going up for your particular locations,
and SIP trunking is a cheaper solution,
you have that option, too.
In fact, you have vendors, as I mentioned,
that you actually buy SIP trunks from them,
but they may actually provision it
from a user interface perspective,
or a user network interface perspective, a PRI.
The handoff to you is a PRI, but them,
it's just another SIP traffic.
There are many options.
The larger the site, there are many options.
The smaller the site, the problem becomes big.
And so, one question is, then, then why we are we worried
about the large sites?
Because you want to have an enterprise approach
to the degree possible.
You want to be able to, and whether that's just,
that's just so you can move to new price limitations,
take advantage of certain features, have,
so you want to be able to have your large sites
and smaller sites to be as uniform as possible.
Now, this is very agency-specific situation.
Some cases, smaller sites have completely different missions,
may not even have a data circuit, and so forth.
So we're talking generally across many different agencies.
>> Now, what are the service providers doing to push fiber
to all these remote locations
that currently don't have it today,
and it would be cost prohibitive to install?
You know, they're trying to abandon their copper networks,
but a lot of the places that a lot of our locations are at,
that's the only game in town, and you know,
especially when you look at a lot
of the remote federal places.
And if it's the only thing down the end of that road,
there's nobody in their right mind going
to install fiber for free.
>> You're absolutely correct, but I also argue
that fiber may not be your only problem.
So for the models we've done, it's that even
if you take the price of an access arrangement,
let's say 1 Mbps dedicated,
or even shared Ethernet with VPNS port.
And let's make an assumption, just for the sake
of this discussion here, that for the sites you've mentioned
at the end of that long road, that's the same price
as your main regional building in that CBSA.
The model shows that still doesn't work.
You still have to have at least eight phone lines,
and probably more in that particular situation,
probably more like 12
or 15 phone lines before the price that's already
in on the books in EIS would actually make sense to you.
Now, you add the cost of special construction,
or much higher access arrangements, of course,
then it gets much worse.
So for those sites, as I show in here, if you go to the,
one more slide to the next one.
No, no, the one with, with the graphics.
So below that dotted line, Steve, that's where,
that's what you're talking about.
And frankly, right now, it's either continue
to use the copper infrastructure for as long
as the carriers are willing to maintain that infrastructure,
or go to wireless, if it's even in the coverage.
In terms of a national broadband strategy, what is the,
you know, government doing?
That is not even GSA, or any of the agencies here.
It's really FCC and the broader, you know,
discussions with whole, you know,
national broadband initiative.
What, it's a much bigger conversation.
It's a very challenging conversation for a lot
of the carriers that have made a lot of investments with fiber,
and they're still recouping that cost.
What can we do from an EIS perspective to influence that?
I am not sure, other than aggressively put
that in your solicitations, and very clearly communicate
with the EIS contractors
that this is the direction you want to go.
And let them go figure out how they might be able to build some
of the special constructions into their cost,
and do it in such a way that it will not be another big,
spiking, up-front cost for you, but build it
over a period of time.
And by the way, I would even throw inside wiring into that,
in fact that's one of the main purpose of this model,
is that if you get the inside wiring with the cost
of the phone, and spread that over a five-year period,
including finance, and cost of money, and all of that.
Does it still make sense in a five-year cost recovery model?
Okay, next.
I want to proceed, but at the same time, Steve, if you're,
if you have more questions, please.
Okay. So as I said, we've ran the numbers in this model,
and in the next slide,
I go through specific assumptions we've made.
But the numbers, again, are between eight and 15,
as the column on the left shows.
In our worst case, we have 15,
and in the best case, we have eight.
It would be great if that number can go to, like, you know, five,
or four, and we get down to offices that have only, like,
you know, couple of people.
And interesting enough, there are actually those sites,
plenty of those sites within the government,
but the smaller the site we can go,
the more we can have a uniform plan and enterprise plan,
and for the, and take advantage of volume discounts,
and take advantage of smoother transition, and so forth.
Not to mention, of course, you can have more of a you know,
have the limited CSVS ask,
then you have a much broader set of competition.
All the EIS contractors could compete for your business.
The more you have CSVS, because the more you have those smaller
sites, and depending on the location and the CSVS, CBSA,
that could be limited.
In terms of CBSAs, we have picked five.
One, the number one, 25, 300, and a 900, just so we have the,
kind of like a sample, a good sample representative
of all the CBSAs, all the 929 of them.
This model still is based on individual NSC
within those CBSAs, and as we know,
the price can vary somewhat from you know,
NSC to NSC within a CBSA.
The next version of the model, we'll try to run all NSCs
within those CBSAs, and present an average price
for all the NSCs, as opposed to just pick one.
But as you see, the numbers for CSVS are pretty much linear.
That's just because we take the cost of the dial tone
and the access arrangement, and we'll just multiply
by the number of lines you need.
Whereas on the IPVS side, there's a fixed cost associated
with the Ethernet circuit and the VPNS port, and then you pay
on a per-seat basis for the hosted VoIP solution.
So once we've run all of the NSCs,
and even we start making different assumptions
on the model and you'll see assumptions next.
I would be surprised
if our range changes too much from eight to 15.
In the best-case scenario, we might go down to six or seven.
I don't think we're going to get below that.
And in the worst case, I don't think we're going to go over 20.
And I think that still is a pretty good result
that the agencies can rely on,
in terms of be a little bit more aggressive,
in terms of transition to hosted VoIP.
And again, this is just hosted VoIP.
We did not include premises-based VoIP,
which is an entirely different type
of design and consideration.
So just to make it apples-to-apples, this is CSVS,
you know, whether it's POTS, or Centrex, or PRIs,
no matter how it's provisioned, individual line,
TDM-based dial-tone service,
versus hosted VoIP per-seat service.
>> Javad?
>> Yes?
>> Would it be helpful
if you would define NSC for the participants?
>> Oh, sure.
So NSC stands for network site code.
Every address in the country has one or more NSCs
within a database that the telecommunication companies have
managed over the years.
And this is not limited to the government.
It's been, you know, in any customer.
Any building in the country
that the telecommunication companies serve has an NSC,
and it's really their code for the address.
So when we're talking NSC,
you can essentially take the street address, city,
state and zip code, and forget
about that, and just go with NSC.
So we're really talking about the location.
>> You're comparing the IPVS hosted VOIP to CSVS.
Is the CSVS, the site's got its own PBX,
or is that still a hosted solution
with just different types of trunks?
>> No, you're right.
So I'm glad you asked that question.
The model right now is not fully complete.
Ultimately, we want to include all
of the three buckets I mentioned at the beginning.
You have PBX.
You have your own PBX.
You have GSA PBX, or you have POTS lines.
Right now, the model only includes the last category,
where you have individual lines coming in, and you're trying
to find a replacement for it.
Now, by the way, you can also think about it in terms
of the multi-tenant GSA PBXs.
Because if you're multi-tenant, and you only have I don't know,
10 lines off of that, off of that PBX, then yes,
it's included in this model.
But the CSVS solution absolutely makes no assumption, well,
actually makes the exclusive assumption
that you don't have the PBX.
But it doesn't make any other assumption about how
that individual TDM circuit is provisioned.
It could be Centrex.
It could be POTS.
It could be business analog.
It could be basic rate interface.
It could be any of those.
And the reason that it's the same,
because under EIS, it's the same price.
>> Hi, this is Ellen Lloyd with FDA.
I have a question.
>> Sure, please.
>> Sorry, I just hit mute by mistake.
Okay, looking at this chart, I'm a little confused by the numbers
in yellow, or the numbers in the column.
Are those, is that a dollar amount?
Like, for example, on the first line?
>> Yes. This is.
>> So, so what does that mean?
If there are eight, if you have eight analog lines at a site,
what does that mean under IPVS and CSVS?
That's thousands of dollars, or?
>> Sure, sure.
So under, yes, it's, so let's say, let's go for Washington,
D.C., CBSA number one, if you have a site
in the CBSA number one, for eight lines,
a site that has eight lines coming into it, your CSVS cost
under EIS would be $25,000 over a five-year period.
Your IPVS cost, for a particular version of IPVS,
which is the hosted VOIP, as in the heading of the table,
is $36,000 over five years.
