**IRM Forum - The FTS-2001 Contract**

A Telecast Originating from the BLM National Training Center

May 13, 1999

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: the Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network Presents Live
from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, the Irm
Forum, An Interactive Telecast on the Goals and Objectives of Current
Irm Activities. Today\'s Topic ‑‑ the Fts‑2001 Contract. And Now, the
Host of Your Program, Robin Stoebe.

R. Stoebe: Good Morning, Everyone. Welcome to the Spring Edition of The
Irm Forum. In Today\'s Show We Will Be Discussing the Changes BLM Will
See as We Transition to the New Fts‑2001 Contract. We\'ll Also Explore
Some Exciting New Technologies That Are on the Horizon. Among Our Guests
We\'re Very Fortunate to Have with Us Today Some of the Government\'s
Top Telecommunications Specialists. They\'ll Be Helping Us Examine Some
Issues Significant to Everyone Involved in the Use of The New Fts‑2001
Contract but Most Importantly They\'re Here to Answer Your Questions.
BLM\'s Fts‑2001 Transition Team Leader, Debbra Deaver, Is Here From the
National Irm Center. Good Morning, Debbra.

D. Deaver: Good Morning, Robin. I Will Be Discussing the Bureau\'s
Transition, Strategy And Time Line this Morning.

R. Stoebe: Thank You. Also from the Irm Center Is Ken Wilbert Who Has
Taken Time off From His Y2k Duties to Talk to Us about Fts‑2001 Changes
for BLM\'s Data Network. Thanks for Being with Us Today, Ken.

K. Wilbert: Good Morning. I\'m Glad to Be in Phoenix Again. Whether the
Forum Is Y2k or Fts‑2001, My Interest Is the Bureau\'s Networks, Both
National And State. The Fts‑2001 Questions I Hear From My Counterparts
in the Field Are, Number One, How Do We Transition Without Disruption to
Our Customers? Number Two, Can We Provide Better, Faster, More Efficient
Services? Hopefully During this Forum We Can Answer Those Questions.

R. Stoebe: Good. With Us from the Department of The Interior, Office of
Information Resource Management, Is Jim Dolezal.

J. Dolezal: It\'s a Pleasure To Be Here in Phoenix. It\'s Sunny and Warm
and I\'m Happy I Can Participate in the Forum.

R. Stoebe: Thank You, Jim. Also on Our Panel Is Deb Weigel, A
Telecommunications Specialist With BLM\'s Montana State Office. Deb Is
Leading Montana\'s Fts‑2001 Effort. Hello, Deb.

D. Weigel: I\'m Glad to Have The Opportunity to Address the Transition
from a Technical Hands‑on Point of View.

R. Stoebe: and Our Special Guest from Mci Worldcom Is Denise Moscatelli,
Doi National Account Manager. Thanks, Denise, for Being on the Program
Today.

D. Moscatelli: Good Morning, Robin. Thank You for the Opportunity. I
Feel Free in Saying That for The past 10 Years We Have Anxiously Awaited
and Prepared For Fts‑2001. Needless to Say, Mci Is Thrilled To Be Here.

R. Stoebe: We\'re Glad to Have You Here. To Bring in Another Agency\'s
Perspective, We Are Pleased to To Have Doug Hodge, The Forest Service
Fts‑2001 Transition Manager. Good Morning, Doug.

D. Hodge: Good Morning, Robin. Glad to Be Here. I Will Be Giving a
Summary What The Forest Service and Usda Plans Are for Transition.

R. Stoebe: Doug Is Joining Us Today from the Headquarter Office on L
Street via BLM\'s Video Conferencing System, and We Will Be Talking More
about Video Conferencing Later in the Broadcast. We\'ll Get Back to You
Later, Doug. Before We Get Started with Our Discussions, I\'d like to
Remind All Our Viewers That We Encourage to You Join in and Be Part of
Our Dialogue. So Here Are the Ground Rules. Any Time During Today\'s
Show If You Have a Question or a Comment For Us, Give Us a Call. Or Send
Us a Fax Using the Numbers That Have Been Provide To Do Your Offices.
We\'ll Get to Your Questions as Quickly as We Can. We\'ve Also Reserved
Some Time Near the End of Our Show for a General Question‑and‑answer
Session. To Begin, We\'re Going to Start Our Discussion with an Overview
Of the Fts‑2001 Contract. Jim, I Believe You\'re Going to Get Things
Started for Us.

