I am Ray Cwenar, Director of
>> Service Delivery
in the office telecommunication services at GSA.
We're going to get started now.
This is our third full service workshop.
Our first full service workshop was on All Agency Inventory,
the IAA inventory specifically with an emphasis on looking
at your inventory on full service.
Our second workshop session was on the GSA owned PBXs,
and we had a good dialogue about that last time.
And this session now is titled Mapping the Full Service
Delivery Model to EIS.
Just a couple administrative things here.
This session is being recorded on the Adobe Connect
and will be available on the GSA Interact
for listening pleasure later.
Also, the slides that we are presenting today will also be,
will be sent out via email after this session.
We ask everyone to please mute your phones
so we can get through the slides.
Any questions that you may all have can be entered into the Q
and A pod on your, on the Adobe Connect, but also,
we can also take questions.
I would try to hold the questions at the end if you want
to voice them after all the speakers.
We have three speakers this afternoon, sorry, this morning,
and they'll introduce themselves as we go
through the presentation.
So what you see on the screen now is the agenda.
We're going to go over a review
of the full service delivery model.
Then we'll talk about some contracting-related items
under EIS.
The meat and heart
of the presentation is mapping the full service delivery model
to EIS.
We have identified many activities
in the full service delivery model
and how they can be executed under EIS.
And we'll talk about some technical solutions moving
forward in the full service business and talk
about some managed service options.
Before I turn it over to Bridget, I'm sorry, okay.
This slide here that you see,
these are all the subject matter experts that we have available
to us today to answer any questions.
So we're not going to go around introducing every one
of these staff members, but they are available to us today.
Before I turn it over to Bridget, you know,
I just want to say, you know,
in November of last year GSA made the decision not
to continue the full service program under EIS,
and we know that's caused a lot of questions and a lot
of challenges for agencies.
So, again, these workshops are an attempt
to further the dialogue and try to answer as many questions
as possible regarding the full service program.
And just so we can define the full-service program,
I like to always just define it just
so we all know what we're talking about here.
Full service program is your legacy GSA regional telecom
program that exists today in regions,
GSA regions one through ten.
It's primary providing local dial tone
under our local service access contracts.
So although we do provide some data and VoIP services
under that program, it's, you know, primarily local dial tone.
So, with that, I will now turn it over to Bridget Williams.
>> Good morning, could everyone hear me?
>> Yes.
>> Thank you very much.
So good morning to everyone.
First of all, as Ray said, my name is Bridget Williams.
I currently serve as the director of operations
under our new program, and in the operations shop,
I own most of the activities that support full service today,
i.e., your order writing group, the billing coordination, TOPS,
E-Morris, our regional help desk activity, and security.
So once we decided or the announcement made to phase
out the GSA full service,
many of the customers raised questions centered
around how can the full service delivery model be mapped to EIS.
So working with this team, we spent quite a bit
of time looking at the many services we did on your behalf
under the full service model and tried to lay
out an articulated listing of those things
to cross map those to EIS.
GSA OTS addressed these questions during our third
session in the full service workshop, the technical scope,
and breadth of EIS servicing offerings allow the current
customers to map the aspects of full service delivery model.
So we're going to look at the next slide please.
This is the listing of about 19 items that we've identified
as the service that we provide on your behalf
under the full service model and broke them out in three areas.
One is pre-award, post-award and transition,
and the operational aspects of the full service model.
Okay. So the first thing we do is we develop an acquisition
strategy, market research, inventory analysis,
tips for construction, the IGCE,
the SOW assist tools and packages.
Yeah, make it bigger, thank you.
Joe understands my senior moment I'm having here.
We also conduct acquisition and fair opportunity
and make full selections.
Again, all this is on your behalf.
We're not making any of these decisions based
on GSA wants and needs.
These are all based on our relationship with you,
the customer, and how we deem the selections should benefit
your mission and your organization.
Once the acquisition has been made, we then do post-award
and transition, and what we do to facilitate that,
we take the telecom requirements and do the analysis
and generally, you guys need to make that bigger, Vanessa.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
And then the transformation of the agency requirement
into CLINs for access arrangements
and voice solutions.
We do a source service order preparation
within the TOPS or E-Morris systems.
We do the pools and the submissions or your orders
to the awarded vendors.
We work with you to validate service installs
to do service award completions.
We do acceptance as part
of the contract agreement for the various LSAs.
We do disconnects of legacy contracts.
That's a very good point to understand.
In the EIS transition, one of the main functions we will have
as your legacy full service is to ensure your inventory
on the LSAs are properly disconnected.
So we do that.
We do project management during the transition.
Operationally, once the service order for EIS adds,
moves and changes and disconnects,
service order approval and submission for EIS moves adds
and changes, service assures tracking of SLAs,
the middle of SLA credit requests, project management
of ongoing operations, performance management of PBX,
trouble ticket management.
Again, I'd say that we have a 24/7 help desk,
so that 24/7 help desk tracks all your inventory
that you currently have in TOPS,
and if you have a help desk request, we actually track
that on a 24/7 help desk support.
Invoice management.
Our current, what we used
to call our financial service center manages
about 1300 invoices monthly on your behalf.
We cross reference to your TOPS to make sure
that what you ordered is exactly what we're being invoiced for
and making payments accordingly.
Inventory administration.
We actually do a reconciliation against our TOPS,
against the invoice inventory monthly to ensure
that proper credits are received
if billing errors were identified.
And lastly we do billing consolidation
and payment management.
We are responsible to a hearing to the prompt pay act,
so we ensure that all payments, the services you requested
in an install base and a monthly recurring are meeting the prompt
payment act and paid monthly.
So that is what we currently do on your behalf as part
of full-service model.
So now we're going to turn it over and you'll be able
to see how that cross walks over to EIS.
>> So we'll now turn it over to Anna Brown.
Anna are you on?
>> Yes, I am.
>> Okay, can you take everybody through this slide please.
>> Okay, and you can hear me, I'm hoping.
I'm a division director in the contracting shop,
and I'm an 11O2, and I don't know how many 11O2's are on here
or how many contracting officers, but this is the part
where we go, we go from what we, what we did before to now,
task orders, so EIS requires
that we have task orders per the FAR 16.505, and you have
to have a bona fide need and spell out your requirements
in detail, and then of course you have to have funding.
And the
>> Anna, I'm sorry, I hate to interrupt.
I just want to make sure, can everyone hear?
We just received a question saying what happened
to the sound.
>> Yeah, we can hear.
>> Okay, great, sorry to interrupt, Anna.
I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.
>> Can you hear?
>> Yes.
>> Yes.
>> Okay. Okay.
Well, I'll just, if you didn't hear, basically EIS requires
that we have task orders placed under it
by warranted contracting officers,
and it follows the FAR in part 16.505.
And in there, you need to make sure you have obviously a bona
fide need and detailed requirements spelled out
and that obviously you have to have funding.
And then if you're an 11O2, you're probably used
to doing this on many, many other buys that you do,
but with telecom it's been,
it seems like it's been a little bit different.
One of the big changes for this is
that we will have actual period of performance instead
of what it's been in the past has kind
of been it just keeps going.
You're order goes and goes until it's actually cancelled.
But now we'll have a period of performance and have to,
you know, you have a start date, and you have an actual end date
and probably options that need to be exercised
and then resoliciting, doing a fair opportunity decision,
which awards a task order.
So customer agencies are going to be responsible
for the service order approval and submission by a COR.
It also, just so you know, it also can be submitted by a CO,
and then also you're responsible for service acceptance.
So you're making sure we know that you did get this
and then prompt payment of those invoices that come into you.
So I don't know what else you need to know on here,
but I'm sure we'll have questions.
>> So, Anna, if we could take a pause right here.
If anybody has any questions on anything they've heard so far,
you can type them into the Q and A pod or,
and hopefully it won't come too unwieldy.
You can come off mute and just ask your question.
So, do we have any questions at this point?
Okay, not hearing any.
Thanks Anna.
We will--
>> Oh, wait, there's one.
I see something there.
>> Okay.
>> Funding, does the agency have to have full funding.
Okay, so the agency needs to fund what is obligated, so,
I mean like whatever we're awarding.
So if we're awarding, if you're going to award like a task order
that doesn't have options, then you would fund the whole thing,
but you're going to fund face period
or whatever is obligated at that time.
You do need to fund it.
So I'm assuming that we won't have a whole lot
of funding the whole thing at once.
We'll have, you know, pieces,
but that does require a contracting officer touching,
you know, the touch labor
of a contracting officer each time you exercise an option
or whatever.
>> Can you see the whole question so you can--
>> Or there's, I see something below, but I can't see it all.
Can you.
>> Is GSA going to have the usual fee attached
to this task order.
>> So this is Ray Cwenar, but I'll answer that.
EIS fee is 4.75 percent, and that's what you pay
for the amount invoiced against your task order.
>> Great. And then there's another one from Kevin.
Please clarify, after the period of performance agencies have
to do another fair opportunity.
>> Yeah, if you, okay, if you have,
if you've made a fair opportunity and you've done it
for let's just say five years and you have a base period
and four one-year options,
at the end of that whole five-year period, you would need
to do another fair opportunity,
and some agencies will have longer than five years.