But, it's and I'll go on the next slide,
what's included is a lot
of stuff that's included in that $36,000.
To make an apples-to-apples comparison, we made a number
of assumptions you see next, but yes.
And what the yellow means is that, at what point in the scale
of the number of lines the cost
between the two solutions are either,
are pretty close, within $1000.
>> Right, I see.
>> Right?
>> I see.
>> Okay? So in Washington DC
>> That sounds, that sounds like an awful lot of money.
Is that comparable?
I mean, I have no idea how much it costs over five years
for eight analog lines, but is that comparable
to what we're currently paying under TOPS?
>> For that, well, there are a couple of things.
First of all, this is just the model
for relative comparison purposes.
To really do this in a way to answer your question,
we have to take all of the NSCs
in that CBSA number one and average them.
And even then, we can give you a better answer,
but not a complete accurate answer, because we have to look
at your particular site.
>> Sure.
>> For right?
I mean, NSC Washington,
D.C. CBSA could be downtown Washington.
It could also be parts of West Virginia, right?
And even in Washington, it could be somewhere that depends
on competition, you've got fiber.
You've got all sort of different media coming in.
Or it could be a particular building that,
for whatever reason, the landlord has not worked
with the telecomm companies, and there's only one, you know,
mom-and-pop shop provider, and you're going to pay a lot
of money to get that circuit.
So we really have to look at the NSC, but that aside,
from an active arrangement perspective, just looking
at what you pay today, as I said in the first slide, in general,
on an average and these are very important qualifications.
Because average means average across the country,
and average across all 10 contractors.
Your prices, your TDM prices are going up somewhere in the 20,
30, maybe even higher than 30%.
>> Oh. So umm.
>> Now, there's one assumption.
>> OK, go ahead.
>> Do you want to share the assumption at this point?
Javad, do you want to share the assumptions at this point, so --
>> Yes, I think, I think yeah,
I think we should probably, you're right.
We probably should jump in the assumptions,
and then we can come back and describe the chart if they want.
So next slide, please.
Okay.
>> So, Ellen, just hold for a second, and let's walk
through the assumptions.
Then you'll kind of get a better feel
for what's building into these numbers.
>> Right.
>> Okay, thank you.
>> So the key variables is it's a five-year model.
And why five years?
Because when you invest in the land switches, and routers,
and phones, well, phones can go probably more than five years.
But generally, a lot of this type of hardware, people think
about in five-year refresh cycles.
You can 10, or seven, because the wiring, the inside wiring
that we're building into this obviously is going to be good
for at least seven years, if not 10 years.
So we can do a 10-year model, too.
The only problem is, going with a seven-year and 10-year model,
then it raises the question would you even be able
to purchase CSVS at a, you know, at an individual line level
in five or in seven or 10 years?
There are a lot of assumptions out there,
and some vendors actually have validated them
through industry dates, that they may be pulling
out of providing those services
at some point during the life of EIS.
So that's one consideration.
In terms of the actual prices, we used the public price search,
so year one prices, and we pulled the prices for that NSC
in the five locations you saw in the previous chart.
And we did a median across everyone
who has proposed a price.
For IPVS, a lot of places you know,
I got nine prices, or 10 prices.
For CSVS, it was anywhere between two to four prices.
And that's just because those particular EIS contractors may
not have that CBSA, or if they have the CBSA,
the pricer at this point doesn't have the price
from that particular NSC.
Next assumptions, the discounts
and this is the important assumption.
Our view is that the EIS contractors are not likely
to provide any discounts on CSVS.
In fact, their margins are pretty thin.
A lot of times, they're reselling the service
from one provider, so they don't even have any room to cut.
Whereas, with IPVS, they have more leverage, more flexibility.
Often, it's their own infrastructure,
at least in terms of the switches, and call control,
and so forth, even if it means they're buying access
arrangement from someone else.
And so, they can go deeper, in terms of discounts,
and that would be a task-order specific decision,
of course, by them.
The model includes a volume discount that's already
in the pricer when you cross the 1000 or 10,000 IPVS seats.
The next bullet it's, it's, that's old.
You can ignore that.
That was from the start of the model,
but then we switched that.
So that's the one that says year-over-year price increase is
no longer valid.
And Scott, my apologies.
I forgot to take that out.
Next one is, we're assuming $130 for each handset.
You can go less than that, if you want.
I mean, you can go a lot less than that
if you just want soft clients, but if you want an actual,
you know, handset on your desk, you can go really from 80 to
and there's no limit, because it can be a speakerphone.
It can have a color LCD.
You can have all sort of bells and whistles.
But 130, we felt, is a good average number.
It gives you pretty decent functionality, and a good codex,
which actually saves, in terms of the bandwidth.
And then the last one, which is also a big assumption,
is the cost of the actual providing
of the Cat6 cables per drop.
Range are from $150 to $450 per drop, depending on the age
of the building, the kind of walls and ceilings you have,
the vertical risers, whole bunch
of questions, issues and questions.
So I just picked 300 as the right
in the middle of the range.
Changing these numbers, the discount assumption,
the inside wiring, the cost of the phone, the length,
the period you are modeling, have great impact.
Any one of them have great impacts
on your model on your prices.
So again, that's why I'm putting the assumptions in here,
so then you can look at these assumptions and either agree
with them, and say, "Yeah, it applies to me,"
or if you think any of them are very different
than what you see, then definitely, please let me know.
And then we'll try to improve the model as we go.
>> Hey, Javad, we have a question from Steve Holder.
>> Sure.
>> Steve, if you'd like to go ahead and ask your PBX question.
>> Yeah. Basically, you know, I've been, like I said,
I've been doing this a while.
$130 a month for a brand-new phone that must be a very basic,
low-end phone, and then the I guess, kind of along that lines,
which PBX manufacturer solutions are you offering
for these hosted VoIPs?
And then, secondly, what level
of section 508 compliance is required?
Because in my years of experience, if I just say it has
to be section 508 compliant, if they meet one of the 12 things
in section 508, they're just as compliant
as the person that does all 12.
So I've actually taken reverse approach, is, I specify the ones
that are most critical, and the one that most
of them can't do is voicemail that answers in TTY tones.
They all, well, we got to have this other add-on device.
It's like, no, it needs to be a language
in the voicemail system.
And so, a lot of them don't pass muster for our organization,
because we've got a very vocal group of people
that require section 508.
And so I'm just wondering
which of those two approaches the EIS contract has taken.
I would suspect it was probably generic, so if they do one
of the 12, then that may
or may not meet an agency's requirements.
>> Okay, let me tackle the easiest question first,
in terms of the cost of the phone.
If you remember from the last workshop,
I think Paul actually had a pretty good slide.
I'm searching it as we speak on the various costs
of various phones offered, Cisco, Avaya, so forth,
and the cost that was under Networx.
And I did some of my own research, and I came up with 130
as one that I felt had sufficient number of features.
Again, you can disagree, and in any particular agencies
or particular applications, you know, within an agency,
you may need something that's more like 200 or $300.
I'm trying to remember the model from the top of my head.
I don't know if it was a Cisco 79-something, but anyway,
so that's where that assumption comes in.
In terms of the PBXs, what services with IP PBX
that they use inside their hosted voice cloud,
that is entirely up to the EIS contractor.
The, from what I understand,
the hosted voice does not make any assumption or requirement,
other than particular performance requirements
and service features, and interfaces, and so forth.
If one of the EIS contractors decides to use Broad Soft,
not Cisco, versus an Avaya, versus Sonos,
versus someone else, that's entirely up to them.
You're really buying a service
that the entire call control system are incorporated
in the cloud.
Now, whether you need to have a session border control
at your site for security purposes,
those become customizations that need to be dealt with.
If you go to the premises-based IPVS, which is not part
of the model, then of course,
you would have substantial portions of the call control,
if not all of it, on your site.
At that point, you can either specify, or you can leave
to the EIS contractor
to understand your requirements and propose.
Your last question about compliance, that is not my area,
so I look to other folks here from GSA, or others,
if anyone understands what
that section 508 I think he mentioned is
and what does that mean.
>> Yeah, Steve, we'll take that, and we'll get back to folks
on the question about 508 compliance.