J. Dolezal: Yes, Robin, I Will. I Am Going to Discuss the Current Use of
Fts‑2000 and Also Highlight How We\'ve Selected Mci Worldcom to Be Our
Fts‑2001 Vendor and Then Discuss Some of The Challenges We Face and How
We Will Tackle this Challenge of Moving from At&t to Mci Worldcom.
Let\'s First Look at the Department\'s Long‑distance Costs. The Chart I
Am Going to Show Is The Historical Costs Much Fts‑2000 and Fts‑2001
Projections. In the Blue on the Left Is the Old Fts Network That Gsa Had
Provided for Voice Services Only. As You Can See, Our Costs Increased
Through ‑‑ or Fy 1989 And at That Point, the Cost of The Telephone Call
Was about 29 Cents per Minute. With the Fts‑2000 Contract in Fy‑90 and
Implementation in \'91, Our Costs Were Reduced Significantly. Also, We
Included Data Communications Services with the Voice Services. As You
Can See, Our Use of Fts‑2000 Increased Significantly Through the Years,
the Costs Were Decreased in about Fy‑96 Due to Renegotiations of the
Contract, and Then in the ‑‑ Well, Current Year, Our Costs Are about 9
Cents per Minute for Our Voice Calls, less an Third Of What it Was Ten
Years Ago. As You Can See, in the Purple, On the Right, Our Projection
for Fts‑2001 Is about a 30% Decrease From What We Currently Have. Our
Costs Will in the next Year Should Approach 6 Cents per Minute, and in
the next Six to Eight Years Will Approach 1 Cent Per Minute, Which Is a
Phenomenal Decrease in Cost. Needless to Say, We\'re Very Excited about
Fts‑2001. We Think It\'s Both Good for Us From the Standpoint of Cost
and Improved Capability. When I Look at the Cost on a Departmental
Basis, the Bureau Of Land Management Is a Significant User of Fts‑2000
Services. In the Yellow on this Chart, You Can See That the BLM Is about
15% of the Total Department\'s Cost. Or Expenses. Only Exceeded by
National Park Service on the Bottom and Fish And Wildlife Service on the
Top. At about \$3 1/2 Million, BLM Is A Significant User. When We Look
at the Distribution Of How Those Costs Are ‑‑ or What Services Are Used
by BLM, In the next Chart You\'ll See That Voice Services in the Blue
Are More than Half the Services, About 55% of the Services That BLM
Uses. In the Lower Portion of the Chart, in the Red and the Orange, Are
Data Communications Services on Fts‑2000. BLM in Addition Uses Data
Communication Services, Frame Relay Services Primarily from The Local
Exchange Carriers. And Probably at this Point Are Half and Half as Far
as Cost of Voices Versus Data. For Fts‑2001, I\'m Sure Everyone Realizes
That Gsa Awarded Two Contracts, One to Sprint and Then One to Mci
Worldcom. These Contracts Are \$6 Billion Worth of Business for Those
Two Companies. The Minimum Revenue Guarantee Is \$1 1/2 Billion over the
Eight‑year Life. At&t Did Not Win, and That\'s Important to Realize.
While They\'ve Lowered Their Prices and Are Trying to Be Competitive,
Mci Prices Are Still Lower than At&t. And in Our Opinion, Mci Is Both
Offering Lower Cost and Providing ‑‑ or Will Provide Higher Quality and
More Services And I Think That\'s Very Important for Everyone to
Realize. In Evaluating Sprint and Mci Worldcom in Late January and Early
February, I Convened an Evaluation Panel, an Evaluation Team. It Was
Comprised of One Member From Each of Our Bureaus, and it Included Ron
Strong from the Bureau of Land Management. The Team Was Obviously Senior
Telecommunications Managers, and They Did a Really Good Job. We Were on
a Very Short Time Frame. We Considered it Extremely Important to Make
the Decision On Which Vendor and Proceed with Transition. We Felt That
the Advantages of The 2001 Contract Were to Such a Benefit for the
Department That We Didn\'t Want to Take Any More Time than Necessary to
Do a Good Evaluation. We Were Briefed by Both Vendors, That Is Sprint
and Mci, in Late January, and in ‑‑ and Provided Them Some Examples of
Our Requirements, Both Voice and Data Communication Requirements. One of
the Offices That We Used Was the BLM California Data Network as a Data
Network Example. We Also Used the Area Office in Canyon City, Colorado,
as One of The Smaller Offices. We Used Bia Offices That Were Very
Remote, Had Traffic Statistics for 800 Service. We Had Large Offices,
Small Offices, International Calls, Calling Card Calls. We Basically
Provided a Sample Of All of the Fts‑2000 Uses That We Have So That We
Could Do a Fair Evaluation of What We Expect to Use on Fts‑2001. We Also
Asked the Two Vendors Some 30 Sessions, and Those Questions, plus the
Cost Evaluation and the Briefings We Received Were Used for Our
Evaluation. We Determined ‑‑ Before We Received Responses and Looked at
The Response from the Two Vendors, We Determined the Evaluation Factors,
Subfactors And the Weightings for the Various Factors. We Evaluated
Things Such as past Performance, Very Important to Us, Technical Factors
as Far as Network Architectures and a Very Important Factor to Us Was
How Well the Vendors Understood Our Requirements. While Interior\'s
Requirements Are Not Unique, They\'re Extremely Important to Us and We
Wanted to Be Sure That the Vendors Really Knew What We Needed. We Looked
at Their Management Capabilities, That Is, Their Program Management,
Their Customer Support Capabilities. And Very Important Was the Service
Ordering and Billing Systems, That Is, How We Could Get Our Services and
Be Billed For Them. Professionalism Was Important to Us, Also. And, of
Course, Cost. We Looked at Eight‑year Estimated Costs for Our Services
On Fts‑2001. We Looked at the Switched Voice Costs. We Looked at Calling
Card Costs, 800 Costs, Service and Then, of Course, Data Networking
Costs. Another Factor Which We Put in Was Basically the General Quality,
Clarity and Thoroughness of the Responses That We Received from Both Mci
And Sprint. As You Know, the Team Recommended Mci Worldcom, and The
Department Selected Mci Worldcom as Our Fts‑2001 Vendor. In Retrospect,
it Was an Easy Decision. The Hard Part Is Now Coming, That Is, the
Planning and the Transitioning of Our Services From At&t to Mci
Worldcom. One of Our Primary Tools to Plan Transition Is an Inventory
System We Developed Last Year. We Developed it as a Telecommunications
Inventory and Called it the Interior Telecommunications Asset Management
System, Itams. Well, a Couple Weeks Ago We Changed the Name. It\'s Now
Called. The Interior Site Information System. We Felt this Was a Far
Better Description of the System since It\'s Used by Our Facility
Managers and Emergency Coordinators. The Data Is Useful for Them as Well
as for Us in the Telecommunications Arena. On the Chart on the Screen,
You Can See the Bureau of Land Management Offices That Are in Isis. If
Your Office Isn\'t on the Screen, It\'s Because It\'s Not in The
Database, and Debbra Is Going to Speak to That a Little Bit Later, but
We Have Significant Information. We Need to Validate That Information.
And Mci Is Going to Use That Information as Far as Developing The
Transition Plan. And Also in Mci Conducting Site Surveys Will Take the
Information They Get in Surveying Your Bureau Facilities And Will Put
That into the Isis System So We Have Good Online ‑‑ It\'s a Web‑based
Information System So Everyone Will Have Access to It. And the Key Is
That it Be Accurate in Order to Be Useful. We Imported Data from At&t,
Uswest, Bell South and Several Doi Databases. But as I Said, Validation
Is Important. I Didn\'t Mention That Isis Is, From Mythology, the Greek
Goddess of Fertility. Someone Recognized this after We Decided on the
Acronym, and We Were Surprised That it Was a Good Goddess of Fertility.
Our Expectation Is That Transition from At&t to Mci Worldcom Is Going to
Be Transparent to Our Users. That\'s Our Expectation. That\'s Our Hope.
And That\'s the Way We\'re Going To Make It. And this Can Only Happen If
We Are Good in Planning Our Transition and If Mci Has a Good Transition
Implementation. This Is Where We Really Make Mci Work for Us and Take
Advantage Of Their Services. We Look Forward to this Partnership with
Mci, and We Look Forward to Moving Our Services to Them as Quickly as We
Can. It\'s a Big Challenge, but It\'s a Real Opportunity for Us in the
Department. It\'s Going to Improve Our Services as Well as Reduce Our
Costs. Thank You.

R. Stoebe: Thank You, Jim. Next I\'d like to Welcome Gayle Gordon, Who
Is Our Chief Information Officer for the BLM, And She\'s in Denver Right
Now And I Have Her on the Phone, I Hope. Good Morning, Gayle.