So, but yeah, wait there's more up here too.
>> Oh, and up here, yeah.
The agency allows for incremental funding it allowed.
>> If your agency allows for, you're going
to be following the FAR and your agency regulations,
so then what your, and I don't know what every agency has.
So if your agency allows for something different, then, yeah,
it means some agencies have other regulations so more
and more specified, so.
>> Right. Again, this is a question I would suggest
that you consult with your internal funding people
and acquisition staff.
>> And yeah, definitely.
There's one down that says Scott, but I can't see it all.
>> The one for Scott was already answered.
>> Yep, that was the last one.
>> Oh, okay.
Sorry.
>> Okay, anymore questions.
Here comes one.
>> If an agency transitions their entire inventory
to the EIS on February 10 and they need another line on 3/10,
do they have to issue another solicitation?
>> It depends.
It really will depend on what your, what you've written
in your original solicitation.
So some of this isn't, some, it depends.
I mean you're going to want to have things that allow
for some movement and growth, but I'm assuming we're going
to be able to help you with some of these things
so that we can all work on how to craft some of this.
Ooh, I heard--
>> So let me--
Let me,
Jump in. We're actually working on a use case right now.
I have a meeting this afternoon trying to finalize it
to help give guidance for this very situation, and it comes
down to, if, in your solicitation you put
in estimates for future moves, adds, and changes and then,
you know, based on those estimates you get those priced
out by your respondents and then you include those estimates
in your evaluation, then in essence you're good up to
that limit of your estimate to go forward.
And, you know, you can order those services,
because they were part of your evaluation.
And so as I said, we're working on a use case that we look
to publish as part of the FOOG document, and hopefully
that will give people, you know, a little more guidance,
and then, of course, they need to always sit
down with their agency, contracting officer,
and the financial people to work those, the details of those
out specific to your agency.
>> Javier asked to repeat the question.
>> Yes, Javier asks if the main speaker, I guess that's you.
>> I guess they're not hearing you,
or if you can speak up louder.
>> Could repeat each attendee's questions.
>> Okay.
>> Okay. Yep.
We will do that.
All right.
Any other questions?
>> Couldn't you also under logical follow on too,
that's another possibility.
>> That's a dirty word now in here.
But to that point, I'm glad you all are doing use case,
but we encountered this when we were doing GRITS 2,
and one of the things the CO wanted
to make sure is you can't throw an arbitrary number out.
So you can't say, well I'm going to do 100,
or I'm going to do 1000 of that.
And, you know, the COs were like, well what are you basing
that on, and I would say to everyone on the line,
look at your TOPS inventory.
It's a very good source.
It shows over a period of time,
how often your agency bought that type of service.
So you can look back a year, two years,
however many years you're putting your solicitation
and said how many times did I buy a business line,
a Centrex line, or whatever,
and you can have a historical fact-based thing to then present
to your CO to say, hey, over previous five years,
I bought 100 of these, and this is my support.
And COs often like that type of under, you know, pinning support
to your actions opposed to just arbitrarily coming to say,
give me 1000 more so I don't have
to do this over and over again.
So we ran into that ourselves, and that's how we addressed it,
by just looking
at the historical buying patterns that were in TOPS.
>> And I would add just briefly, many of you, if you do ponder,
just to follow on Bridget's notion that you look
at your as-is inventory, but as most of us know,
the preponderance of our inventory is TDM based,
legacy VoIP solutions.
So in order to permit a transition during the course
of your period of performance to VoIP, you would want
to consider including VoIP in the technical scope,
so include VOIP as an option,
but your initial buy could be a like-for-like TDM solution.
So be mindful of what you'll do in the period of performance
because surely people would be focused on retiring TDM assets,
and you want to ensure VoIP would be in the technical scope.
>> Right. Any other questions at this point?
Okay, let me introduce myself.
I'm Bill Kinter.
I am with the Transition Coordination Center,
and I'm going to take you
through the next section of this workshop.
As we said in the beginning, we've modeled as a workshop,
so we want it to be as interactive as possible.
So what I'll be doing is I will be pausing periodically
and give you a chance to ask questions, and if you want
to keep putting the questions in the Q and A pod,
we will address those as they come up.
So, in mapping the full service delivery model,
what we did was we put a group of subject matter experts
into a room, pretty much locked the door, and said,
let's break down the full service
into all its component parts.
So what Bridget walked you
through in those 19 different activities are what
that team came up with.
And as you'll see, when I go to the next several slides,
when you're looking to map those full services
that were delivered by GSA to the EIS model,
you'll see that there are contractual obligations
that in essence agencies will be hiring GSA vendors to do,
and they will need to perform those.
You'll also see especially in the beginning part,
the pre-award, there are task order assistance
that is available to help people,
I guess it's transition ordering assistance, the TOA contractors
to help you with this doing solicitations
and through the EIS transition.
You're also going to see that there are certain activities
that are just inherently governmental.
They can't be outsourced.
They can't be passed to anybody else and need
to have a government employee perform those activities.
So, let me move into the breakdown
of those 19 activities.
What you'll see is, we've structured this
with three columns over there on the right hand.
And this is the available resources
to help the agencies handle each of these 19 activities.
And you'll see some things can be done by EIS contractors
if you make an award to them.
Some things, the GSA full-service program stands
ready to help you with.
And then there's other things
that you can use your GSA TOA contractors to help you with.
So what I'll do is I'll basically walk
through these first two, and then I'll pause for questions.
So activity number one is developing your acquisition
strategy, market research, inventory analysis,
constructing the IGCE, you may use the SOW-assist tool,
but basically it's figuring out, you know,
what do you want to do?
How do you want to take what is delivered in full service today
and how do you want to handle it in the future?
I mean, I will give you an example on acquisition strategy.
As many, many people have cut the cord
with their home service, you may have just straight voice
services that are being delivered today
through the full service program.
You want to make, you may want to make a decision
that now is the time and the opportunity to cut the cord.
In doing that, that may impact what you do
from an acquisition standpoint.
So you want to figure out that strategy first.
To help you do that, you can see
in the far right-hand column there are TOA contractors
who can assist your agency do this
by reviewing your inventory, doing reconciliations,
helping with market research, the IGCEs,
helping you write Statements of Work.
You know, providing content for your acquisition plans,
basically those resources, all these things, you know,
in activity one, are in-scope for those resources to help you.
Once you get through those things,
if you look at activity number two,
actually conducting the acquisition
and the fair opportunity, making your source selection,
and then getting to the place
where you will issue a task order or task orders.
Again, the available resources
to help you there are the GSA TOA contractors.
They can help you develop tools for your evaluation,
assist with your evaluation,
working with the technical, the price factors.
They are there to be by your side to help you do that.
So, let me pause, let's see what questions we may have
on activities one and two,
because these two constitute the pre-award activities
that we've designated in this mapping.
So Vanessa.
>> Yes, Iris has a question.
You should probably have another column spelling
out what the agency should be doing alongside the
available help.
It's a suggestion, I think.
>> Okay. Let's make sure we capture that,
because what we want to do in this workshop,
we want to address every issue you have relative to this,
and we're actually going to ask you at the end for ideas
for other workshops or other training or whatever,
so good, very, very good.
We'll make sure we'll capture those.
>> Hey Bill.
I'd like to make a point.
So our teams that are out there with the agencies,
they are not operating in a vacuum.
>> This is one of our TOA leads.
>> So my name is Don Wilkins, and I'm the program manager
for the TOA contract, and so to that point you just said,
I want to make sure that everybody understands we are not
out there in a vacuum to do stuff.
We're out there in partnership with each agency,
working with the agency teams on their products.
These are all agency products that we're helping develop,
and it only works in coordination
with the agency personnel themselves.
>> And I will say, and TOA has a wide range of experts
in the telecommunications area, and as I said, you know,
figuring out that acquisition strategy,
those resources can be tapped for helping, you know,
figure that out, and addressing questions like,
you know, can I cut the cord.
Does it, does it make sense?
Is this the time?
Those resources can help with all those kind of things.
>> This is Carolyn Kahn-Hall at HHS.
>> Yep.
>> I think we are really struggling still
to understand what we have in some of the regional solutions,
and more than that, at sites
where perhaps facilities are limited, what is possible
in terms of replacements.
Is that something that the TOA team is able to help with?
I understand GSA isn't going to do site surveys,
but what information do they have about the existing services
to help us figure out what our requirements are?
>> So, let me introduce Joe Hester.
Joe is the TOA lead on this full service area,
and I'm going to turn that to him.
>> Carolyn, if I understand your question,
you had a couple of questions there.
One, there are AAI reports,
which if you can get your TOA people to work with you
at the agency level to help you go through, they can identify,
and I think there's a report 24 specifically,
that points out what kind of service you have,
whether it's Centrex, whether it PBX, and it's in the blocks
that are marked or not marked.
So in terms of going through your inventory for full service,
that inventory is available.
Your second question, if I read it correctly,
you wanted to know what we're going
to be doing for the locations.