>> Okay. Thank you.
>> And next slide.
>> All right.
Javad, you got 15 minutes.
>> Okay, I'll go through this pretty quickly.
So next slide, some minor assumptions.
The --
So the, not sure if you're looking at the right slide
but I think, Scott, this is the one that talks about the, okay,
here we go that's okay.
The other assumptions, I can talk to it.
I'm not sure if you have the right slide there,
but the other assumptions are basically,
I'm including a VPNS port.
The port could be 1 MB dedicated Ethernet or 3 MB,
depending on your bandwidth consumption.
In terms of the bandwidth consumption,
I'm going with 90 kilobits per second for each concurrent call.
That number could be anywhere between 28 kilobits
to 90 kilobits, depending on the codex on the phone,
but since we're trying to really do an apples-to-apples
to traditional legacy services, I'm going with 90.
Then the next assumption is how many concurrent calls you're
going to have for any given number of phone lines.
Traditionally, people have used the ratio of four to one
for sites for numbers larger than 100,
meaning that if you have 100 phone lines in an office,
at any given time, 25 people are on the phone.
As you go smaller in terms of the number of phone lines
that ratio changes all the way to one to one.
So if you have an office of five people there are definitely
chances, during peak hours especially,
that all five people would be on the phone at the same time.
So that's a one to one ratio.
So the model goes anywhere from one to four ratio,
all the way down to one to one ratio on an exponential curve.
And we're assuming, again, 90 kilobits per second
for each call, and when you do the math on all of that,
I think it comes to on the top of my head, up to 23,
or it's up to 16, I think, phone calls or phone lines, I'm sorry,
up to 23 phone lines, you can live
with a dedicated Ethernet 1 megabits per second.
So that's 1 MB access arrangement, and 1 MB VPNS port.
The next jump, because 2 MB is optional
under EIS, we jump to 3 MB.
This is dedicated Ethernet, and I specifically went
with dedicated because, again,
we don't want any bandwidth issue, you know, packet drop,
or anything else, or congestion -- not packet drop,
but congestion to become a problem.
So we went with dedicated Ethernet,
and the next jump is 3 MB.
So that's one assumption.
Managed LAN services is included,
and that's a per-seat cost.
Now, you may say, "Well, I don't have that on the TDM side."
Well, on the TDM side, there's really not a lot to manage.
When you get a, you know, POTS line, essentially,
it's in a punch block, or whatever, and then a bunch
of wires all the way to your phone.
With the IPVS, you have the router.
You have the Power over Ethernet switch,
and associated management, security, all of that stuff.
So that's where the managed LAN service comes in.
So those are some of the assumptions
that are built into the model.
The, and this slide you're looking at, it basically talks
about the challenges with the smaller sites.
I think we already covered that, but it's important
in relationship to the assumptions.
Like, for a lot of these sites the smaller sites,
there's not a lot of information,
in terms of their inside wiring, what they have,
how old is the building, and so forth.
Even power, you know, if I bring the solutions in,
do I have enough power?
Do I have the power conditioning?
Do I have the rack space?
Do I have the closet space?
But because a lot of these things are unknown,
and there's really no way
of validating those things before the solicitation,
and a lot of this heavy lifting needs to happen afterwards,
we just have to make those large assumptions in the model.
Next, okay, so now let's switch to the other two concerns.
So now that we established that cost is not as big of a deal
as we might have originally thought,
again, for smaller sites.
For larger sites, we knew that was not the case.
Let's see if, what does that mean,
in terms of the transition delays?
If you go with a large volume of CSVS in your traffic model,
number one, we have to do more work to make sure
that it's accurate, because CBSAs are involved.
With IPVS, we don't have, we're not as restricted.
We know at least there are a couple of vendors
that cover entire 929, and other ones that are going
to probably do contract mods.
Eventually, everyone's going to move that direction anyway,
whereas we have limited coverage on CSVS.
So to begin with, we have to perform a CBSA-based analysis,
and then we have to do a more inaccurate job
of reflecting the traffic models in your bids, in your RFPs,
and that takes more time.
On this, a lot of these contract mods can happen quickly.
Before the solicitations hit the street and awards are made,
you may be limited in competition,
and limited competition could complicate your
evaluation process.
So these are the risks that could lead to delays
in the pre-task-award stage of the process.
In the post-task-award, of course, there's the heavy lift
of inside wiring changes, user training, you know,
configuring all those hardware I just mentioned, switches,
and the routers, security, and so forth.
But because IPVS is in the strategic direction
of the industry, and the EIS contractors have priced it
to provide you with all the incentives to move away
from CSVS and migrate to IPVS,
I think they will be a lot more willing to share that burden
with you, and help you with that heavy lift.
Help, in terms of the waiving certain costs,
throwing in engineering and project management resources
for transition, and so forth.
You can even specify that, and say, "Hey, it's a concern.
If you go with IPVS from day one, we don't want any,
you know, you need to come back and assure me
that you will provide enough resources
as to not cause delays in my transition."
And by the way, if you stay with CSVS, unless you really stay
with the same company, with same incumbent,
there will be substantial work, including tracing all
of the TDM circuits, and the wires, and mapping,
and all of that stuff.
So unless it's a paper change between, you know,
two contracts, if you go with a different company,
there will be a lot of heavy lift,
for which you're probably not going to get a lot of support.
So these are the reasons that we think there are definitely,
let's put it this.
The transformation to IPVS should not cause delays.
In fact, I would go as far as claiming that, in some cases,
it may actually speed up your transition.
Next, okay, and lastly and this should be pretty obvious by now,
you don't need an enterprise plan.
You don't need every site, every sub-agency
to make a joint decision to go down this path.
The entire cost analysis we did was on a per-site basis.
Sites can move off of TDM and into IPVS on their own timeline.
If that timeline can happen before, you know, be ready
and execute before March 2020, great.
If not, they can stay on CSVS, and Jim's going to talk next
about how you can structure your fair opportunity solicitation
to reflect that.
They can stay on CSVS, and then migrate
to ease the transition, and so forth.
Some sites, as we mentioned, numbers below eight and 15,
you know, smaller sites may remain on CSVS for a long time,
unless a solution, another solution comes along.
So you're going to deal with a mixed environment,
but because the cost is shown to be on a per-site basis,
you can make an enterprise decision
that you're going to go to VoIP.
And, but different sub-agencies and even different sites
within the sub-agency can move along that direction
in a different timeline.
And I think that's, oh, so there's only one thing you lose
if you do that, and that does have an impact on the model.
If you cannot commit to the thresholds that are required
for volume discounting for IPVS, you may lose that.
But even if you lose that only for the first year or two.
Once you have all of your sites,
that discount is not a per-site discount.
That discount is a per-task-order discount.
So if you hit 10,000 IPVS seats, you're going to get
that 10,000 threshold volume discount.
So it's a small price to pay for the year one or two
to ease the transition,
and eventually realize the cost savings
that are shown in the model.
With that, let me end here, see if there are any more questions,
and if not, we'll turn it to Jim.
>> So, does anybody have any questions for Javad?
>> I got something.
>> Okay. Ray?
>> So, this is Ray Cwenar just a comment or two.
You know, there's, again, as I said earlier,
there's a push towards modernization.
Legacy TDM voice is just one small piece
of that push towards modernization.
Now, we talk about the full-service program.
The full-service program within GSA is in GSA regions one
through 10, and that inventory primarily is TDM.
There's close to 150,000 analog Centrex POTS pipes of lines,
right, old technology.
There's, we have close to 4000 PRIs in that inventory,
up to close to a million DID numbers.
It's huge, the legacy voice service that we have out there,
as a government, and this is just stuff
within GSA's inventory.
And I know there's a lot of other agencies out there
who don't have full service,
but they still have local service on their own.
So, again, this presentation, you know,
it shows us that we can move to VOIP, and as Javad said earlier,
sooner or later, we hear, we've heard it a lot over the years,
that, you know, TDM is going away.
You know, it's going to be sun-setting.
You know, I mean, I don't have a crystal ball.
So, I mean, I don't know when that's going to happen,
but that's what we hear.
So as a government, we need to be mindful of that,
and not be caught short, and be either subject
to huge price increases or discontinue of service.