G. Gordon: Hi, Robin.

R. Stoebe: Do You Have Some Words of Wisdom for Us?

G. Gordon: I Don\'t Know

\> I Have Some Words and You Guys Will Have to Decide Whether They\'re
Wise or Not. I Appreciated That Overview, Jim. Thank You for Joining Us,
and Doug Hodge, It\'s Good to Have You along on the Broadcast, Too. This
Is a Very Important Subject For BLM. As a Matter of Fact, I Met with Tom
Fry, Our Director, Last Thursday and to My Surprise, He Raised the
Subject, and He Asked ‑‑ Had All Kinds of Questions About It. So I\'m
Not Sure Tom Is Watching Today, but I Think We Definitely Need to Get
Some Feedback to Him On What this Means to the Bureau. I Think That
Giving it to Mci Was a Very Good Business Decision, as Jim Outlined.
There\'s Another Advantage of Giving to it Mci, and That\'s Because They
Were Very Disappointed Not to Get the Last Contract, and So They\'re
Going To Be Very Anxious To, I Think, To Prove Themselves on this
Contract and We Need to Take Advantage of That Eagerness and Try and
Make it Work for All of Us. I Think Telecommunications, as All of You
Appreciate, Are Really Critical for the Bureau, And So Our Partnership
with Mci Will Definitely Be a Strategic One for the Future, and It\'s
Going to Be Important for Them To Understand Where the Bureau\'s Going
So They Can Make Suggestions to Us on How We Can Take Advantage of the
Services They\'re Offering. The Contract, as Jim Mentioned, Is a Real
Good Opportunity for Us to Reduce Our Costs and We Can Do in That Two
Ways. One Is Because of the Great Pricing That We Did Get on the
Contract. So the Costs after Transition Will Be less than What We Had
Been Paying. And We Also Will Have an Opportunity for Mci to Look at The
Services That We\'re Getting From Other Sources Other than At&t, and
They\'ll Be Giving Us Proposals on How We Can Get Similar or Better
Services for Less Cost. It\'s Going to Be Advantageous to Us to
Transition as Early as Possible. First, to Get the Lower Rates, And
Then, Secondly, to Make Sure That as the At&t Rates Increase, As People
Are Going off of the System That We Aren\'t Stuck Carrying More of the
Burden. But That Means That the Decision And the Timing to Transition Is
Really up to All of You Who Are Watching this Broadcast Today. It\'s
Going to Be up to You to Figure out What Makes Sense, How Quickly You
Can Move and Still Do it as Effectively as Possible. One of the Things
That We\'ve Got To Keep Upper Most in Our Mind Is That the Transition
Plan must Minimize the Impact to Our Employees. Jim Talked about the
Transition Being Transparent to Our Users. That\'s Something We Are in
Irm Like to Say and it Elicits a Lot Of Chuckles from Our Customers, But
We Really Need to Make Sure That We Keep Our People So That They Can Do
the Business of the Bureau, and We\'re Providing the Support Services.
That\'s Pretty Much All I Have to Say, Robin. I Hope That the Rest of
the Broadcast Goes Well, and Again I\'m Glad All of You Are Listening.
There\'s a Lot of Work to Go on In the Future, but It\'s Really
Important for the Bureau and for All of Our Programs to Get These
Services and to Reduce the Costs So That We\'ll Have Money Available for
Other Programs. Thank You, Robin.

R. Stoebe: Thank You, Gayle, For Sharing Your Time with Us. Next We
Would like to Take a Look at the Telecom Services and Support Available
under the New Contract from Mci Worldcom. Denise, What Are Some of the
Specific Offerings Your Company Will Be Providing under the New
Contract?