What we're in the process of trying
to do now is obtain an as-is profile of what's there.
In other words, there's a PBX there.
What kind of facilities are coming into the building?
What's with the vertical wiring,
the horizontal wiring, the power supply?
We're trying to get that from the maintenance contractors,
and we're working through that with different folks right now.
That'll take a bit because there's just a lot
of PBXs to go through.
In addition, there is a service if you will or a CLIN
on the EIS contract which allows you to have your vendor,
your contractor, do a real site survey.
So they can actually go in and tell you
in the location once you've made the award to that contractor
and tell them go see 22 Main Street
in Conshohocken or whatever.
If you give them the award for that kind of activity,
they can go in and actually do that site survey for you,
tell you what's needed, and where you need to go from there.
So, that is all available to you under either the TOA contract,
which I explained, you know,
and the TCC is actually the one doing the AAI reports.
So across the board, there's available services for you.
Did that answer your question?
>> That answered a lot of it, Joe, but if I can follow up,
and I'm not the most involved in this at HHS,
so I may not be stating this exactly correctly.
>> That's fine.
>> But I understand there are different ownership of,
for example, VoIP solutions, and we don't, I believe,
have the detail to know exactly what is currently there
and what's happening to that infrastructure.
>> Okay, specifically the voice to VoIP, okay.
I've been dealing with John Norton,
who is one of the delivery directors,
and do you want to answer that?
>> Yes.
>> Okay.
>> Okay, finish.
>> Oh, and what we're doing is John's going through,
and basically there are several avenues, as John's explained it
to me, under one avenue GSA owns everything,
just like a regular full service arrangement.
In that environment, I'm being told that all of that reverts
to GSA at the end of service life disconnect
or whatever you want to get rid of the service.
The other option from what I'm hearing is
that you can rent the equipment yourself,
meaning the telephones, in which case I think you can
retain those.
I will take your question specifically back to GSA
and make sure I'm giving you the correct answer.
>> Okay, thanks.
>> But I think that's what they've explained.
Am I off the rales a little bit or--
>> No, no.
So this is kind of also, this is Ray Cwenar.
So I just want to reiterate, you know, our first session
that we had a month or so ago was AAI, all agency inventory,
and basically what we have done is take the databases
out of TOPS, out of E-MORRIS, and put them all together
to come up with the inventory.
Specifically we created a report 24 in AAI that narrows
in on the full service inventory.
It's just data.
I understand.
You know, you have to know what you're looking at, you know.
But it's a good start to determine what you have
at these locations, at all your locations.
If you need an individual session
with probably Ken Palmer will be the best person on your AAI
to go over that and help and analyze that, you know,
just let us know for that.
The other option that's always been out there for years,
and a lot of people don't know it, but, you know,
our billing system is TOPS, right,
and we run a bill every month in TOPS where it interfaces
with IPEC, but in that bill is your inventory.
You know, it could be across hundreds of customer accounts,
but it is there to see what the inventory is.
>> I would take it one step further and maybe put
in a suggestion bill on what to have.
Oftentimes, our customers go into TOPS just
to get their bill, and then they turn around and leave.
But in TOPS, there are canned reports that will give you,
just as Ray said, inventory by worksite.
So therefore you can see your entire inventory by worksite,
by billing arrangement, and that's already in TOPS.
>> Hey, Peggy at HHS.
What's missing currently, and I think Iris is attempting
to type this question into the chat,
and she's not being successful, so I don't know
if we're full on chat questions.
We need to clear it
out so people can type additional questions,
but currently we've had separate calls.
Iris, Mike, myself and some of the other TCC and TOA folks
to go over some of the VoIP detail in the regions,
and some of the detailed information pertaining
to the access, how that,
those VoIP solutions are being provided
in the regions isn't fully flushed out yet,
and it's not detailed on the reports yet.
So, unless it was just published correctly
on this latest iteration,
and that's why we're having a separate VoIP meeting.
Unless it's happened in the last couple weeks and we haven't,
you know, they, you know, the access isn't clear.
For example, San Francisco is an area
where there's GSA converted an entire building to VoIP,
but the access wasn't appearing on any of the reports,
and it's not showing in e-bill, a GSA provided VPN.
>> And, and thank you for that clarification, and it won't,
and reasons being is because GSA, the full service model
for all intents and purposes is a shared service.
The GSA buys something and then redistributed based
on customer demand.
So for the access for VoIP, GSA in most locations,
and I trust Bill and Joe and everyone to dive into that
in more specifics, but in most cases,
GSA actually purchased the access, and that access is how
and what we call our GSA master account.
So in every system within TOPS,
we have something called a 999 account,
and what that 999 account does is where we house and pay
for services that everyone uses across that platform.
So all the access, trunking, that support VoIP is
in those 999 accounts, so you will not see
that on your individual account because it,
you know, services everyone.
So what we need to do
in understanding your question is just look at the architecture
of all our VoIPs that we have in our full service and look
at it not just from the customer perspective, Joe,
but also from the GSA architectural aspect as well,
and then we'll be able to flush out that access
and to share that information.
>> You just need to know what kind
of bandwidth requirements they need at those locations.
>> Exactly.
And that's what has developed, that's what we see on our side
because we knew how many chestnuts we had sharing it,
and so we'll be able to get that to you.
>> And Helen, Jerry Brosnan speaking.
I'm on Ray's team.
That's essentially the subject of our workshop on March 15.
So in approximately five weeks we're going to address,
we have about 4000 subscribers on GSA managed VoIP,
and you mentioned San Francisco.
In that instance, we've actually purchased the solution
under Networx Enterprise, so we will be able during the workshop
to explain what equipment can be transferred,
particularly the IP, the phones on the desktop as well
as your closet switches, because in the case of HHS,
you're the anchor tenant if you will for that site.
So we will be able to share with you
where individual agencies are the anchor tenant, if you will,
or the subscriber of record that has most of the closet switches
and equipment, which under Networx,
just in a contractual sense, government has the option
to take ownership of those because these are SEDs,
service enabled devices at the conclusion of lease payments,
if you will, we can take ownership.
So that's something that we're going to talk about in
about a month, and so we've advised Iris via email
about that topic, and we'll have a lot more to say then.
>> Okay. So that's all going to get covered and especially,
like you said, the handsets that we can take ownership of
and the ones that we can't.
>> Yes. As well as additional infrastructure, if possible.
To facilitate, you could bring a lot of GFE
to the table in your solicitation.
So you can reuse assets.
That's already been paid for
and that remain technologically relevant,
unlike our TDM-based PBXs, which we're decommissioning,
they're obsolete, risky.
There are some assets that still have economic life, okay.
>> And there are a lot of questions.
>> Okay.
>> Hi, this is Iris Chinn.
I'm sorry, I'm typing the questions into the Q
and A portion, and I realized it's not really being seen
by everybody.
Sorry for other agencies.
HHS is trying to have the appearance
of dominating the call,
but we do have a whole lot of questions.
There are ICBs in the AAI report
that is not fully defined and disclosed.
Without understanding of the full detail,
it is really very difficult for us to provide ATP
with high confidence, and that's currently what we are facing.
We are supposed to submit the ATP, which is at the end
of last month, but we have so much unknown about full service.
>> When you say ICB, that's, is that what's listed in the IAA?
>> Yes. Because San Francisco voice
over IP solution is a separate contract between GSA
and the vendor, so we don't have this ability
into those ICB CLINs.
>> Yeah, Iris, not to, we don't want,
I think what we'll probably have to do is, we're probably going
to have to sit down with you and HHS specifically and just talk
about HHS full service.
>> Absolutely.
>> Okay, we'll work on that in the next few weeks.
>> Thank you.
>> Okay. We have a question that was submitted from Kevin.
Is the same offer of help available for agencies
who must take services from GSA full service model
to contracts other than EIS?
So in our table here, the things that you see
or in the TOA contractors, that is specific to EIS only.
The full service program things,
I think the full service program may help assist.
I'll let Ray address that.
>> Yeah, we talked about this before.
The funding that we have is tied to EIS transition.
I mean that's period.
I don't, so that answers that question for me, no further.
>> Okay.
>> There's another question from Mike
with Railroad Retirement Board.
Is TOA support based on hours/projects?
>> Hours/projects?
>> Is TOA support based on hours or projects?
>> The TOA contract is based on producing deliverables
and helping agencies do their assisted,
doing their acquisition.
A lot of it's based on fair opportunities.
We, TOA support is working with agencies at a very high level.
So, we're working with Department
of Transportation for TOA support.
So it's not necessarily, you know, that's our first entrée is
into agencies at a high level.
Then it gets filtered down to sub-agencies.
But it is a labor-hour contract.
>> It is a labor-hour contract,
and we roughly have some flexibility
in allocating resources as required
as we understand requirements.
So, but the contract itself is set up, as you've all seen,
the recent AIs that have gone out,
it's set up with a proportional share of TOA per agency,
which was roughly based on some logic related to Networx volume.
>> We had a, one in the chat pod from Billy Vaughn.
It's, so one VoIP implementation could affect multiple agencies?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> The answer is yes.