And as we know, everything is moving towards IP.
So anyway, just a little commentary there.
>> Okay, thanks, Ray.
So, you know, one of the points that Javad made was,
you're going to have a mix, most likely, of the old and the new
for some period as you start to modernize.
So one of the questions we've had, you know, come in,
and has come up in previous workshops is, you know,
from a solicitation standpoint, how do I deal with that issue?
So for the next section of this, let me introduce Jim Soltys.
Jim's going to talk about just one possible approach
that you might consider on how to move forward.
So, Jim, take it away.
>> Thanks, Bill.
This is Jim Soltys.
I'm supporting GSA through the transition ordering assistance
task, and focusing this briefing on, just like Bill said,
how do you actually now implement this as you're trying
to put out a fair opportunity and award a task order.
And so, one of the first things you're obviously going
to do is looking at your inventory,
and the AAI's been provided out there,
provides you a lot of good data.
And in addition to that, it has some usage information
about how much long-distance calling you make
as an agency at various sites.
And so, what we highly recommend is you first do,
is looking at those, and there may be many of your sites
that make very few or no long-distance calls at all
from a certain set of lines.
It could be because you're just making local calls,
or that they're just used for elevators, or security,
or whatever, or they could be more associated
with skated-type solutions.
So in those instances, we want you to look at that,
because it could be that the combination or plans that are
on the EIS contract as standard could be overkill,
in terms of the total amount of features, and inclusion
of an unlimited local and long-distance plan
as we typically get at home.
And so, the vendors have to hedge their bets a little bit,
so they put a little bit of a premium
into that unlimited local and long-distance plan, assuming,
oh, I don't know how many long-distance calls you're going
to be making.
So I have to add a mark-up on that, and not sure
if you're going to make 1000 minutes a month, 10,000 minutes,
they have to take that into account.
So by doing this, we recommend you look at that.
If you're not over 500 minutes, you might want
to consider creating what we consider
or call a task-order-unique CLIN,
where it's an unlimited local-only plan,
and the long distance, you then buy
as a six-second increment whenever you use it,
so it's on a per-usage basis.
Any questions on that before I move to the next slide?
Okay. So next, in terms of looking at your inventory,
you can obviously take that for all your voice services,
and when you're crafting section B, the pricing section,
that we suggest that you require a couple different things.
One of those is say, "I'm going to need site surveys
for X number of locations," and that obviously varies based
on how many locations you have.
And you want to put that in there so it's a priced option,
so you can say, "Okay, I'm going to do a certain number
of site surveys, because I might need to do that in terms
of later on, having to do some inside wiring."
So put that into your section B, get some pricing,
make sure that's on there, it's in scope of your contract,
and you have it to fall back on when needed.
Second thing we recommend is, both for the IPVS
and the circuit switch voice solution service,
is you actually make both of them mandatory
to offer to the vendors.
And what this will do is, and we're assuming here
that you have sites that have a lot
of circuit switch voice service today.
But you want to make or have
that as an option, be able to go for it.
I'll talk about that in the next slide.
When you're asking for the IPVS, if you have a good idea in terms
of the flavor of IPVS you want,
that would be a good thing to do.
If you know that you want premises-based solution,
or hosted solution, or a SIP-trunking solution,
it's better to identify it
and tell the vendors that's what you want.
Because it makes the evaluation process a lot easier,
because you'll get apples-to-apples
and reduce the chance of protest.
Secondly, with the circuit switch, you know, you're putting
that there as a fallback, because it might not be possible
at certain locations to move to IPVS.
And you want to be able to at least make sure
that that's there for your sites,
especially if you have remote sites today
that there's no chance of even getting an IP solution
out there.
And then, last, what we're showing here is an
infrastructure upgrade forecast,
how much inside wiring you may need to do in order
to accommodate modernizing up to an IP solution.
Again, that all depends on what you have today
at your different sites.
Any questions on that?
>> Jim, I'll be shocked if we have no questions on that.
>> Hey, Jim, this is Este,
question on requiring both flavors of voice service.
So on the EIS contract, the EIS contractors only selected one
or the other for the most parts, or one of only one
of them was mandatory.
Is this an issue of requiring them to offer both?
>> Well, again, this, we're recommending this for sites
for agencies that have a lot of circuit switch today.
And the reason is, is we want to make sure
that you can get your solution, and if you require only IPVS,
and they cannot get it to you, what are they going to do
for you as an overall solution?
So what we're having here is, yes,
it's going to potentially dwindle the competitive nature
of this for bidding on it, but you want to be able
to have that as a fallback.
If you're pretty sure that, you know,
an IP solution can meet all of your sites,
let's say you have five or six sites, and they're all
in a metro area, and you're good to go.
Then you wouldn't do this, but I'm talking about the,
typically, the larger agencies that have a lot of remote sites.
This is what you would want to do.
>> Got it.
Thank you.
>> This is Ellen.
Would it be possible to get a copy
of this presentation afterwards?
Because this is a lot of information to look up.
>> Yeah, so, Ellen, if you look down there
on the lower right side, there's a files pod.
You can actually click on that full-service workshop number
five file name.
>> Oh.
>> Open that up, and you can download that.
And we're also going to send it out to everybody after, but,
you know, if you want it a little sooner, you can get it.
>> Oh, okay.
Okay, thank you.
It's a lot of good information, but it's a lot to take in.
Because I know at FDA, we have a lot of remote sites,
and we've been moving off of our site, all of our sites,
practically all of our sites now are using voice over IP,
though we're using, we're not using GSA's voice over IP.
But we do have lots of lines that are still
or that may still be connected to a GSA switch.
So I, I'm assuming that,
even though we're not using GSA's voice over IP,
we still have to specify, you still have to plan to get off
of those analog lines.
We need to try to move everything towards SIP.
>> Yes, that's the way we recommend you go as well.
So good thinking.
>> And Jim, before you proceed, just if, there are a couple
of changes under one of the slides.
I think it will be great, if you haven't downloaded already,
give us a chance to correct those,
and then we'll e-mail it out.
So that way, we know that you have the absolute
correct things.
There were a couple of things on my slide that need
to be correct, and my apologies for that.
>> Thanks.
I'll wait to receive the distributed copy.
Thank you.
>> Okay. So on to the next slide here.
We're talking about section C,
which is where you write your technical requirement.
And just as you're doing in section B with the pricing,
you would indicate, I want to make sure
that you're proposing IPVS.
If you identify, you know, what your architecture desire is,
you could say, "I want hosted as the solution," or you would say,
"No, I need a SIP solution."
Please do so in your technical document.
I would also, if you are considering using
that local-only unlimited plan,
and not including the long-distance piece of that,
we recommend then you would create a task-order-unique CLIN
and have the technical requirements
of that specifying out, spell out that this specific type
of dial-tone solution you want.
You know, a couple ways to do that is that you could say,
"I want a local-only with the same feature set
that are already defined in the unlimited local
and long-distance plan," or you could even go as bare-bones as,
"I want the local-only unlimited, but no features,"
or just voicemail, or whatever.
You can create those different variations,
based upon what you're using today,
as opposed to the full package of features that are
in the packages today.
>> Jim, I had a question for you.
Not to put you on the spot, but you talk
about this unlimited local and long-distance, right?
>> Yep.
>> Does that apply to PRIs as well?
>> Yep.
>> Maybe I should know that, but I, I mean,
>> Yeah. So there's three plans today on the EIS contract.
One is for basic subscriber line, or analog lines.
There's a PRI plan and a BRI plan,
and each of them have their different feature sets
that go with them as well.
>> Thank you.
>> Thanks.
>> One other thing to think about as you're looking
at your technical requirements, some agencies
that we've been supporting under the TOA task is,
they've actually thought about.
Well, if I have my MPLS wide-area network,
I could actually transmit all of my voice to one
or two central locations within my agency, and have all
of my voice calls go out to the PSTN from that location.
And that way, you can then aggregate all the calls,
roll up, and put it out on a large pipe,
save a lot more money,
as opposed to buying individual analog lines, or whatever,
across the nation, and save money that way.
It also potentially reduces the management headaches
that you might have to deal with, etcetera.
So, another way to look at how to do
that with your overall technical requirements.