D. Moscatelli: First of All, I Wanted to Go Through, There Is So Much I
Could Cover Today, but I Really Want to Highlight the Things I Think
Will Be of Particular Interest to Bureau of Land Management and Doi
Overall, But Specifically Focus on BLM Today. I Wanted to Start out by
Discussing the Mandatory Services and I Mean Mandatory Differently under
Fts‑2001 than I Did under Fts‑2000. This Contract Is Not a Requirements
Contract per Se, But These Are the Services That We Bid and That Are on
the Contract Today. As I Go Through My Presentation, You\'ll See Many of
the Services That We\'ve Added That Were Already re ‑‑ We\'re Already
Revising and a Lot of Enhancements We\'re Now Offering. I Want to Go
Through That and Then Just Kind of Share Some of The Highlights of the
Contract. First of All, the Services I Want to Touch on Are the Voice
Services Shall, the Switched Voice Services, Similar to What You Knew
under Fts‑2000. There Is the 1‑plus Dialing, or The Old Von, Virtual
On‑net, and The Pics. The Only Difference, as Jim Commented On, Is That
the Rate Is Much Lower than it Has Been In the Past. So You Should
Definitely See Cost Savings There. The Audio Conferencing, the Way It\'s
Bid on the Contract or the Way it Is on the Contract at This Time, Is
That it Is a Stand‑alone Audio Conference Service, and I Know That You
Are Accustomed to Being Able to Use Your Calling Card to Charge
Conferences and Set Them up That Way. We Are Working to Merge Those Two
Items Together. Right Now You Will Have a Calling Card under Fts‑2001
That Doesn\'t Yet Accommodate the Fts‑2001 Rates for Audio Conferencing.
Again, Don\'t Panic. We Are Merging the Two of Those Together So it Will
Be Similar To What You Know Today. The Other Difference Is That You Will
Have a Single Card to Do All Your International and Your Domestic
Calling. So I Believe That\'s a Little Bit Different than What You Have
Today as Well. And Lastly, under the Voice Services, Just Wanted to
Touch On Toll‑free. There Is a Number of Enhancements, as Well as the
Basic 800 Service That We Offer Domestically. It\'s Offered to Canada,
Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, as Well As, Of Course, the Lower 48 United
States. We Offer 900 Service, Too, Which Is a First and That Is New to
Fts‑2001. So There Are Some Particular Applications Where That May Be
Appropriate, and That, If You Remember, Is the Service Where Folks Call
in and They Actually Pay to Call You. So They\'re Calling in for
Information or to Get, for Instance, for U.s. Geological Survey, Maybe
Maps or Something To That Effect. I Want to Go on to the Data Services
Next. Some of the New Data Services We\'ve Added Are Paging. We Have
One‑way and Two‑way Paging That\'s on the Contract, The Video Codec
Equipment, That Is the ‑‑ Basically the Guts of Your Video Conferencing
System The Way You Have it Now. It Handles the Compression and
Decompression of the Signals. That Is Extremely Important Because Right
Now under Fts‑2000, That Is Included in Your Cost of the Circuit That
You Get from At&t. So When You No Longer Get That Service from At&t, the
Codec Goes Away with Their Circuit. That Leaves with You a Void. What
We\'ve Done Is We\'ve Heard The Request, We\'ve Added it to The
Contract, and Gsa Is Approving the Pricing Right Now. So That Will Be
Available for to You Get under Our Contract as Well. Internet Services
Is Something That I Believe Is New to Fts‑2001. The Way We\'re Offering
That Is Through Our Internet Service Provider, Uunet and They Are, I
Believe, What I Have Been Told And What I Have Read, They Are The
Largest Isp in the World. We Provide Internet Services to Companies like
American Online And Some of the Other Large Ones. Uunet Has a Very
Extensive Internet Backbone. We Bid the Basic Services under The Gas
Requirement. Those Were the Dedicated Internet Services up to a T‑3, And
the Dial‑in Internet Services, of Course. What We\'ve Done Is Enhanced
That. I Have it down as a New Offering But It\'s Basically Enhancing the
Offering We Have Right Now. We Are Offering Tiered and Burstable
Services and What That Means Is Another Way for to You Manage Your Costs
So You Get the Advantage of the Full Bandwidth Of the Circuit but You
May or May Not Use it All the Time. Burstable Means Can You Burst up To
That If You Are Transmitting Large Data Files but It\'s Not Something
You Would Normally Use. We Also Have the Ds‑3 and Oc‑3 Network
Capabilities. That\'s the Extent We\'re Making Available to You to
Purchase as Far as Dedicated Internet Services. Next I Wanted to Go on
Another Topic That I Know Is of Interest To Everybody, Which Is Dar
Training and for Those of You Who May Not Be Familiar, it Stands for the
Designated Agency Rep. That Individual Is the Person Designated by
Department of Interior to Obligate Funding on Behalf of Department of
Interior To Purchase Services off of Fts‑2001. Those Folks, of Course,
Are Very Important to Us. They Are Being Identified Right Now. We Are
Offering Training Actually Through Gsa, and That\'s ‑‑ That\'s a New
Change That\'s Just Happened. Originally We Were Going to Offer the
Training at Our Facilities or Doi Facilities, And What We\'ve Done,
Though, Is We\'re Working in Conjunction With Gsa to Make That Training
Available to You Through the Gsa Regional Training Facilities. That Will
Be Hands‑on Training, So the Rooms Will Be Equipped With Pcs. Because We
Are Using the Regional Facilities for Gsa, They Will Be in Various
Cities Throughout the Country. So Hopefully That Will Minimize Your
Travel Expense and Your Travel Time. And it Will Offer You, I Think,
More Flexibility in Having the Classes a Little Bit More Often. The Way
We\'ve Designed the Training Is Basically an 8‑our Modules or 8‑hour
Training Sessions. One of the Training Sessions and What I Have Tried to
Do Is Pair These up Together, but One Is The Dar Training, an 8‑hour
Module and That Will Be the First You Will Take, and That Will Be
Available to More than Just the Dars. It\'s Extremely Important and
It\'s a Requirement for the Dars To Participate in it Because it Will
Teach the Dars How to Order The Services, How to Use the Pricing Tool,
How to Use Some of The Other Available Tools That Mci Has for Acquiring
Services And Trouble Tickets and Those Sort of Things Through Our
Contract. But There Will Be Other Folks, I Know, Within BLM That Will Be
Actually Putting Together Their Requirements. So It\'s Important to Them
to Understand What\'s Going to Be Asked of Them to Place These Orders.
The Second Module That I like to Bump up Against the Dar Training Or
Make it Immediately Following Is That What We Refer to as Coad Training
and That\'s an Acronym That Basically Stands for the Operation
Administration Data. In a Little Bit I Will Go into The Tool We\'re
Making Available To You. But What Coad Does Is Takes You Further into
Our Process, Further into Our Tools and Teaches You How to Take Full
Advantage of the Tools That We\'re Making Available to Doi Free of
Charge, or Available to All of Our Fts Users Free of Charge. So There
Will Be No Charge for The Training During the First Six Months of
Initiating a Service with Mci. So the Expense to You Will Be Generally
for the Traveling Session ‑‑ for the Traveling Expense. Excuse Me. Next
I Want to Go on to Our Fts Net Tool and Describe to You What That Is.
You\'ll Become Very Familiar with That over the next Year, but Over the
next Eight Years of the Contract Particularly. Fts Net Is Not a
Requirement of Gsa. The Requirement of Gsa Was That We Make Certain
Information Available to Our Fts Users. What We, Mci, Have Elected to Do
Is to Use Kind of a Unique Approach and to Allow You the Fts User to Get
into Our Databases and View Our Information, Much of it Is Interactive,
Much of it You Will See Engineer\'s Comments, You\'ll See Everything
from the Trouble Ticket When It\'s Opened to When It\'s Closed, You\'ll
See When Orders Are Placed, and I\'ll Go Into That in a Little Bit. But
That Is Basically a Front End to Our Commercial Databases. It Is
Web‑based, You Will Be Able to Use it from Your Desktop And it Is Very
User‑friendly. The Fts Net Tool, First of All, The Way We\'re Going to
Allow Access to Sit We\'re Going to Be Issuing a User Authorization
Request Form. It Will Basically Tell Us What Your Profile Is. For
Instance, If You Are a Dar For Your Agency, it Will Identify to Us That
You Have the Ability or You Have the Authority to Order Particular
Services and What Those Services Are from Mci. That\'s Important So That
When We Get an Order from You it Doesn\'t Hold up the Processing. We Can
Go Ahead and Put it into The System and We Can Move it Through the Cycle
Very Quickly. It\'s Also Important to You Because it Protects Doi from
People Who May Not Be Authorized To Order Those Services from Just Going
Ahead and Ordering Them Directly from Mci. So it Definitely Has a