>> And I think this one last comment from Kevin,
and it's going back to the transition support,
full service transition is part of the EIS transition.
>> Okay.
>> Say that again.
>> Oh, I think this is going back to the question
that Kevin asked earlier regarding support
for TOA off EIS, and I guess his only comment was
that the full service is part
of the EIS transition even if it doesn't go.
>> So fundamentally the, so the TOA support,
up until the decision was made in October, the TOA support was,
the majority of it was out with the agencies,
helping the agencies with their non-full service transition
to EIS, and then there was a full-service team
that had TOA support that was working
on full service transition.
When the decision was made in October
to shift the full service requirement to the agencies,
the TOA teams that are with the agencies are available to help
with the complete integrated solution
for both non-full service and full service,
and most of those teams, since the October timeframe,
have been working to, all right, let's integrate
in that full service inventory and come up with
and help every agency understand their true holistic as-is
environment and then have all the architecture
and engineering discussions
for what do you want your to-be environment to be
that you want to contract for.
And every agency is taking different tacts on doing that.
Some of them are integrating it in and they're still going
down the path of one solicitation.
Some agencies had a solicitation far enough along.
They're doing a separate solicitation
for their full service inventory.
Some agencies are like-for-like.
Some agencies are, now that they got this inventory all together,
it makes more sense now to have transformation discussions.
So every agency is dealing with this differently,
but it's now your responsibility
for your entire enterprise environment.
>> Okay. Vanessa, do we have any more.
>> No more questions.
We're good to go.
Okay. So it figures I would probably have the most
because that's the pre-award stage where most agencies are.
So moving forward into the post-award and transition,
as we broke down full service into these activities,
you can see the next one is telecom requirements analysis
and specification.
Okay. And you'll see, this is the first time where,
because it's post award, EIS contractors can pop in
and bill a sale for available resources.
The kind of thing we're talking about here is the ability
to provide inventory items to and spreadsheets
to your EIS contractor and say, hey, how do I turn these
into service orders, and that's been done on many
of the previous contracts.
That's a pretty standard course of business.
So you want to make sure you have your EIS contractors set
up to help do those individual, figure out how
to do those individual service orders.
>> Bill?
>> Yes.
>> It's Carolyn again.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I get stuck here
because this is a task order environment.
It's not IDIQ, and when we talk to our contracting officer,
she needs everything to be defined.
So what am I missing?
How do I put those pieces together?
>> So, who's my best SME here to address,
you can place service orders against a task order.
>> Well, I mean you can, yeah, you well, well we do it today,
you create a task order for a defined type of service.
This goes back into the previous question
about doing follow-on orders or do you have
to do additional fair opportunities,
but you put a solicitation based on your current inventory
or your future state inventory of VoIP or whatever,
and then you turn around and you, for your transition,
then you're going to do task orders
against what you projected.
>> Service orders.
>> Service, I'm sorry, thank you, John.
Service orders against that task order that you put,
but the specifics around that is, as I think you said earlier,
Joe, or no, I'm sorry, Jerry said earlier, about whether
or not you have TDM now, and your task order is based
on a future state technology, i.e., VoIP or some type
of cloud-based service.
You can put that in there and ask the vendor to then come back
and tell you what's in that wheelhouse to meet that need.
But once you get that task order in place, then you turn around,
and then you put the specifics of the service order
against that task order.
But I'm not saying it's easy.
It is work, but, you know, we do it today
on several of our current LSAs.
>> And just, Kevin did make a comment.
He said speaking of the transition specifically,
there is a billing and payment slide
that task orders don't work.
>> I'm not sure, your billing should match your service order.
You billing won't match your task order,
but the billing should match your service order
because the service order placed against an awarded task order
that the cost and value was determined and agreed upon.
So the service order should match.
>> This is Kevin.
This is Kevin.
Let me clarify.
You know, the transition is not the issue.
The transition of services, like for like, transformation
and what have you, the issue that we're having is,
I still find it hard to believe you know, task order is,
you have a, basically a single line of accounting
or you could have multiple lines of accounting
within a reasonable amount.
We are a direct-billed agency where units,
Coast Guard units pay for their own way.
We don't have a central account that, one line of accounting
that pays for all services.
Underneath the task order, it requires a contracting officer
to sign off that funding is available for the line
of accounting that is used to pay for the task order.
Now, if we were to transition 300 plus full service accounts
and 30 plus WITS3 accounts, a single task order,
that would require a contracting officer to sign off
on 300 plus lines of accounting that they are all fully funded.
And no contracting officer, even the GSA contracting officers
on this call can speak up.
None of them in their right mind would probably do that.
And so EIS, you know, the task order process makes it
so situations like I'm in or that we are in doesn't work.
And I find it hard to believe that we're still,
if we continue, I mean we're months into these calls,
and I have yet to find another agency
in the entire federal government that's in the same situation,
so, and then there may be agencies in this situation,
I'm wondering what they're doing
to transition services, if they exist.
>> Kevin, this is Ray.
You kind of hit the nail on the head
and the difficulties that we have as well.
Unfortunately, you know, the FAR is the FAR, 16.505,
EIS is an IDIQ, and we have to follow that.
And it doesn't give, fortunately there's nothing
that gives us any relief on funding and task orders,
and a lot of times you're right, funding,
task orders follow the funding, and when you consolidate it,
and the funding is not, you consolidate the acquisition
and the funding is not consolidated, it makes it very,
very difficult, I understand.
I'll just say some organizations have solved this
by the CIO organization consolidating the requirements
for, for communications, voice, video and data
under one enterprise solution.
And you are not unique in that you have, you know,
a decentralized funding structure,
a lot of other agencies as well,
and they're dealing with the same thing.
>> Can I jump back in, because Kevin kind of took
that in a different direction than I was trying to get.
My struggle is, if we don't understand what the solution is,
how can we make a task order award?
What I'm hearing, and maybe I'm misinterpreting is,
make your award, and then have your vendor do a site survey
and tell you what you actually need to order.
But how can we have awarded a task order
with that lack of specificity?
>> That's where you need
to really flush out the requirement.
>> That's the problem we're having, so it's a circle.
>> You know, you have to understand your requirement,
and just like you buy anything in government,
you have to know what--
>> And if we don't, we can't wait until after award
to get a site survey to figure it out, correct?
>> You're right.
Either you're going to go like-for-like or you're going
to go through some transformation solution.
>> How can we go like-for-like
if it's using GSA infrastructure that's not going
to be available to us?
>> I don't understand what you mean by that.
>> Are you talking VoIP?
Because infrastructure is available to you.
Like if you, in most federal buildings you can bring your
services into the MDF, the main distribution frame
in most basements of that building,
and then have the carrier bring it up to the IDF,
the individual distribution frames on your various floors
and closets on your floor to provide to you.
That's not going away.
So the CAT6, CAT3, CAT7, whatever wiring that GSA
over the years has put in those buildings,
that is still available for your use.
>> Yeah, but you're replacing a single circuit
with multiple circuits from multiple agencies, so can that,
in those building accommodate multiple agencies.
>> No, no.
No, it accommodates them now.
In those buildings, most buildings,
and I will say I have not been in every federal building
that GSA has services in, but I was a regional director
of region four, so I had a pretty robust inventory
under my management, and in those buildings,
even I bought solutions came in at the MDF in the basement,
and then it was distributed up.
So even though we brought in a single solutions, our customers,
which I did have customers who owned their own services
in GSA buildings, they came in the same MDF
and then they distributed up.
So you're going to find that in a lot, you know,
not a lot of restrictions.
>> Well, I think our problem is,
I think our problem is we don't have that insight
that you're talking about about how the current solution is
deployed, and so that's what I think we're really struggling
with, and we probably need to have a separate meeting,
but the question was really, is it the TOA team
that can help us figure that out?
>> I can do that.
I can do that.
Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> Yes. Sorry.
>> Thank you.
>> Okay.
>> Any other questions?
>> Do we have any others?
>> No, just on that I.
We don't need to do that now.
>> Okay, activity four, service order preparation.
You can see, I don't need to read all this to you,
but you can see there are full service program resources
available to help work with you and coordinate staging,
prepping of orders, okay.
If those orders are using Conexus,
support can be provided, and I do want to emphasize this,
if and only if agencies provide the list of materials, the SRN,
the AHC information for each order line.
So Joe Hester has, you know, he's working out ways
to coordinate all this kind of stuff
so resources are available to help with this.
Okay. Let me go down to activity number five,
service order approval and submission by the core.
Okay. Here's our first inherently
governmental activity.
So when we get, you know, near the end of this workshop,
and we talk about, you know, managed services
and functions you can outsource.
The reason why this is in red,
got to make sure you know you can't outsource that function.
Okay. Do we have any questions that have popped
in before I go to the next slide?
>> No, just on the individual configuration,
but it wasn't a question.
>> Okay. Now we're talking service order implementation,
okay.
Again, EIS contractors, okay.
Pretty much like Networx, service order completion notice.
You know, you're hiring those EIS contractors to deliver
on your service orders.
However, again, TOA resources can help you
with the transition, can help you with cutover support,
acceptance testing, billing verification,
all those functions.