With that, and this also goes to Ray's question,
is when you're including the circuit switch voice solution,
there are the three flavors of plans that are out there.
Again, you would consider this local-only task-order-unique
CLIN on the circuit switch side.
In this instance, you would also then have the, you know, again,
the six-second long-distance CLINs that you would want
to include, and then any other required features
that you would want to add to the mix.
So spell that out, tell the vendor what you're looking for,
and then tie that and make sure that it mirrors what's going
on in section B. Any questions on that slide?
Okay. So now, you have to think about okay,
I've got my inventory.
I've specified what I'm doing in terms of pricing,
what CLINs I want the vendor to provide back to me,
and what technical requirements I have associated with each
of these different plans.
And now you have to say, "Okay, vendor,
let's say I'm doing X number of years, or 10 years."
And one model you could do is say,
"I'm going to have circuit switch voice
for a certain number of my sites for the first X years of that"
so maybe first three years or something.
"And then, after that, for years four through 10,
I want to have IPVS," and tell the vendor,
"That's how I want you to price it."
So that, you then have a transition period,
and then a modernization period built into your overall plan.
And I'll show you how we mitigate
that in the second main bullet below.
Another option is to say, "Okay, vendor, I want you contractor,
I want you, for each of my sites,
to price both circuit switch voice and an IP solution,
where commercially available."
And indicate, "I want you to do this for all the years,
and for evaluation purposes, when I evaluate the total cost,
I am going to choose the least expensive solution
when I'm rolling that up."
So now, you get to see overall, all the years, what's going
on for each of my sites, and be able to decide, okay, you know,
the IP solution is cheaper here,
but the circuit switch is more expensive for this scenario.
And that ties back into what Javad was talking about.
It really depends on your location,
and how many lines you have at that location,
and probably also includes, you know, other inside wiring,
or site surveys you need to do,
what type of equipment you may need.
All of that can help you identify what's my total cost,
and what makes the most sense for me as an agency.
It also gives the vendor an opportunity to say,
"I really want you to modernize faster,"
and make the IPVS cheaper up front,
and so that you can actually see a plan to move faster to IP.
And it gives you that choice now.
Addition, don't forget to include the access arrangement,
which is that last-mile piece
for both the circuit-switch voice,
and if you already have a data network connection in there,
you can assume that I don't need that last-mile piece.
I don't need a data port.
It's already there on my network.
I'm going to be ordering that either
through a separate fair opportunity for a data network,
and that my IP solution's going to ride
over that before it gets over onto the PSTN.
>> Excuse me, this is Ellen.
I'm glad you brought that up, because I was asked
that question the other day, about the access arrangements.
Should I include that under, well,
we're doing one fair opportunity for voice and data,
but we're going to have separate task orders for voice and data.
Which would I include the access arrangements under?
Would that be under data, or should I include it under both?
>> So if you're going with an IP voice solution,
then you could put the access arrangement,
and assume that you're, you're going to, somebody's going
to play integrator, and that voice solution's going to ride
over the data network contractor,
the awardee of the data network task order.
If you're sticking with circuit switch voice, you're going
to probably have to continue
to buy your own access arrangement for that part of it.
>> And what if they're expecting
>> So it's by site.
>> Okay.
>> Each site will have to make that determination.
Does that answer your question?
>> Well, we have a combination of both, currently.
We're not, we don't have everybody under SIP yet,
and it's not likely that we will have everybody moved to SIP
by this time next year, when we hope to be transitioning.
So I'm going to need it for both.
>> Yeah, so, you know which sites are going to stick
with circuit switch and which are definitely moving to IP.
You don't have to worry about it.
You should identify that in your forecast,
when you're giving it to the vendors.
>> Okay. So would I then need to specify, okay,
these are the sites that are,
that are on circuit switch voice, include,
please include access arrangements?
I mean, I'm not sure what I or how I need,
what I need to do for that.
>> So if you know the site, and you're going to tell the vendor,
you could do it one of two ways.
The way I recommend it is,
you actually identify the plan you want
and the access arrangement that you want at that site,
and tell the vendor, "I want you to price that CLIN."
That way, all the vendors price the exact same CLIN,
and you get apples-to-apples.
Another way to do it is more of just, the vendor,
make sure you put all the stuff in there that's needed
to make this a complete solution, and let them come back
with the solution, and the CLINs, and the pricing.
So,
>> Now, are there and I'm sorry, I don't mean
to hold up, hold things up.
But are there descriptions of the various types
of access arrangements?
Because I don't really know any specifics
about the access arrangements.
>> Yes, they are in the EIS RFP.
There's various items in there.
The access arrangements are spelled out.
The CLINs are there.
You can download all the CLINs, also, from the EIS pricer.
>> Okay.
>> So it gives you a great list of all of them, all at one shot,
instead of having to read
through section B. The service guide also gives you some
identification about how, what combinations
of CLINs you may need for different services, as well.
>> So this is Ray Cwenar, I just,
just a little more commentary.
So for us.
I know Steve's been in the doing PBXs for 18 years.
I've been doing this for 30 years, and on the voice side,
we are not usually familiar with this access arrangement, right?
When you order the analog line, you order the analog line.
It's a flat rate, right?
When you ordered a PRI, or a T1, right?
So this is something new.
This is something new under EIS for switch voice service,
that if you want a PRI, or an analog line,
there's only two CLINs, right?
You got your port, and you got your access, right?
It follows the, what I think has been going
on in the data side of telecom for years.
So that is a difference, and I've talked to some people
that it's been very confusing to them, about, you know,
why do I have to have access,
and why do I have to have the port.
That's the way it is done under EIS.
>> Yeah, and one clarification on that.
So yes, it is a very different paradigm than what's been done
in the program up to this point.
So there's the access arrangement, plus the plan,
as opposed to the port.
So it's the last-mile piece, plus now,
I get all these features, and unlimited local
and long-distance calling with that plan, on top of the access.
The plan itself, with all the features and unlimited local
and long-distance, that's the same price
across the entire continental U.S. The access arrangement,
that last-mile piece, actually varies by your location.
It could vary as much as between 50 bucks a line
to 200 bucks a line, depending upon where you are.
>> So when you say it's the same price per vendor?
>> Per, within a vendor, it's the same price
across the continental U.S.
>> Obviously, vendors have different prices.
>> Every, yes.
>> Okay.
>> So that is a different paradigm,
and it's not just one price, and you get the, you know,
local calling, and local loop, all that at once.
>> Okay.
>> Is there another question?
>> Yeah, this is Steve Holder.
Quick question.
If I heard this correctly, that if my IPVS is from vendor X,
and my data is from vendor Z, that they'll play nice together
and let me ride my IPVS over their data circuit?
>> I would say that they should.
I'm not going to say 100% that you're going to get, you know,
all cooperation is perfect.
But, I mean, there shouldn't be any reason for them not
to accept voice riding over their data network
as just another application.
>> I mean, so, and you mentioned integrators.
Like, okay, I mean, because we've run into this before is,
you know, this is the data circuit, and they're only going
to let their services ride on that.
So it sounds like that's a change for EIS
that they will have to let another carrier's voice ride
on their data service.
>> Well, it's really, I mean, you're initiating a call,
and it's getting routed over the data network
as the only thing that's happening with it
from the solution provided there.
And then it hops off, based upon where it's being routed to,
to the hosted solution of the voice carrier.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah, if I can jump in just for a second, in this case,
I'm assuming you're talking about an agency
that it's the enterprise WAN is managed by the EIS contractor.
If that's the case, because if you're managing internally,
then it doesn't matter.
They have no idea.
They just service MPLS, you're on your own route, you know,
the IP routing in the top of that,
and they have no visibility
in what traffic you have, including voice.
But if you have one managed service provider
that runs your VPNS, and it's managed,
and you just get a fully-managed environment.
And now you're going to do a different IPVS provider,
and you want to buy IPVS from them, then you have
to tell the first provider that you need
to interconnect their MPLS or VPNS network
with the other provider, and that can happen.
Happens all the time, even across two MPLS providers.
So that really should not be a problem at all.
>> So should that be in both our fair opportunity requirements
for both voice and data, if we do them separate?
>> Yes.
>> If you're doing that yes, mm-hmm.