Twofold Advantage. But Fts Net, You Will Be Placing Orders Through Fts
Net, You Will Key Them, in We Will Be Using Our Commercial Databases,
They Have on the Front of the Order Form a Government Tab That Will Have
Information Specify Tyke Our Government Customers, Information That
You\'re Familiar With. For Instance, Your Agency Hierarchy Code, Your
Local Government Contact, Things of That Nature. And All of These, I
Might Add, Will Be Covered in the Training. So You Will Become Very
Familiar With Fts Net Through the Training. But You Will Also Be Able to
Open and Track Your Trouble Ticket. So You\'ll Know When it Goes In,
When It\'s Been Opened, What the Engineer\'s Comments Are, What Mci\'s
Doing to Resolve That Problem. You\'ll Know When It\'s Been Closed.
Available Through Fts Net Is Also a Pricing Tool. We Encourage You to
Take Advantage of That. A Loft Times You Need a Private Line Priced Out.
It\'s a Single Circuit. Or You\'re Doing Your Own Homework and Want to
Price Different Components of Our Service. We Encourage You to Use That
Price Quote Tool. We Don\'t Want it to Be Perceived As a Replacement for
Your Account Team, Because Your Account Team Is Always There. My Number
Is Available. You Can Always Call Us, and We Will Be Working Very
Closely With Many of You on Redesigning The Bureau Networks and in Your
Additional and New Data Requirements. The Other Thing That\'s Offered
Through Fts Net, And, Again, All Of These Tools Are Free of Charge, Is
the Network Monitoring and Management Tools. That Will Allow You, for
Instance, in a Frame Relay Set Up, You Can Actually Go down and Look at
the Pvc Level, Look at That Circuit, You Can See the Pvcs and How They
Are Mapped Between Pvcs. You Can Look at Various Usage. You Can Get Any
of this Data and Graph It, That Is Also Provided In the Tools, So If You
Want to Look at Your Network Monitoring Statistics, Your Traffic, and
Also You Want to See a Pie Chart, You Can Highlight the Information That
You Want, You Can Click on the Appropriate Button, and it Will Graph it
So That Can You Download That, Print That, Send it E‑mail and Use That,
Incorporate That into Your Meetings and Your Reports. The Other Thing
That\'s Available To You Is a Reporting Tool. You Will Have the Ability
to Use Some of the Customized Reports ‑‑ or I Should Say Some of the Ad
Hoc Reports That Are Already There. They\'re Kind of Canned Reports But
You Will Have the Ability to Set up Your Own Reports. So You\'re Going
to Have Your Own Requirements, and You May Want To ‑‑ You May Want to
Have a Certain Report Run on Specific Data. You May Have ‑‑ You May Want
That to Be Run Every Friday at 5:00. Well, You Can Set That Up, You Can
Set it up One Time, So That Every Friday at 5:00 the System Almost Ought
Automatically Pulls The Report, Sends it to the Message Center and You
Go to the Message Center and Retrieve it As Would You Your E‑mail. All
That Information Is Available to Be Manipulated by You. It Can Be Used
in Reports. It\'s Very User‑friendly. One of the ‑‑ One Other Thing I
Wanted to Point out about Fts Net Is it Allows to You See Your Invoices.
It Allows You to Look at an Invoice Archive. Through Fts Net You Will Be
Able To Retrieve Invoices for up to a Period of Seven Years. That\'s
When We\'re Required to Keep Them Electronically. So It\'s Not Important
to You Now Because We\'ve Just Started, but Seven Years down the Road
You May Want to Go Back and Do a History and Do Some Reporting And It\'s
Just Good to Know All That Information Will Be There. One of the Other
Things I Wanted To Mention That\'s Also Going to Be Kept in the Database
or That You Will Have Access to Is the Tmi Database. Tmi Stands for
Transition Migration and Implementation. What We Will Do Is We Will
Capture Your Configuration from The Moment That We Transition You from
At&t to Mci, and We Will Capture That and You Will Be Able to Go Back
and See the Configuration That We Have in Our Databases for Your
Specific Location. The Transition Plan, I Know, Is Very Important to You
and I Heard Gayle Say and I\'ve Heard Jim Say and I Would like to Mirror
That, Is We Would like it To Be Transparent to the Users. There\'s a Lot
of Work That Has To Be Done Behind the Scenes to Make That Happen. It\'s
Definitely a Joint Effort. But We Are Working Very Hard on Doing a
Transition Plan, Completing a Transition Plan, That Will Cover All of
Your Services. The Pics and the Calling Cards, We\'re Planning for Them,
but They May Be a Little Bit of Exception. They\'re Very Easy, Very Easy
to Turn Around. We Can Very Quickly Get Those Into the System and Get
Them Switched Over. We Are Doing Site Surveys Right Now. We\'re Doing
Them Telephonically. We Will Be Doing Them Onsite. That Is an Important
Starting Point for Our Process. We Have to Know What You Currently Have
and Where You Are At Currently to Know Where to My Great You to or Where
to Transition You To. Through That Process, We Want to Take Advantage
Of, in Addition To Understanding What You Have, That\'s Important to
Take Advantage of Optimizing Your Access and We Want to Do That, And
That\'s an Important Feature. It\'s Going to Save You Money. So Right
Now There Are Certain Things That We Look For. For Instance, If You Have
Seven T‑1s Coming into a Single Facility, Whether It\'s Multiple Bureaus
or a Single, it May Make Sense to Optimize That Access And Consolidate
That to a Ds‑3. That Would Then Save You Money And That\'s Just a Very
Simple Example. The At&t Disconnects, We Understand That That\'s an Area
Of Concern. You Don\'t Want to Continue to Be Billed by at and T or Pay
for Services You Are No Longeering. So One of Our Objectives to Closely
Coordinate the Start‑up Of the Mci or Turn‑up of the Mci Service and the
Disconnect of The At&t Service. Another Area of Importance and I Know
Doug Would Agree, Is the Co‑location, and the Fact That Many of Your
Locations Do Share Facilities with Department of Agriculture.
Thankfully, Department of Agriculture Has Also Selected Mci. So We Can
Consolidate Many of Those Efforts. At Those Shared Locations, What We
Want to Do Is Minimize the Number of Times We Have to Go Out There to Do
a Dispatch or Do An Installation, I Should Say, So That We\'re Not Going
out There Three and Four Times, So That We Can Do it One Time, Make It
Efficient, Cut it over at the Same Time. Minimize Is the ‑‑ Minimizes
the Disruption to Your Day Services As Well. The Transition Plan That
We\'re Working on Right Now and Our Commitment to Doi Is to Present A
Draft Transition Plan in Denver June 21‑23. I Want to Say this Is Draft
Because We Have a Lot of Work to Do on the Data Networks and on
Transitioning Them. We Don\'t Want to Make Any Assumptions. We Want to
Definitely Understand Your Business Environment and Your Requirements
and Do the Transition the Way You Want it To Be Done. It Will Not Be
Done Void from Your Involvement. I Thought this Would Be Helpful, Too,
to Let You Know the Installation Intervals on the Contract So You Know
What to Expect. The Standard Installation Intervals with the Telco and
What That Means Is with the Local Access Loop, the Uswest, The Bell
South, Whoever We Need To Use for That Circuit, for That Piece of That
Circuit, the 19 to 24 Business Days Applies To Switched Voice Services,
Circuit Switched Data Services, The Toll‑free Services, Internet And
Private Line. Some of the Services That Take a Little Bit of Extra Time
Are Frame Relay and the 36 to 41 Business Days That I Have on the Chart
Basically Applies To, If You\'re Requiring Mci to Provide The Routers,
it Takes a Little Bit of Extra Time to Get the Equipment In. We Also
Offer the Atm, Which Takes about 45 to 50 Business Days to Get That in
That That\'s Usually Because the Bandwidth Is So Much Greater. There Are
Nonstandard Installation Requests That Will Come in and We Have Seen a
Few And Accommodated Them So Far. To Do That, What That Basically Means
Is That You\'re Asking for Us to Install Something in a Shorter Interval
than What I\'ve Just Presented. That Is Very Doable. There Is a One‑time
Expedite Charge of \$600 That Would Apply To the Installation of That
Circuit. But an Important Consideration, Something to Think about When
You Consider That One‑time Charge, Is the Fact That Mci Has Elected to
Waive the Service Installation Charges for the Contract Through
September 30th Of the Year 2000. What That Means to You Is That The
Nonrecurring Charges for Your Circuits Will Be Nonexistent Through That
Time Period, and Our Goal Is to Have Doi Transition Completely Before
Those Service Installation Charges Are Reinstituted. And That\'s ‑‑ That
Really Concludes My Portion. I Thank You for the Time this Morning and I
Hope I\'ve Touched On Areas That Are of Interest to You and I Am Sure
There Will Be Questions Coming in Later to Cover Areas I Did Not Get a
Chance to Talk about this Morning.