TOA resources are available to take you
through that transition implementation.
>> Help and oversee and manage those phases.
>> Yep. Okay.
Activity seven, service acceptance in accordance
with the EIS contract.
Okay. Again, an inherently governmental activity.
We have resources that can help with that acceptance testing.
They can help you, they can turn to you and say,
here's the test results.
You can see what they are,
but that acceptance is a government activity.
Activity eight, service disconnects.
This is one that you want
to really make sure you work very closely
with the full service program resources on.
Okay. I think many of us have been there
where we disconnect before the new service is working.
We have a disconnect in error, and all those things.
Absolutely want to avoid that.
Coordination and communication are the two best things
to make sure those situations don't occur.
So we want people to realize those GSA resources
in the regions are standing by to help with that coordination.
And then--
>> I promise this will be the last time I chime in, but--
>> Oh, I don't think that promise is going to be kept,
but feel free to chime in, Carolyn.
>> So, we work with the EIS vendor
to install the new service,
and then the agency tells the GSA full service PMO
to disconnect the legacy service?
Is that how it works?
>> Yes, yes.
So basically once you have your firm install date,
you would let us know what date that is,
and then we will coordinate between you and the vendor
and do our disconnects anywhere from 24 to 48 hours
after that has happened, because you can have an install
and then something goes wacky, so we don't want
to pull the trigger until we know for a fact that services is
in and working, and once we have confirmation of your acceptance,
which is normally three days,
we're going to disconnect the services behind it.
>> Okay, so GSA issues the disconnect order
to the legacy contracts?
>> Yep.
>> We have to because we own it, but more importantly
from a contractual standpoint, you know, we just want
to partner with you to make sure you're stuff went in right,
and we're disconnecting in a timely fashion.
But the one thing to be said, do not assume we know.
We need every agency to make sure we know, and it's one thing
for us to say, oh, yeah, we got it and we're taking care of it.
It's another thing to say I didn't know anything about it,
and, you know, so make sure we know that, you know,
your install is a firm delivery.
You have accepted it, and now we can proceed with a disconnect.
>> Is there any kind of a procedure that's spelled
out in terms of what to notify GSA of at what points?
>> Yeah, we're working on those procedures.
Joe is working with Jim Bethke,
who is over the service ordering team, and they're working
on those policies and procedures as we speak.
So that should be coming through shortly.
>> In a couple weeks.
>> Okay, thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> And Carolyn-- Joe, give me the proper name for the document
that has been drafted.
>> Oh, the implementation plan?
>> Yeah. There's a full service, you know--
>> Yeah, what we've renamed it is the "Implementation plan
for the transition of regional local services to EIS."
>> And Carolyn, that document has been drafted.
It's being finalized.
It will need to go through, you know, the approval process here
at GSA, but that document will cover the kind
of things you brought out.
It addresses porting and, you know, processes for porting
and all those kind of things.
>> Okay.
>> So that's another document that's in the works
and hopefully will be out somewhat soon.
>> Question from Mike with Railroad Retirement Board.
Will agencies be able to port phone numbers to new services.
If yes, does the port constitute a disconnect?
And then just piggybacking on that, what is the procedure
for porting numbers, which I think is correct.
>> It's just in the document.
>> Yeah, so that document will be coming out with that,
and we've also been talking about doing one
of these workshops just to walk everybody
through that document once we get it approved.
So I'm kind of guessing from what I'm seeing
that might be a good idea.
>> Yeah.
>> April.
>> Okay, any other questions?
Vanessa?
>> Someone's typing, but nothing yet.
>> Okay. Project management.
You'll see available resources in two of the columns.
Obviously you don't want them doing the same thing,
but we want to make sure people know you can use a divide
and conquer approach in your solicitations,
and I think this is pretty much well known by everybody.
You want to be very specific
about what project management you are expecting
from your EIS contractor and what they will do.
From your side of the house,
there is project management assistance available
from TOA contractor.
So they can be watching out for your best interests.
They can be helping you oversee the project management
that your EIS contractor should supply, and between those two,
you should be able to have your implementation projects
well managed.
>> And William asks, what's the process
for requesting TOA support and responsibility for managing TOA?
>> So, requesting TOA support, you can either A,
reach out to your agency manager.
Most, every agency right now currently has TOA support.
It's documented.
Their working through finalizing these inter-agency agreements
that document what TOA support is available.
Previous to that, there were TOA support letters
that were negotiated and arranged for,
fundamentally were focusing on solicitation
and development of TOA support.
But if there's additional support that is required,
reach out to your agency manager.
I know that answers the first part.
What was the second part?
>> Responsibility for managing TOA.
>> So, the responsibilities for managing TOA are actually
at the Debbie Hren and Fred Adams' level, the COR,
but we interface daily, weekly with the agency managers
and work in concert with the agency managers in working
with the agency out there.
Also, every agency, I believe, has a lead transition manager,
which is where we put in our team leads for that agency.
In my mind, hopefully are hip to hip
with that lead transition manager, helping the agency
through all these processes.
>> All right, and just one more question.
Circling back to the second part of Mike's question,
I guess we didn't answer that.
Does the port constitute a disconnect?
>> Number portability is not a disconnect.
Just because I ported the number, you can have a number
and still have a line.
So let's be clear on that.
So, no, you don't want to move the number
and then have an unidentifiable billing item that's out there.
You must do a disconnect even though you're doing,
you're porting numbers.
And oftentimes, if you're doing like for like
and the services have a number identified with it,
that is something that the gaining vendor
and losing vendor will coordinate
through the number portability center here in DC.
So--
>> And Layesha's asking, oh I'm sorry, was that it Bridget?
>> Yeah.
>> Are there different levels
of project management offered at different costs.
Are the specific CLINs for that
or is it filtered into the process?
>> So project management from the EIS contractor side,
it will depend on what you put in your solicitation
and what the EIS contractors put in their proposals.
So you can work through that and define your requirements, and,
you know, see how they respond.
And from project management, from the TOA side, you--
>> Well, yeah, project management
from the TOA side will be
as your agency lead transition manager reaches
out for project management support, we'll provide
and adjust that accordingly.
You know, it's mainly an FY probably '19 and '20 function,
and it'll be a function of the budget at that time for us.
>> Okay. All right.
Let's move on to the next activities.
Now we are into the operational phase,
so we're through transition, and you will see
on the chart visually, you won't see TOA contractors in any more
of these boxes going forward.
So now, transition is over, and you're in the operational phase.
Service order preparation for moves, adds,
changes, and disconnects.
Again, EIS does not specify CLINs for MACDs
or changes requiring dispatch labor.
You can look at the contract.
You can set it up.
This will be pretty much business as usual,
like you've done on other contracts.
The service order approval and submission, okay.
Again, inherently governmental.
You will need to submit service orders for your services,
and we talked before about how you set that up
in your task order so you can handle those things.
Number 12, Service Assurance, again, make sure you've got
in your solicitation how you want service assurance done.
Obviously the contract has all this in it.
But the terms and conditions of EIS contract, you know,
it's not separately ordered.
A lot of the service assurance is part of the service.
So make sure you understand exactly what's in there.
If you feel you need to go above and beyond,
remember always custom requirements usually have a
price tag with them, but make sure you familiarize yourself
with what EIS contracts have in them.
Activity 13, this is agency oversight of SLA reporting,
submitting of SLA credit requests to the EIS contractor.
I'd say this is pretty much like you had under Networx and some
of the other contracts,
inherently governmental activity.
And then again, we broke out project management
that we talked about before in the implementation phase.
Now it's your ongoing operations project management.
You can work with your EIS contractor on that.
Also want to make sure, and we'll talk about this
in a little bit, service related labor is on the contract.
You want to make sure you think about that
when you're doing your solicitations
and your requirements about what ongoing operational project
management you may want.
You know, a big difference, as I've heard people
like Fred Haines say many times,
EIS is not just a follow-on for Networx.
They are different contracts.
One of the things EIS has in it is labor categories and things,
and we're going to talk about those.
Make sure you're aware of that.
You have more flexibility under EIS in that area
than you had under Networx.
>> Bill, if I can--
>> Yep.
>> If I can just jump in.
All these activities here are, as you mentioned,
being done on all the contracts
that you guys are using WITS and Networx.
And, again, to me it all, in my acquisition experience,
it all starts with your requirement.
The government has to know what we want and articulate
that into the Statement of Work.
So if we want additional project management, if we want them
to do more, you have to articulate that and put
that into your statement of work.
And, in some cases you may pay for it.
In some cases you may not pay for it.
It all depends.
And you won't know that until you get proposals back.
>> Okay, before we go to the next slide any questions
that you see in there?
>> Just one question, what constitutes a large site?
>> What constitutes a large site?
>> I don't know.
>> I don't know what the term,
where the term large site was used.
>> Yeah, I don't know how they came up with it.
It ended up being a dividing line when they looked
at overall volume of network inventory
when they did the EIS contract, but there were 19 major, oh, oh,
large site, large agencies.
All right, all right, all right.
>> Large site.
I'm not sure what--
>> Context.