>> Yep.
>> And then, you would probably want to put class of service
or quality of service into the data network fair opportunity,
so that you are identifying that a certain percentage
of the pipe is designated for voice.
Obviously, this also applies to any video that you want
to be doing, et cetera.
Okay. All right, the second half of this, no, go back,
is to handle any mitigation.
So what we're also recommending is that you get unit prices
for the circuit switch and IPVS for all years, so if you happen
to transition slower or faster,
you have the prices on your contract.
There's priced options, so you can say, "Oh,
I'm taking a lot longer to get off this circuit switch,
and I don't want to have to run out.
So even though I asked for a circuit switch only
for the first three years, now I'm in year four.
I don't have any pricing."
That's not a good thing.
You want to make sure that those prices are actually
on your contract for all the years that you're asking for.
So those, again, unit prices that you want to have on it.
Or if you're moving faster, you want to make sure
that the IPVS is up there up front as well,
starting from year one, so that you can move sites
that are ready to go when they're ready to go.
So, and also make sure you're asking for the unit prices
of the access arrangement, that last mile for all years,
to cover either having an analog line, or a PRI,
or a dedicated Ethernet access line at that site.
You know, we want to make sure
that you're covering all bases there.
Okay?
So, when it comes to evaluation now, things we highly recommend
that you consider is that in the technical approach
that the vendor's proposing in their tech volume,
is that they give you a really good plan
about how they're going to move you
from circuit switch solutions
that you have today to an IP solution.
You want to make sure that they know what they're doing,
that they spell this out, that they actually identify the steps
of going through the process,
how they will communicate everything with you.
And also, when you're doing the schedule, the plan with them,
make sure they're understanding the critical elements
of "how do I make sure local number portability works
in this scenario", so that you can keep those phone numbers
that you have?
What's the timeframe to make that all happen?
So that should be a high, a big part of the section M,
the evaluation criteria, in your RFP.
Secondly, when you're looking at it,
and you're evaluating the proposals, look for any risks
that might be associated with a non-recurring charge.
Like up front, you might say, "Okay, they're pricing a lot
of non-recurring charges in the first year,
because I'm transitioning from one vendor to another.
And they've made those prices, or they've waived those
in year one, but they didn't waive them
in year two or year three."
And now, you are slower in your transition.
You were slower in your modernization,
and those waivers aren't there.
And the costs that you thought you were going to get,
based upon your model, actually turn out to be higher.
And so you want to look out for that type of gamesmanship
that can be played in the proposals.
And then, another thing to think about is,
when you're evaluate, evaluate for realism.
If you have really remote sites, and all of a sudden,
they're proposing Ethernet access out there,
and the price looks really great.
And you're like, wow, this is a deal.
Make sure that there's no special construction hidden,
or that they're going to come back to you and say, "Oh,
by the way, in order to do that, I need to spend $10,000,
$20,000 to do some special construction,"
a million dollars, whatever.
So write into it that any costs,
any special construction costs need to be told up front.
Otherwise, the contractor, you know,
is going to have to eat that cost.
Okay? So that's the end of the solicitation guidance
that we're giving here as a possible
>> Quick question.
But that requires a site survey, right?
Because the vendor won't know any extra construction
until they get to the site.
>> In some cases, it may, but they would know
where there's fiber today.
They would know, looking at your sites, you know,
is it even possible to get you that.
So they should have a good map already of what's going on.
So I think you just got to put it on them.
You need to tell us if there's special construction necessary
or not, and let them come back and say, "I don't know."
And then you can negotiate from there,
but I would definitely start up-front
with the strongest negotiating posture possible.
>> Okay.
>> All right.
So, went through these two sections.
We'll open it up for any questions
from anything we've gone over today.
>> Yes, this is Ellen with FDA.
Is there, where can we see more information
about the long-distance service plans?
Is that also in the service,
I guess that's in the service guide?
>> Yeah, so the service guides.
Also, all the CLINs are there, and when you use the pricer,
you can see how much, you can do some market research up front,
and price a couple of the plans, and see what they cost.
You could actually go by site,
and see what the last-mile piece would cost, et cetera.
>> Okay. Thank you.
>> Next question?
Well, either you guys have done a fabulous job,
or everybody really wants to hear from Ken
about inventory report 24 [laughter].
>> There we go.
>> So, going once, going twice
on any other questions before we move on to Ken Palmer.
>> And Bill, before we do that, to just add to Ellen's question,
you asked earlier question earlier, you asked this question
about the why the cost seems high to you
in that table I showed.
I am assuming unlimited CONUS to CONUS dial plan.
So, or calls.
>> Okay.
>> And that's just because that's right
out of standard EIS piping.
As Jim said, that may or may not, and most likely may not,
work for many agencies, because the volume of, you know,
domestic long-distance has dropped.
But just for modeling purposes, I'm sticking with that.
So you should really not take the literal cost out of
that table, but just a relative between the IPVS and CSVS.
>> Okay. All right.
Thank you.
>> Sure.
>> All right.
Anything else?
Okay. Ken, floor is yours.
>> Thank you.
Okay, thank you, everybody.
We're going to go over the full-service inventory
report 24.
Just seeing the names on the line, I think a lot
of people have been using this report.
Certainly, some of the questions that we've seen
from folks lends itself to the fact that it is being used,
so that's always a good thing.
We did initially, the first full-service workshop was
actually a pretty thorough look at report 24, and this is going
to be a real brief one, because it's really just an update
on what's happened since then.
So if you do have questions more broadly
about how report 24 works, we would encourage you
to contact us with a help desk ticket,
or through the EIS TCC inventory mailbox.
We tend to respond pretty quickly,
so with all of that preface, preface comments,
we encourage you to let us know if you need more help.
So with that, so what is report 24?
It is one of the 43 all-agency inventory reports.
You've heard that mentioned a couple times today,
by Jim, I think, primarily.
I think Bill mentioned it as well.
These 43 reports are your inventory that we basically,
to be very blunt, slice and dice for you for the three programs -
Networx, as well as the regional full-service, as well as WITS.
Obviously, the full-service portion of it that we're talking
about right now is restricted to regions one through 10,
and to steal one of my bullets from in a second,
the long-distance side of that regional inventory.
But these reports are produced monthly.
We've produced all 43 for 257 reporting packages.
Every agency gets them.
Many agencies get them at the sub-agency level as well,
and some even go lower than that.
So bottom line is, we push over 11,000 reports
out to the agencies, or available
to the agencies, on a monthly basis.
So if you haven't received these reports, or if you want
to see these reports, there's multiple ways you can get them.
Certainly, the best way to get them is to go
through your agency manager,
and they can make them available to you.
And we can get them to you several ways.
If they're too large, we, one of the best ways,
if you're an E-MORRIS user for TI,
we can actually load the files up there for your use.
So bottom line, just get the word to us, and we'll get them
out to you one way or another.
So report 24, just as a quick review of what we covered
for almost two hours and incidentally, we provide a lot
of training for all-agency inventory
and inventory in general.
There's a TI class, transition inventory class that's a
two-hour training class.
We've trained many, many people in that.
We've also had all-agency inventory training,
and there's actually three different individual modules.
So what I'm going to cover in the next 10 minutes
or so is really covered
over about six hours' worth of classes.
We also have one additional class
where we've created a special piece of software.
It's an Access database that folks can use called
"All Agency AAI Read," and that's available to all agencies
to slice and dice the inventory their own way
if the 43 reports are not sufficient to do that.
So, to jump on right onto report 24, the review, so report 24,
what it does is, it isolates the full-service inventory
from all other data.
So that data is found in other reports, but we carve it out,
and just isolate it in report 24.
So it does contain all the regional inventory,
regions one through 10, not WITS but regions one through 10 are,
or in the you know, what we knew in the past
as regions one through 10.
And it contains the Networx side
of the inventory for long distance.
So as Ray said earlier, most of the service is TDM,
has a long-distance element.
You would see that record in this report, or those records
in this report as well.
So we've had seven worksheets available
on this particular report, and by the way,
the report is provided as an Excel spreadsheet.
Just a real brief review of them so the summary provides the TI,
the transition inventory counts, and it's grouped
at the contract and service levels.