R. Stoebe: Thank You, Denise. Now Let\'s Take a Look at How BLM Will Be
Managing the Transition To the New Contract. Debbra, I Believe You and
Ken Have Some Information Regarding The Bureau\'s Transition Plan.

D. Deaver: We Certainly Do. The Approach to Transition Will Be to Work
Quickly and with Little Disruption in Service and At a Lower Cost. Irm
Would like to ‑‑ I Would Like to Share with You the Division of
Responsibilities and N‑ni 100 Between Ken Wilbert And Myself. As Jim
Mentioned, We Have a High Percentage of Switched Voice Service That
Needs to Be Transitioned. We Also Have a Great Number of Federal Calling
Cards. We\'re Also Going to Look at Transitioning Our Five Video
Conferencing Rooms. And Ken\'s Responsibilities Are, As You Can See on
the Screen, Ken?

K. Wilbert: What I Will Be Taking on Is Essentially the Data Network
Side, All the Data Services for All of BLM. In Addition to That I Will
Help Out Deb a Little in Three States, Alaska, California, and
Oregon/washington for Voice Services There. One Other Thing I like to
Point Out, Deb and I Are Both Going to Be Backing Each Other Up. If You
Can\'t Get Ahold of One of Us, Call the Other and You Will Get an Answer
There.

D. Deaver: Thanks, Ken. I Also Wanted to Mention the Itams Project We
Have Going On, Which Is Now Known as Isis. We Have Roberta Truax at the
National Irm Center Who Is Helping All of My Points of Contact in the
Field. She Has Sent out Reports to Each One of You and Highlighted the
Areas That Need to Be Completed. They\'re Either Completed Right Now
with the Word \"Test\" or \"Unknown.\" If You Need Assistance with Some
Of Those Particular Blanks, What I Wanted to Share with You Today Is
While I Was Doing Some Research for this Presentation, I Came Across a
Facilities Inventory Maintenance System Database Called Fems That\'s out
There That Local Engineers Are Using to Track Maintenance Costs Of All
Their Facilities. This Particular Database Does Contain a Building Name,
the Particular Contact, the Building Manager, the Addresses, the Number
on the Building. So this Is ‑‑ Some Valuable Information. If You\'ll Get
in Touch That Your Local Engineer, I Think They Can Help Fill in Some of
the Blanks That Roberta Has Let You Know That We Need the Information.
Mci Is Requesting this Information from Us, but They\'re Not Able to
Access Isis Right Now and I Don\'t Know If They Would Be Able To, but
Roberta Is Pulling off Reports and We\'re Getting to Them as Quickly as
Possible. Remember, We Have Offered Her Services. She Is Available to
Help Us Out. And That Has Been Very Important To Me with a Few Other
Projects I Need to Get Going for You Folks. I\'m Going to Work with the
Bureau\'s Specialist on this Database to See If We Can\'t Import Some of
the Data, but in The Meantime, Please Do Not Wait For Me to Do That and
Get Information out to You Because It\'s Very Important That We Meet
Some Department Requirements of Getting this Isis Database Populated. As
Gayle Mentioned, it Is Very Important That We Plan Properly And
Correctly for Transition. Now, Not Only Have I Let You Know Some of the
Ni\'s Responsibilities but the States Also Have Responsibilities as
Well. States Are Responsible for Their Own Transition Plans. Now, the
Bureau Issued Their Transition Plan on April 8th. Attachment B of That
Plan Is the Transition Template That You Folks out in the States Should
Be Taking a Look At. I Know Some of You Have Already Used Those. This
Template Is Going to Help You in Your Brainstorming and Planning
Sessions to Capture Some of the Transition Issues That Are Specific to
Your State And Center. We Have Given You Some Tips That Should Give You
a Few Starting Points, but Some of the Locations Have More Specifics.
Those Need to Be in Your Plan as Well. Now, Remember Those Plans Are Due
May 28th and We Discussed That Particular Date at Our Phoenix Meeting
and Please Send Your Reports into Me at Ni‑100. I Wanted to Touch on the
Dar Training That Has Been Mentioned, That\'s the Designated Agency
Representative Training. In the Bureau of Land Management, There Will
Only Be Three Official Dars, That Will Be Myself, Ken Wilbert and Ron
Strong. We Will Be the Ones Who Mci Will Actually Accept Service Orders
From. However, the Point of Contacts In All of Our Field, My Transition
Team, So to Speak, Will Be Going Through the Dar Training and Have
Access to Fts Net. This Is Very Important. We Will Come One Some
Procedures On How We\'re Going to Work Together with Each One of You in
Ordering Services. It Will Be a Great Benefit If You Folks Knew How to
Complete The Forms, Provide All the Information That We Need and Help Us
Track Orders. I Know All of You Send Me off a Lot of E‑mail Messages on
What\'s The Status of an Order. But Once You Go Through Fts Net
Training, You Will Be Able to Check on Some of That Yourself, And I Know
That You\'ll Appreciate That. Once Again, the Two‑day Session June 24th
and 25th. It Will Be Held in Denver and I Promise I Will Get More
Information out to You Once I Get Back in the Office. I\'m Looking
Forward to Reviewing That Training Again, and I Know That All of You
Will Get an Awful Lot of Information out of That.