>> What, yeah--
>> Is it in our slides?
>> I think you were addressing this--
>> There's one earlier.
>> In slide nine, activity nine, there's--
>> Well let me go back.
>> It's the only one that says large.
>> Large.
>> We're talking about large multi-tenant buildings?
Is that your question Layesha?
>> Layesha, did we address your question?
I'm not sure we understand your question.
>> We can get back to you on that.
>> Yeah, okay.
>> Let's just move on.
>> Yep. All right.
Then finishing out the activities that we broke out,
performance management.
Again, you can look at managed network service.
We'll talk about it in a couple minutes.
Again, you want to make sure you look.
The reason why we broke these activities out is
as you're working on your requirement,
look at all 19 activities
and make sure you are addressing them for your agency.
So, again, trouble ticket management.
Another one.
There's T's and C's in the EIS contract.
You need to think about what you need to support your agency.
Invoice management.
Okay. Can't outsource that,
can't have the fox watching the hen house.
Want to make sure everybody knows that's a
governmental activity.
Inventory administration.
Okay, there are things that you can have your EIS contractor do,
reporting.
You can have them do on that.
Many of you have done that under the previous contracts.
And then finally, billing consolidation,
payment management, adherence to the Prompt Payment Act.
This has been said before, governmental activity.
Got to make sure you handle that.
So, with that, I will make a pause before we move
in to the next section.
Okay. So, let me set up for the next section.
We've walked through all the different activities that break
down full service and the way it's been offered
and what you've used over the years.
We're going to take a couple minutes, and we're going
to talk about, you know, the technology that you have
as options to move into, and then we're going to talk
about how you can look
at procuring resources to help you do this.
Because definitely GSA people have done things in the past
that are going to need to be done
by other people in the future.
So let me turn it over.
Jerry, if you would like to introduce yourself,
I will hand it over.
>> Thanks Bill.
I'm Jerry Brosnan, and I support Ray
on the service delivery transition team.
And I'm going to briefly address transformative solutions,
solutions that would entail a significant change because most
of our customer base continues with legacy,
TDM-based solutions, and continued operation
of those pose risk because surely we're aware
that the service providers, they have business objectives
to retire those assets as quickly
as the regulatory authorities would allow.
And in the commercial space
where they are exhibiting more power, they are turning TDM off
in a lot of places, particularly low speed lease lines,
and that represents a lot of our activity.
So we base a reflection point, the PSTN is sun-setting
and poses risk, even within five years.
Just consider that of the ten vendors under contract,
under EIS, only five have circuit switched services,
and only one provides full ubiquity covering all 929 CBSAs.
On the other side of the coin, all ten can offer the solutions
that we're going to briefly discuss.
And let me draw your attention to the first one.
So how do you procure voice in the most expedious manner
if you're doing transformation?
Well, you simply put it on your existing data LAN,
and although technically that's quite feasible,
and this is very mature technology,
at least 10 to 15 years in the marketplace.
We do recognize organizationally there could be impediments,
but let me just talk about what's required
from a technical perspective.
If the government, the typical government knowledge worker,
if he or she goes to work at a fixed site,
invariably they have two purpose-built networks serving
them, a data LAN and a voice,
the traditional TDM inside wiring
that goes to a central office.
Well, you can turn off the voice.
The purpose built voice network,
that's the notion Bill had talked about, cut that cord.
And you could do it by merely putting a voice app
on your existing data network, and for quantity one,
you can buy that on EIS for as little at $11.81.
So that's your price point, $11 to $20.
And if you buy in volume,
obviously it's less, on a per seat basis.
So, doing so, you need to enable,
to enable the solution, you need an IP phone.
They're available 48, you can really make the cost bearable,
if you will, by leasing it for 48 months,
and those typically retail $100 would suit the needs
of the typical knowledge worker in business or government.
So imagine a payment over 48 pay periods.
So it can, it's by far the most economical solution,
and it would be the quickest to commission.
However, things to consider, you would need to coordinate
with your OCIO, because the people that are responsible
for the data network, they in effect would have to permit you
to put the voice on the data, to allow the convergence,
and some agencies that's easier said than done.
We recognize that there's various ways of budgeting,
and so your budget would have to facilitate that,
your purchasing, your enterprise buying approach.
And as I noted, this may require a one-time investment,
but however you can mitigate that financial obligation
by leasing, a very long-term lease, and shorter term as well.
The tenor of the lease is 24 to 48 months under EIS,
very much similar to what we did under Networx as well.
So you have the path.
You could converge, the most,
the cheapest solution is clearly convergence.
Directing your attention now to wireless, another means
of cutting the cord, simply go wireless.
And that's probably the quickest way in terms
of ensuring dial tone as quick as possible, and I just want
to note that under EIS, you can do,
you could purchase voice-only plans.
I'm going to conclude this quick segment
on transformative solutions with a brief overview
of what's available under EIS for wireless.
However, we would be remiss in not mentioning
that GSA has other sales channels available
to serve your wireless needs, notably the schedules.
You can go directly to various vendors.
Or, we have strategic sourcing agreements.
FSSI Wireless is available.
So a quick means of solving your legacy voice is clearly
convergence on your data network
or cutting the cord via a wireless solution.
Okay. Next slide please.
>> The only--
>> Oh, go ahead.
>> Consideration
that transformation during transition is risky.
>> That's noted.
And, yes
It's two risk profiles, and you have to choose the risk
that you're most willing to consider,
but absolutely understood.
Okay, slide 13 addresses, I mentioned that the full service,
we do have pretty significant low-speed internet
in our inventory.
It's not just POTS.
We probably have at least 30 percent by revenue
or business volume in what's essentially DSL,
and again regrettably DSL poses a risk of obsolescence.
This is a technology that is not getting the investment
that wireless is or fiber-optic based solutions
to homes and residences.
So this more or less is a technology
that has a short life let's say, and so same risk profile.
Continued operation of DSL.
Inevitably in the near term you're going
to face discontinuance.
Under EIS, the vendor can withdraw services of course
with government consent.
There is a means to exit with offerings, service offerings,
and I think the PSTN base ones would likely be a de-commission
during the course of EIS.
It's just a matter of when they'll do so.
They're doing it very much out, where they, as I said,
where the regulatory bodies allow them.
They are actively decommissioning the PSTN
throughout the country.
But let's look at our slide.
Fortunately there are solutions.
Mostly likely, simply Ethernet.
Ethernet is the means to future proof your LAN way
and interface, but it's not the sole solution
because it's not widely available in low-density,
low-population areas, probably requiring you,
if you want to replace, to consider wireless.
But when you consider replacing your DSL,
do ponder other options,
and probably your best solution is aggregating,
putting what's currently served on DSL on other existing pipes
that you already are procuring.
So buy bigger pipes with a bias toward fiber.
Okay. Last one.
Private line.
DSO, this is the highest risk.
There's a lot of activity.
Vendors simply are withdrawing this,
and it's the clear full shadowing
of likely decommissioning around the pike.
So, I would advise people not to do like for
like for a small private line and consider, again,
Ethernet-based solutions.
And a key benefit is the notion of future proofing,
and Ethernet is generally cheaper
because the world has wholly adopted Ethernet.
This is the notion of getting the best possible price points
for CPE generally is found with the Ethernet-based solutions.
>> And Jerry, just so, just so, when you say private line,
what you're talking about is a point-to-point circuit?
>> Absolutely.
>> A TDM point-to-point circuit that's connecting
to a data network.
>> Yes, indeed.
Yeah, Ray, PLS, that's the term under EIS and Networx,
but it's also known as nailed-up circuits.
It's also known as dedicated transmission facilities.
But you're right, PLS, anything you have nailed up,
point to point for data transmission--
Okay, the next slide we're going to--
>> Jerry?
>> Yes, question?
>> Yes, Nick Minnick, CMS.
I do have a question for you related
to that DSL replacement options.
So if some of our regional offices have DSL/internet access
for certain testing reasons,
and I know you're saying an Ethernet option is available
to replace those, but I think you're referring
to a specific vendor-provided Ethernet connection
to an internet-based service, what about some
of these vendor replacement services that are,
that are getting rid of the DSL,
such as in Verizon LEC serving areas,
you know, they have the FIOS.
In the AT&T serving areas, they have the U-verse.
Are those options that will also be available?
>> They are but admittedly you have to ensure
that it's available for your given CBSA
and your network site code.
Broadly speaking, where there's an addressable market
for the carriers, you're going to have fiber.
So where the population is, where the business centers,
the urban business centers, fiber is there.
It's available.
It's been there under Networx.
We've seen significant uptake in Ethernet in the recent years,
so there's adaption in the U.S. government,
but I don't think that's the full case, you know,
the footprint of the U.S. government touches the citizen
wherever the citizen is, and that's in a lot of small,
low density, low population.
And that's where it's more difficult,
that you won't find Ethernet solutions necessarily,
but that's where wireless can help you for data.
I hope I addressed that.
So, yeah you can get Ethernet.
What I'm talking about is more widely available
where the customer base is.
>> Yep, all right, thank you.