So obviously, the two contracts you would see would be regional
or Networx.
It also provides detail, and that's very robust data.
It provides all of the data that you would find, for instance,
on your TOPS bill, or you would actually see related
to the Networx piece of it.
And it shows all the components of it,
so it takes that TI instance level and takes it
to a much lower level.
The TI record portion of it is where we're
at the service instance record level.
What's really important, and the big distinction on this one is,
for TI, on this particular report,
this is the only worksheet that shows both active as well
as disconnected records.
And the reason we included the disconnects here, but not on any
of the other worksheets, is because we did receive a lot
of questions as to, hey, I thought I had these numbers,
but when we would look a little deeper it was
because they had been disconnected in the past.
So this would show you anything that's been disconnected
since January of 2016 that was originally captured
in the original release of TI.
So that's one big distinction you need to be aware
of when you're using the data.
Jim and Javad was both talking about location a lot.
When you look at your data, the group, we do group the data
at a location level, so that you can see the types
of services you have at a particular location,
whether they're the BRIs, PRIs, BIDs, Centrex, whatever it is.
And that data for location is also found
in the other worksheets we've talked about,
detail and TI records,
but it just groups it a little differently.
You could certainly do that on your own through filters,
and sorts, and things of that sort.
Two particular worksheets that weren't available
when we did the original full-service workshop,
but have been out there for four months now, it was released
in January is we provide
where your agency may be behind a GSA PBX.
And in those particular locations, we've broken
that inventory out separately.
Again, it's also found in the other reports, or excuse me,
on the other worksheets, but we do isolate it out for you.
And then, lastly, the GSA PBX line counts, we take those.
We roll them up, so where you're behind a GSA PBX
and then we show you what other agencies,
or how many other agencies may be behind that same PBX
at that location with you.
We were asked to do that because a lot of agencies wanted to know
if they were the, if they had the largest number of lines,
because it might affect the way they wanted
to conduct their transition,
compared if they were just a small player that only had one
or two particular lines at a location.
And then, the last worksheet that we had originally
on here was the LSA information.
And frankly, that's a little bit of a misnomer,
because not only do we tell you what local service agreement
you're on, but we also tell you all
of the regional data you have.
So if you have data that was procured through you
through just the tariff service,
you'll see that on there as well.
So we break it out by contract, and, you know,
that's kind of good-to-know, not you-have-to-know information.
So that if you ever wanted to see, for instance,
where you have data with a particular vendor,
or on a particular local contract, such as GRITS-2,
or RLSA, or one of those.
Okay, next slide.
Any questions on the first real quick overview review?
Okay. So the main reason for me being asked to speak
at this one is to talk about the recently enhancements
that was just released with the last AAI push what we call a
push, the reporting packages provided to everyone.
And in that, we were asked early on and actually,
it was during the first full-service workshop,
to not only provide the PBX, GSA PBX lines broken
out by themselves, which we were working on anyway.
But we were also asked by agencies
to provide where they were behind a GSA VoIP solution,
so that those could be broken out separately.
So we worked with a lot of the local ATMs.
We reviewed a lot of the data out there.
We made a few updates to it, and we've now broken it out,
this GSA VOIP solution data on two different worksheets,
two additional worksheets.
So the first one would be where an inventory or,
the first worksheet called GSA VOIP worksheet, it's similar
to the inventory behind a GSA PBX
if you've been using that worksheet.
In this particular case, you get many of the same types
of fields, as far as the location, the number,
things of that sort, and it breaks
out where you're behind a GSA PBX or, excuse me,
sorry, a GSA VoIP solution.
One very, very important point to note on this, though,
is this is going to isolate the inventory
where agency inventory is behind a GSA VoIP solution.
In other words, if it is an agency-specific VoIP solution,
we don't include that on this particular worksheet,
even though you may have worked with a regional team in the past
to get a SIP trunk or something of that sort.
You'll find that in report 24.
You just won't find that on this particular worksheet.
And in the other, the last additional worksheet, so,
totally now nine worksheets on this particular file,
this particular report is the VOIP line count worksheet.
And that is similar to the PBX line count,
in that we show your agency, and all the other agencies
and we do mask that, part of the same VoIP solution.
Just so, again, you know how much
of that perhaps VoIP solution you have with your agency.
And then, on both of these worksheets, we do provide it
at the TI-SIR level, so that rolled-up level.
We're not giving you all the different components.
You'd have to go back through one
of the other worksheets on that.
So what I'd like to do for just a couple minutes is actually
bounce around to two quick documents.
I just want to show you real briefly report 24
in the event you haven't seen it before, and then I just want
to start with actually what we call the AAI user guide
in appendix C.
So I think most folks are familiar with this
that use the all-agency inventory, or the AAI reports.
We do send an updated AAI user guide with any packages
that we push to agencies.
We include that in the notification
as an e-mail attachment, and we also make it available
in the different locations that the data's retrieved from.
But, as you can see, this is just isolating on report 24
in the appendix C of the AAI user guide.
So what I had on the slides is pretty much what you're seeing.
You'll see this as a miscellaneous report.
The name of the report is the "Full Service Inventory,"
and then what we do is, we go through all of the fields
on the different worksheets.
So on the summary worksheets, you would see all
of the different fields that are found on it.
And then, if you were to work with the detail, you'll see,
well, you won't see all the individual fields,
because there's 105 of them,
and it would make this matrix too big.
But it includes all the fields, and then so on, and so forth.
And then, in the description column,
you'll just see a description at a high level, it doesn't get
into great detail, but at a high level,
what that particular worksheet is showing you,
and how to use it.
Lastly, just very, very briefly, we talk about the use
of the report, and then we talk about how we named the report.
And that's just a template name.
So, switching over to the actual report itself,
so here is a sample report.
As you can see, it's an Excel spreadsheet.
You can see it's report 24.
Your agency name would be where it says sample agency.
The category of this report is miscellaneous.
You can see full-service inventory,
and this particular report was produced in early April
for the March data for agencies,
and then the R91 is just an internal code
that we need to use.
So if you look along the bottom of the Excel spreadsheet,
you'll see all the different worksheets I've already
referenced in the PowerPoint, as well as what you just saw
in the AAI user guide.
So summary, this just helps you.
And by the way, so this particular agency has multiple
sub-agencies, so we've broken it up, as you can see
in the column C, the sub-agency.
You can also see in column B that you have regional data,
but you also have some Networx data, because, again,
it's the long-distance side of this particular, for instance,
telephone number or voice service.
Going across the top, you can see the service,
how it's defined at a high level, or a line service,
and then the service description,
and then the logical and this kind of flies in the face
of what you've been hearing for the last hour and a half.
But if you were to go like-for-like,
this is how it would be mapped under the EIS contract.
So you see in general if it's, for instance, a PRI,
or if it's a BRI, you'll see it's going to map to CSVS,
just as a general rule.
And then it gives you the counts.
So this is a good, quick view of how many, for instance,
Centrex lines this particular sub-agency has,
or how many business analog lines this particular
agency has.
In this case, it's actually a sub-agency.
So this is just a good, quick summary view of it.
I'm going to skip one of the worksheets and go to TI records.
So if you were to go into E-MORRIS, basically,
you're looking in spreadsheet view
of what you would see in E-MORRIS.
In E-MORRIS, you can filter it, but basically,
you're seeing the exact same data.
You're just seeing it on this particular spreadsheet.
Detail, this is, this is the robust information,
and we could spend two hours just going through all of this.
The important part is, if you're reviewing this, while we roll
up at a, I'll call it a generic line service,
or service description, if you move over through all
of the fields and there's a lot of fields in here.
And I'm not going to go through them all, but if you go
over to basically where you see what we call the CLIN product
description, you're going to get the lowest-level detail
that you would see on your e-bill, or if you were to look
in your TOPS inventory.
You're just looking at it in a spreadsheet formula,
or in a spreadsheet manner, excuse me.
Okay? Location, a lot of the same information
that you would see under TI record.
The difference is, we just roll it up at a location,
as I stated earlier when we were looking at it.
So you can see the locations are all going
to be grouped together.
Then we move into where this particular agency has inventory
behind a GSA PBX.
So it shows you the different locations,
the different telephone numbers associated
with that particular PBX that this agency is behind with GSA.