K. Wilbert: One Thing I Would Like to Point out Is All the Information
That We\'re Making Available to the Field Is on Line. All You Have to Do
Is Go to the BLM Internal Website. Go to the Nrmc Location, Go to
Telecom and There Is an Fts‑2001 Website There. On the Screen below Me
You Should See the Address. Thank You.

D. Deaver: Thanks, Ken. I Appreciate That. The next Slide I Would like
for To You Take a Look at Has to Do With Billing Hierarchy. While it
Won\'t Be Very Informational for a Number of Viewers, Contacts in the
Field Will Find this Information in The Transition Plan. This Is a
Hierarchy Plan We Established While We Were in Phoenix, and You Will Be
Seeing This this Information Probably On the Orders You Look up in Fts
Net. Just to Be Familiar with the Format, We Know it Looks like a Data
Stream at this Time, but it Does Have Value to You, and I Will Be
Working with You with These Billing Hierarchy That the The Bureau of
Land Management Will Continue to Use Centralized Billing, All the Bills
Will Be Coming into Ni‑100 and Paid at That Level.

K. Wilbert: Deb, If They Don\'t Remember the Numbers, I Think We Can
Tell Them What They Are, Right? Give Us a Call.

D. Deaver: Absolutely. Also I\'d like to Touch on the Sharing
Opportunities, since We Do Have Doug Hodge with Us Here Today. It Is
Important That We Coordinate and Share Our Transition Plan with Our
External Agencies That We Are Currently Located with or Potentially
Could Be Co‑located With. We Will Make Every Effort to Accommodate Those
Agencies\' Requirements While Consolidating All of Our Services. In
These Cases, Coordination Will Be with All Parties Important. You Might
Ask Why We\'re Particularly Looking at this and Why Am I Bringing up the
Issue? It\'s Because Gao Did an Audit, Last Year, I Believe and They Are
Asking Us to Identify and Act on Telecommunications Sharing
Opportunities. In Addition, It\'s in the Proposed 1999 Annual Work Plan.
Some of the Documentation Is on Our Website as Ken Had Mentioned. So Be
Sure You Consider Those in Your Transition Plan and it Is a Point on the
Template That We Have Passed Out. We Have an Aggressive Transition Time
Line to Follow, So I\'d like You to Take a Look at the next Slide. This
Is Our Intention of How We Plan to Implement Transition. By the End of
the Fourth Quarter Of Fiscal Year \'99, We Are Going To Transition All
of Our Calling Cards, Most of My State Offices Are Working on an Excel
Spreadsheet They Will Send into Me So We Can Place the Orders. And,
Remember, We Are Going to Issue Cards in an Individual\'s Name Rather
than a State Office Name and Number. To Avoid Any Disruption in Service
to the Folks That Already Have Calling Cards in Their Hands, We Will Go
Ahead And Order the New Ones, You Will Be Issued a Brand‑new Card,
You\'ll Still Have Your At&t Card In Your Hand until You Get Your
Brand‑new One, and I\'m Suggesting at the Time You Receive Your New Mci
Card That The Old Card Be Recalled, You Make Sure You New One Works and
That Way We Will Avoid Any Disruption Whatsoever.

Excuse Me. One of the Things with the New Calling Cards with Mci Is That
They\'re Going to Have the BLM Logo on Them. It\'s Really ‑‑ They\'ve
Gone out A Long Ways for Us, and I\'m Sure Everyone Will Appreciate
Having The Personalized Card as Far as From Mci.

D. Deaver: Thanks, Jim. I Appreciate That Comment. I Also Wanted to Let
You Know The Interval for Ordering Cards Is 1 to 10 Days. Should We Need
Any in an Emergency Situation, Give Me a Call and We\'ll See If We
Can\'t Get One Issued Within 24 Hours. Next We\'re Going to Transition
Our 800 Numbers and Our 888 Numbers. They Are Portable, So They Will Be
Very Easily Transferred over And I\'m Working with You Folks On That.
Now the 700 Numbers Has Come up As an Issue. 700 Numbers Are Proprietary
to At&t. But I Have Been Told That the Did Numbers That Sit Behind the
700 Numbers Are Portable. What We\'ll Do Is Submit an Order, a Request
for a Specific Range of Did Numbers That You Would like to Keep in
Place, and We\'ll Put That in the System and We\'ll See If We Can\'t Get
Them. Our Only Problem Is Those Numbers May Belong to Sprint and If
That\'s the Case, We May Be Behind a Sprint Customer. But, I Tell You
What I\'m Going To Do the Best We Can for Those Locations Have That
Talked to Me And Want to See about Portability of Their Dids. Von
Service Will Be 1‑plus Dialing under Mci Worldcom. We Will Be
Transitioning Those Services. Video Conferencing, the BLM Has Five Rooms
out There. We Will Be Transitioning All Five Rooms at the Same Time, and
More Information Will Be Following on That Particular Issue. For Those
Offices Where We Do Have the Rooms Available. Interlata Limited Data
Services Is What We\'re Looking at Right Now. Ken Is Working on Quite a
Bit of That and We\'re Sharing Information. Remember, Transition Will
Occur On Evenings and Weekends to Limit Any Disruption in Service To Our
Customers. For Those of You That Sit Behind Gsa Switches, Gsa Is
Responsible For Transitioning Those Particular Locations. They\'re
Working with Me. If You Have Any Questions or Concerns, I\'ll Get Back
to Field Offices If I Need Some Information from You. But That Seems to
Be Going Quite Well. I Know They\'ve Been Working on It for the Last 30
Days or So. As We Move into the Second Quarter of Fiscal Year 2000, We
‑‑ it Looks like We\'ll Look at Completing Our Switched Voice Service
Ordering and Our Intralata Limited Data Service Which Ken Will Cover a
Little Bit Late in His Presentation. That Brings Us to Phase 2 of Our
Transition. We\'re Going to Evaluate Vendor Proposals and Determine
Substantial Improvements in Service and in Cost Optimaization. There
Will Be an Awful Lot of Discussions Going on During Phase 1 Where They
Will Come up With Some Very Good Suggestions For Us That We May Not Be
Able To Implement. We\'ll Keep Those on the Table And We\'ll Move Them
to Phase 2. But I\'ll Be Working with All of You So You\'ll Know What
That Is. We\'re Going to Review Nonfts Services to Determine Optimum
Configuration as Well. So We Have an Aggressive Transition to Contend
With, and That\'s All I Have for Today.