>> Okay. We're going to conclude with,
I more or less pitched wireless, but there's a lot of offers,
means of restricting the fact
that you may not necessarily need a full smart phone solution
to replace a POTS line, a black phone on someone's desk
in a multi-tenant federal building.
You could simply buy voice only.
And so that's the key point.
You can enable your people by restricting their devices.
There are means of having more
or less a managed wireless service offering
that would limit it to just voice and short messaging,
chatting, or multimedia messaging, but that would be it.
So you don't necessarily have to take the big leap
into a smartphone solution
as a replacement option for your voice.
So I'll leave it pretty much at that,
and I'll hand it back to Bill.
Go ahead, Micah.
>> Managed network services,
you guys were going to talk about that?
>> Yes.
Coming up next.
>> Okay. So we've talked about how you break the program
out into all those different activities.
We've talked about contracting stuff.
We talked about, you know, some technologies.
>> Excuse me?
>> Iris?
>> Yes, before you go
to the next subject, can I ask a question?
>> Okay.
>> From the very first full service workshop, we understand
that PBX and voice over IP services has to be transformed.
Like for like is not possible, and now I'm finding
out that private line services should be considered a
transformation, and like for like is not very feasible.
So is there any other services that belongs to this category
that we really have to look
at some other solution rather than like for like?
>> Well, I'll start this off, and then others can chime in.
Many of the technologies that full service currently delivered
over are coming to or some have even passed, you know,
end of support, end of life.
Most of what, you know, full service that's out there needs
to be moving to a new technology.
You know, that there are some things that you can kind
of split the difference on.
Jerry said, you know, if you've gone with one
of the GSA offered VOIP solutions and you have desk sets
through that, those probably still have some life
because some of those just went in in the last few years.
And you can work through, you know,
the methods that we shared here to figure
out how you can take ownership of those and reuse them.
But many of the things, the PBXs out there,
they are beyond end of life.
So when we talk about risk, there's that risk
of obsolescence that Jerry talked
about that everybody needs to be aware of,
and most of these full service, you know, offerings are based
on those technologies.
>> This is Kevin Guthrie, can I add in.
>> And, Iris, I would just add, it's fundamentally
that industry, the service providers, no longer want
to support copper-based access, simply put.
And just a very telling point, Hurricane Sandy,
when Sandy destroyed the outside plant for Long Island,
and this was affluent communities, the carrier,
the dominant carrier, did not want to replace it.
They went with wireless.
So the investment, the people providing us the dial tone
or the data, their investment bias is toward other solutions
than maintaining the copper-based TDM access.
>> I think one other thing you need to be aware of,
like for like as though that's some type of mandatory option
in EIS, you may want to go like for like and put that out
to the vendor, and the vendor may very well respond and say,
we are no longer providing this.
You know, you've been around as long as I have, you know,
I remember when Ethics came to an end and we thought
that was going to be the end of the world.
So, you know, the vendor very well have an option
to say they're not going to provide you, I know especially
with AT&T, I mean if you're following their FCC filings
that they're really trying to get out of all of the business
of TDM, but to, you know, to the question that was posed,
you know, you have your PBXs, you have some Centrex services
that may not follow on.
You also have remotes that are tied to switches.
I mean it's a laundry list of things
that off the cuff are obvious that somebody may not offer,
but be mindful that the stuff that you assume may be
like for like, vendors may opt not to provide that as well.
>> Okay, this Kevin Guthrie, if I could, if I could add
on to what Bridget was saying.
You need to look at things that we don't typically think about.
Emergency lines and elevators,
any type of alarm systems you have.
Any type of call-down circuits, crash lines.
Any of these standoff one or two output-type devices
that you normally don't even think about,
those will all be sun-setting.
You're going to have to find some other mechanism
to support those if you still need those activities.
Fax lines would be a common one that we run into issues with.
>> Okay. And it's not to say that, you know,
there won't be any TDM on the contract either.
It'll be there.
For a private line, you know, that wasn't a mandatory service,
but there are vendors that do offer that, but you still need
to have that, that that is available.
You can put it in your solicitation.
But of course the push is to move off of legacy.
So you could go from a private line to, you know,
perhaps a IP based VPNS network, for example, as an alternative.
>> Okay. So, let's talk for a few minutes
about from an agency perspective,
how do I get help doing all this?
Okay. And we walk through, you know, for all the activities,
the resources that are available,
but we want to leave you with you want to think
about what services are available on EIS
to help you operate going into the future.
So, taking a piece right out of the EIS contract,
EIS describes managed service as the practice
of outsourcing day-to-day customer
management responsibilities.
Okay. And I think from what I've heard,
that's the concern of a lot of agencies.
A, GSA helped me handle these day-to-day customer management
responsibilities, and now that function will be ending.
You can look at outsourcing those functions.
So, there's two things that we want to share with you
as options to consider.
There's, you know, a full outsourcing kind of mode
to go forward with or very specific and kind
of more surgical, service-related labor.
So when you're thinking about your requirements,
thinking about what you would put in solicitations, okay,
you're solicitations can include kind
of a full outsourcing requirement.
And I've listed out here on this slide a bunch
of the different features and things that you may want
to think about from, you know, planning, you know,
help doing training for new technologies,
service order work, inventory, technical support,
even down to help desk type stuff.
You can make sure that EIS contractors when you make awards
to them, you know, can handle these kind of functions
that were handled by GSA people in the past.
If you're looking for, okay, you know,
full service is going away, and I understand
and there's certain things that are inherently governmental,
but there's things I'd like to get other people to do,
you want to look at the labor categories, and we picked
out three here that we think, you know, applied directly
to what you may need to have somebody sitting at your elbow
to do the kind of things the GSA folks have done in the past.
Customer service representative.
Interact with customers.
Those can be your, the old resources that you have,
to provide information in response to inquiries
about products and services and to handle
and resolve complaints.
I'm guessing there's GSA people doing those functions
under full service as I speak, okay.
You can set it up, you can hire resources
under EIS to help do that.
Obviously, more sophisticated engineering,
there's engineering categories that help, can help figure
out how you go forward, how you manage these,
especially how you operate.
There's project manager categories in there
for how you can make sure, you know,
maybe you deem my full service replacement is a project.
Give me a project manager to oversee
that for the next so many years.
You know, you may figure out that's what you want to do.
So we want people to think about, there are options,
you can outsource these functions
that we've broken down for you today.
The final question is, you know, okay, Bill,
you know, that all sounds fine.
I don't love it.
I know I have to do it, but how am I going to pay for it?
How can I pay for these resources
that I need to help me?
Okay. And I will turn to some of my subject matter experts here,
but the fee that agencies are paying today
on full service is quite high.
I don't know if you want to give a percentage,
percentage is 30 percent.
Okay. If you do this, if you are purchasing labor under EIS,
that fee is dramatically smaller, 4.75.
Okay. Do the math.
You have about 25 percent.
>> 25.25.
>> You know, to play with.
Bridget is very specific.
You need to think about how, as I go into the future,
can I take that funding
that I've been paying these GSA people
that have done all this good stuff for you,
but you've been paying them for it through this fee.
How can I apply that fee toward these labor services,
this outsourcing that I may want to do.
Just for my own, you know, data point, I asked to look at,
show me for the largest agencies, you know,
what kind of fee they've been paying for these things.
For many of them, it's millions and millions of dollars a year.
You can buy bodies for millions and millions of dollars a year.
So we want people to make sure they look at that aspect
of all this and how can they take the money that's been going
toward that 30 percent fee and apply it in the future,
set it up in advance through your solicitations
and your funding documents and everything,
to do that going forward.
Well let me pause here, see if we have any questions.
Well I must have done a good job on that.
Okay, next steps for agencies.
Let me go of the script just a second and say, you know,
we've got a lot of really good questions here today.
Some are specific to your agency,
but some of them obviously apply across all agencies.
We have multiple channels of communication.
We have, there's GSA-specific training.
There's these workshops we've been doing.
We're working on documents that will be released.
We're working on use cases for just specific,
you know, surgical type items.
We need to know what are the things that you need
to know about, the things you're confused on,
the well how am I going to do this or that thing.
The first place I would suggest you stop is get
with your TOA resources on this and get with them
and say "I don't understand how to do this."
We have communication channels set up between the TOA resources
and the TCC to gather these things, when we see agency,
you know, things that affect multiple agencies, we can figure
out the best communication mechanism, get the party line
on these issues, and get that information out.
So please, you know, make sure you're telling us, you know,
what information you need.
Biggest thing that we started with,
determine your acquisition strategy.
As Ray said, it all starts with requirements.
Figure out what you need, how you want to go forward,
how you want to get from point A to point B. You know,
think about, as I said before, all 19 of these activities.
You know, when you're crafting your solicitations,
get out this list and look through it and say,
"have I covered, can I check every one of these?"
Okay. Look at the technologies available that Jerry said.
You know, many agencies have government supplied smartphones
that people are carrying around.
This might be the time to say, hey, maybe that's going to be,
you know, a major communication device going forward,
not just a supplemental device anymore.
Okay. Think about the last thing we talked about,
your need for full outsourcing capability, managed service
or just, you know, service-related labor.