It tells you who the local contractor is in this case,
for instance, we know that that first one is a maintenance
contractor, as an example.
And then, probably most importantly, in column P,
you'll see who the primary regional contact is
if you had questions about that.
I know Edgar, for instance, is on this call, as an example,
looking at the top of this.
But these are the folks who could assist you
if you had specific questions about it.
Moving over to PBX line count, for this particular location,
as an example that I'm highlighting on the screen now,
you can see the sample agency and I'm just going to move
over a little bit, only has three lines.
And you can see, across this, there's over 71 lines,
for instance, behind this GSA PBX at that particular address.
We mask the agencies.
So, for instance, agency 42662 might be DHS,
and 19896 would be DOD, or whoever's there.
We know who it is, but we do mask it.
But if you wanted to work with Edgar or one of the folks,
you know, if that would become a consideration, or Joe Hester,
that's where you would work or, try to obtain
that additional information, who that actual agency is.
Moving over to inventory behind a GSA PBX
so in this particular case, this is, again, where it's a GSA,
I'm sorry, VoIP, excuse me.
I keep saying the same.
This is GSA VoIP solution.
So in this particular case, you can see, in Atlanta, Georgia,
this particular agency has some numbers there.
I'm not going to go through all of the fields,
but you can see it's got the main fields that you would need
to provide you the information.
Details would be found in the detail tab.
But you can see the type of information, and basically,
again, all of this information is found
in detail and TI records.
It's just that it's isolated out here for you,
so you get the quick view.
So, this particular agency has a few other sub-agencies,
actually, just two of them,
and they've got roughly 80 different VoIP numbers there.
Moving over to the VoIP line count, same type of thing.
You'll see that there's a lot of agencies
at some of these addresses.
So if you were to look at the different addresses
that are associated with it,
and where this sample agency has five
of those numbers, and then so on.
Okay? And then, LSA information, just real briefly,
what I was saying before, tells you the contract number.
For instance, I mentioned, I think, in my example, GRITS-2,
and you can see this particular agency has Centrex lines, DIDs,
and some PRIs through AT&T on GRITS-2, as an example.
Any questions about that?
I know that's a whole lot of information.
It's really just to kind of give you a small taste
of what is available in report 24.
Again, if you do have additional questions,
or you need additional training, just open a help desk report,
or a help desk ticket, excuse me,
or contact the EIS TCC inventory mailbox.
>> Okay, any questions for Ken?
>> Yeah, this is Ellen.
I have a very basic question,
and it's probably a dumb question to ask at this point.
But I'm not clear exactly what it meant by full service.
I know that GSA no longer offers it under EIS, but I noticed
on our, on my inventory, which I'm looking at, you know,
some of it says, you know, is full service, yes,
and others say full service, no.
What is the difference between yes, full service, or not?
>> This is Ray Cwenar.
I'll try to help you out here.
So full service is service that GSA provides in GSA regions one
through 10, where it is a form of assisted acquisition,
where GSA provides all of the services from requirements,
to acquisition, to billing, and installation.
It's primarily, it's primarily a local dial tone,
as we've been talking about here today, and voice
services. So it's, when you're looking at the inventory,
if it says full service, that means most likely,
or probably more than most likely it's in TOPS,
if you're familiar with that.
>> Right, yes.
>> That's our billing system.
>> So if it's not, if it says, if it's not full service,
what does that mean, then?
That it's not in TOPS?
That it's on a like a tariff bill?
>> No. If it's not in TOPS, most likely, where it would come
from is services off of Networx, or services off
of the WITS contract, where they are,
those contracts are direct order central bill,
or direct order direct bill.
It's a different model.
Those contracts have a different model
than the full service program.
>> Okay. So the full service is strictly TOPS, refers strictly
to the TOPS account, the account under TOPS.
>> You can say that, yes.
>> Okay. Okay, well, that makes, that makes sense, then.
Okay. That gives me a distinction,
because we have both.
You know, we have TOPS, and WITS,
and I know the WITS stuff is the stuff here in the D.C. area.
And then, all of our field is all under TOPS.
So, okay.
>> Correct.
The full service is where GSA does all the ordering, right,
and that's from our regions one through 10.
That's our local service contracts.
WITS and Networx, direct order, where you all,
the agencies, order directly.
>> Okay. All right, well,
that was an easy explanation [laughter].
Okay, thank you very much.
>> And I'll add an explanation for the transition perspective.
This is Debbie Wren.
For transition, because, as Ellen mentioned,
full service is not an offering under EIS, that service,
that life cycle management that GSA was doing on those,
on that inventory won't be, won't continue under EIS.
So for transition, GSA is still the customer of record
for those services that are in the full-service program
until they transition to EIS.
So there will be some coordination required
between GSA, between our transition team
and the agencies, to transition those,
and get them disconnected off the expiring contracts
without any hiccup or loss in service.
So there's some, we're writing a plan right now
to outline the process for coordinating the disconnects
of your full service lines when you replace them on EIS.
>> This is Steve at USGS.
If our service that we have through you today on TOPS ends
up with the same carrier, is it really going to be disconnected,
or is there just going to be a paperwork exercise?
>> Well, I'll take a stab at that.
It's really up to the vendor.
>> Okay.
>> It's up to the vendor.
>> And when, what's your drop-dead date
for us getting transitioned off of your,
off of you for the services that we have with you today?
>> March of 2020.
>> Well, what if an agency's not ready by March 2020?
You turn, you pull the plug and turn everything off?
>> Well, the contracts expire.
So the options are limited.
We can talk to you about some possible sole-source type
justification that you might explore
for moving those services to EIS
under a sole-source type environment,
if your agency is willing to do that.
But at this point, the, that deadline of March
of 2020 is important to keep in mind.
And if you're having challenges meeting that, I'd suggest you,
you're under you said USGS?
So your agency
>> Yeah, we're in the Department of Interior.
>> yeah, your agency manager is Darrell Miller,
and I would suggest you ensure
that he understands what your concerns are.
>> Well, I also understand that, on a recent CIO-level meeting
with GSA present, that there was a lot of heat borne by a lot
of the government agencies that, to me, from what I'm hearing,
set dates in jeopardy unless a lot of changes
or some things happen rather quickly.
>> Yeah. In fact, I was at that CIO council meeting,
so I heard that firsthand.
And we're working through those, the concerns that were raised.
>> Okay.
>> All right, any other questions?
So one thing I want to leave you with --
you will be getting an e-mail with a survey.
If you're anything like me, whether I'm at home
or at the office, usually when I see survey,
I'm pretty quick to hit delete.
But what I want to encourage you to do, it's a very short survey,
and the most important thing is, there's a question in there
with an open-ended box of,
"What more training are you looking for?
What issues are you facing?"
You know, as Debbie mentioned, we have agency managers who are
out there with agencies.
We have TOA resources that are out there.
We've got all kinds of avenues to distribute information
and collect information.
We really want to know what's on your mind.
What are you uncomfortable with, you know,
that you could use some more education on?
So please, open the survey
and let us know what you're looking for,
for more formal training, for workshops, whatever it might be.
We're really looking for that feedback.
So I'd encourage you to do that.
>> In fact, I'll put a plug in for the next topic
that we're exploring, and that is what is the bid
and proposal timeline that the EIS contractors go
through when they're responding to an agency's solicitation?
We're working with ACT-IAC right now to lay out that process.
And our intent is fairly soon, hopefully sometime in May,
the next workshop will focus on an industry
and agency discussion about what the steps are
that the EIS contractors go through,
and how long it takes them to respond in a quality manner
to your proposals or with a proposal
in response to your solicitation.
>> Okay. Ray, you started us off, so you want to finish up?
>> Appreciate it.
This is Ray Cwenar again.
So if I could, I just want to, just let me thank Bill, Javad,
Jim, and Ken, our subject matter expert speakers.
Also want to thank Scott Sizemore
for helping us put together, and Debbie Wren, in the background,
making this happen as well.
So anyway, appreciate everybody's time here.
Again, this session was recorded,
and it will be put on Interact.
And just to follow up with Bill, again,
please fill out the survey.
And we are looking for suggestions, and,
maybe even more importantly
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