Those things are all on EIS, okay?
So with that, I think we've got about 15 minutes left
in our scheduled time.
Let's open it up for questions.
You can post them in the Q and A pod or, and just speak up.
>> Bill, I did want to share something.
You know, I was just
at a telecom working group just yesterday and the day before,
and someone from the department of Army was speaking,
and they provide all the local telecom for the bases,
all bases except for Fort Belvoir,
and one thing they were doing, he was doing,
he says he's got one flat price for all their telecom.
They do it, you know, it's a monthly,
flat price that they provide, and he says that is,
that is reducing considerably, you know, the management costs
that they have, and so I just wanted to share that, you know,
you can think about that for building or something
like that, as a possibility.
But he says it's been very successful, so--
>> And we did that once before, and that goes back
to what you put in your acquisition strategy.
We did that a couple years ago with PRIs.
We found a disparaging of cost of PRIs all over the place,
so we leveraged to buy based on what we had divided by,
you know, whatever and came up with a common price, and as GSA,
we actually did that for a time
where some people may have paid a little bit more or higher
in a metropolitan, but if you had an agency that was
out in the woods and they paid an equitable cost for that.
So, yes, what the base has done for that,
the agencies can very well put that acquisition strategy
in place to have an all-inclusive price
to include whatever, but again, they must come up with
that strategy to make that happen.
Bottom line to all of this is everything is possible.
You just need to know how to package it,
to put it out there, to have bids on it.
>> And those are, those are very good points.
I know back when I was a telecommunications director
of an agency, you know, I looked
for opportunities to simplify things.
We all can very quickly get overwhelmed with the complexity
of things, but to the points just made,
there are opportunities to simplify things,
and agencies want to think about those.
And I don't know, would that agency that was speaking
to you be willing to, you know, share with others.
>> I would suppose so.
>> Yeah?
>> We're going to get a list of contacts,
so I can definitely co-chair that.
>> Yeah, we definitely want to learn to each other.
>> Sure.
>> Use lessons learned and apply those for everybody's benefit.
>> And just quickly, I mean you were talking
about like future proofing and, you know,
providing priced options on your solicitations, so you're moving
to like a VoIP environment, you're not ready to do it yet,
well have it available as an option on your solicitation,
and you can also get the vendors to help you come
up with the quantities and the type of solution if you ask for,
you know, you state your objectives for that portion
of it and get a PWS back from them.
You can do that.
Of course, there's an RFI method also.
I just wanted to mention that.
You don't have to obligate your funds
until you exercise the option.
>> This is Ray.
I think what we're going to see for this TDM local telecom,
some of the resellers that are, or the contract,
I think you're going to see them very competitive.
You're nontraditional local exchange providers,
in providing this legacy voice, and hopefully, you know,
that gets us, really just buys us some time, buys agencies time
to transform to something different.
As Jerry said and a couple of others said,
TDM is not going to be here forever.
POTS lines, PRIs, they're not going to be here forever.
And I think what you might see too, I haven't seen any pricing,
but I mean I've been thinking about this for a while, you,
you know a lot of these vendors want to get
out of the copper-based TDM.
One way they're going to do
that is they're going to jack the price up.
It's going to force you, it's going to force you
to look at a VoIP solution.
And again, you don't know
that until you actually get your proposal.
>> Other questions?
What mechanism do we want to use to get recommendations
for future full service workshops?
>> Email to Ray or Bridget with suggestions.
>> No, no don't do that.
>> I don't think that's it.
>> No, don't do that.
Please don't!
>> I can give them my email.
>> This is what we'll do.
We're sending out an email after this with the slides
and with the Interacts website.
We'll have a message on there on, like we do have one set
up for it in March, and it has to do
with the GSA managed VoIP locations
that we have across the country.
We're trying to get our hands around on all those locations.
It's not as many as you might think, but there are some,
Jerry mentioned how many lines?
>> About 4000.
>> Four thousands lines that are on VoIP.
And, you know, I can think of four
of them off the top of my head.
St. Louis, San Fran, Atlanta, and there's one in Philly.
So there's not a lot of those.
But, yeah, so I think that's what well do is
if you have any suggestions for other workshops, and again,
these are intended to try to have a dialogue
but more importantly answer questions around, specifically
around the full service program moving forward to EIS.
I mean I think we got a couple good ideas
for future workshops already.
You know, number portability and plan,
and I know we have done some, some analysis on CBSA coverage
for TDM, so we probably want to do one on that as well.
Okay.
>> Last chance, last call for questions.
>> I have one more question.
>> Okay.
>> Hello.
>> Go for it.
>> Yeah, since GSA will be the owner of the record,
you will have to issue the disconnect orders.
>> Correct.
>> So if we, agency, completed the service and notify you
for a service to be disconnected, what do you expect
to be the lead time or the schedule for you
to actually get the service disconnected and off
of the transition inventory.
As I said previously, so once you have your firm date
of install from your vendor, service has been installed,
you've accepted the service, once you get the acceptance,
because that's when billing should start, at acceptance,
you notify us, and we will then do a disconnect.
Now we're going to disconnect that service within 24
to 48 hours after your notification.
Now--
>> Okay.
>> One thing I want to throw out there,
because it's real, we bill from TOPS.
TOPS is an auto billing cycle system, so if it happens
for the 22nd, you will get a final bill of that month.
So, you know, so if you order, TOPS doesn't pro-rate,
I guess that's what I'm trying to tell you,
it doesn't pro-rate, so you will get a final billing
of that service even if it disconnected earlier
in the month, and there's really nothing I can do about that.
>> And those disconnects have to be orchestrated very closely,
but if you have a date and a date slips--
>> Then we're screwed.
>> Then, you know, and new service doesn't get installed.
>> And that's the reason why I said acceptance, not the fact
that you have a firm date, but the fact that you have,
it has gone in, and you have actually accepted the
functionality of that service, we will then disconnect 24
to 48 hours post notification.
And, you know, and I can't say enough, yeah, we're working
with you, but please don't assume we know.
Really make sure we do.
Did I answer your question?
I wasn't sure.
>> Okay, well mostly, but say, for example, I accepted my side
of service on March 15.
I notify you on March 15 or 16
that the GSA service should be disconnected,
and you will issue the disconnect to the prior vendor
within 24 to 48 hours, but it takes the prior vendor some time
to actually disconnect the service--
>> That's on them.
>> What's our, what's our billing obligation?
>> No, that's on them.
Once I notify them to disconnect service,
that service effective disconnect
for billing purposes is the day of my notification and the day
of their acceptance of my notification.
So when I say to them disconnect, they acknowledge
that I sent them a disconnect notice.
So if they acknowledge that I sent them a disconnect
on the 15th, I have no more billing obligations with them,
I don't care if they leave the service in there
for three or four months.
Now, we will have better insight too because we're disconnecting,
but on average, if we're doing it today,
I always ask my customers to watch your bill to make sure
that doesn't happen, you know,
that the billing didn't go through, because some
of the billing is like on auto pilot.
So if it did go through, then we will do a credit
to your account, to your IPAC account to refund
that beyond the month that the services were disconnected.
>> Iris?
>> So, to re-iterate,
on the 15th if you give me the disconnect,
I send that disconnect to the vendor between 24 and 48 hours
after you submit it to me, once I get a confirmation
from that vendor that the disconnect order was accepted,
the disconnect, we no longer have a billing obligation
with that vendor.
>> Bill, I lied.
I'm going to ask another question following
up on Iris here.
>> I predicted that.
>> Yeah, you did.
Networx has a 30-day disconnect SLA.
So for the Networx complement to a regional service,
I think they can keep billing us for 30 days, can't they?
>> Same thing with GSA-- I mean, and I just want to make sure
that 30 days is not unusual.
I mean that is, networks has a defined 30 days,
so they will bill you, you have a billable obligation
for 30 days.
>> Okay, I think that's what Iris was trying to clarify.
>> Yeah, right.
>> Yeah, for the long distance part of a service--
>> Yes.
>> That's facilitated through local, the local will go,
as Iris said, and the Networx portion will have a
30-day interval.
>> And I think that's what I was trying to articulate.
If you disconnect on the first of the month,
you will still get a final bill for the 23rd.
Or let's hypothetically you disconnected on the 30th
of the previous month, the billing cycle is from the 23rd
to the 23rd of the month.
So therefore, you know, you could still get a bill
after you disconnected either on the local side
and with a 30-day billing obligation of Networx as well.
>> So they should expect one more bill.
>> One more bill.
You should get a final bill.
>> Through TOPS.
>> Yep.
>> Yeah.
>> Good clarification, thanks Carolyn.
We will, we won't ping you for that one.
>> Thank you.
>> So real quick, Iris, I'll be in touch with you
to set something up in the next couple weeks, okay.
This is Ray.
>> Great, thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> And Ray, since you were kind enough
to start us off, do you want to--
>> I think I said my closing--
>> Wrap us up.
>> I'm good.
>> Say goodbye.
>> I'm good, we're out.
All right, thanks a lot everybody.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> All right, thanks you all.
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