R. Stoebe: Ok. Thank You. Ken, Did You Have Anything to Add to That?

K. Wilbert: Yes, I Would like To Talk a Little about the Bureau\'s
Networks and in Particular I Will Be Talking About Doi Net and Art Net.
That\'s Actually a Departmental Network but BLM Uses the Fire Backbone.
I Will Be Discussing What\'s Happening in the Transition at Our State
Levels, Both for the Intralata and Interlata Traffic. Lata Is a Local
Access Transport Area. The Third Network I\'m Going to Talk About, and
Very Briefly, Is Our X‑25 Legacy Network, and Actually I\'ll Start off
with That One. That\'s the Easiest One. What it Does Is Connects Our Dps
6s to the Honeywell Dps‑8,000 in Denver. As We All Know, That Was
Retired A Few Weeks Ago at the End of April. It Was Replaced by the
Lr‑2000 System. So We Don\'t Need the Circuits Anymore. They\'re Being
Retired and We Have No Plans to Have X‑25 Service in the Future. So
That\'s an Easy One. That Will Be Done Very Shortly. The next One Is Doi
Net. It\'s the Departmentwide Network. It\'s Managed via Multi‑agency
Approach with Oversight Through The Department. Mci Has Given a Proposal
to Doi Net to the Core Team Members and The System Owner. Under That
Patrol You Will, They Would Use Some of the Frame Relay, the Higher
Speed Frame Relay Services as Part of That Network. They\'re Reviewing
That Proposal. I Don\'t Have Any Dates for You. They Need to Make Some
Recommendations on it and When We Get Those, We\'ll Get Them Back to
You. I Expect We\'ll Be Able to Have a Formal Proposal at the Irmac
Being Held in August and Probably Have More Inform Ache Before Then in
One of the Monthly Data Communication Teleconferences. I\'d Also like to
Mention as Part Of Doi Net Art Net, the Alaska Regional
Telecommunications Network. They Will Be Looking at That as Well and
Covering That this the Review Process. I Will Keep You Posted. What\'s
the Heart of the Matter Here in the Heart of the Mat Certificate We\'re
Going to Transition in Phase 1 Are the Interlata Services. These Are
Dedicated Data Circuits That Are Typically Connecting Some of Our Field
Offices to the State Office and All of Our State Offices to Doi Net.
These Aren\'t the Bulk of Our Data Service, to Be Honest. Most of the
Services Are Frame Relay Within the State in the Interlata Services. But
We Are Going to Transition These in the First Phase. They Are Going to
Be Our Focus. Most States, this Is Going to Be An Easy Issue Because We
Only Have a Couple of Them There. That\'s the Good News. Now There\'s a
Couple States That Have Lots of Latas, and California Comes to Mind. You
Know, California Has a Lot Of Lata Everywhere You Go. I Think They Give
You a Lata When You Get a Driver\'s License ‑‑ or Is That a Latte\'?
Anyway, They Have a Problem down There and They Are Going to Move
Aggressively. They Are Moving Their State Office this Week and So They
Will Be Well Rehearsed for the Transition. Some of the Services That ‑‑
I Didn\'t Cover the Services We\'re Going to Cover During That Move.
Again, Those Are T‑1s, the Dedicated T‑1s We Have. Sometimes We Also
Have Smaller Dedicated 56 and 64k Circuits. Those Will Be Moving. These
Are All Private Line, in Mci Terms, Data Private Lines And They Will for
the Most Part Be Converted over to Frame Relay Services on Mciw.
Whenever We Go Through the Transition, One of the Big Things We Want to
Do Is Make Sure We Give Value to Our Customers When We Go out and Get
These Services. So Always, Every Step of the Way, We\'re Going to Be
Evaluating These Proposals Against Local Service Providers And Mciw to
Make Sure We\'re Getting the Best Value. In Some Cases We May Have to Go
Over to Jim and Talk to Jim About a Waiver or Two and He\'ll Look at
Those, We\'ll Do an Analysis and Hopefully When It\'s In the Best
Interest of Both Doi And BLM We\'ll Have Concurrence On That. Jim Has
Been Very Helpful in the Past. Let\'s Talk Now about the Intralata
Services. These Are the Circuits We\'re Going to Transition in Phase 2.
Right Now Most of These Circuits Are Provided by a Local Exchange
Carrier, Primarily Uswest, but Also Pac Bell. Frame Relay Service, We
Transition Them from At&t a Couple Years Ago, Primarily Again for Cost
Reasons. It Was Much More Cost Effective To Go to These Services and
They Gave Us the Same Kind of Speed We Got from the Dedicated Lines. So
it Was a Good Move for Us. Now, in the Second Phase, Which Is ‑‑ Which
We\'re Going to Complete in the Second Quarter Of the Fiscal Year 2000,
We\'re Going to Look at a Range of Factors as We Evaluate All of These
Circuits Again. We\'ll Look at Mciw, Look at Their Circuits. We\'ll Look
at Their Prices and Compare Those. Weary Going to See How Compare
Technically, Are There Some Advantages One Way or the Other In Terms of
Support? We\'re Going to Consider Some External Factors as Well. We Have
to Take a Look at Co‑location. Can We Get Some Substantial Accessory ‑‑
Reduction in Access Costs by Co‑located or Using Co‑located Services
with Other Agencies, Particularly the Forest Service? We Have a Number
Sites We\'re Doing That Today. By the Way, I Want to Emphasize That We
Encourage That Kind of Sharing in All Locations. I Know There Is Some
Security Concerns about That, We\'ve Addressed Those, Particularly With
the Forest Service and We\'re Very Open to Those Kinds Of Connections.
Some of the Other Side Issues We Will Look at as We Go Through Some of
the Newer Technologies That Are Available from the Contract, Also Some
of the Technologies That Are Appearing Outside the Contract, for
Instance, Voice over Ip. And Some of Our Smaller Offices, That Might Be
an Option for Us Given an Area Where We Have less Staff Support and Need
to Do Some Consolidation of Services. Again, We Need to Take a Very
Close Look at and That Make Sure It Makes Economic and Technical Sense
to Us. That Covers the Intralata and Interlata Services. I Want to Touch
on Maybe a Couple of Other Issues. One Is Customer Premise Equipment. As
Denise Has Noted, It\'s Not an Automatic Part of the Contract. Like it
Was on the Fts‑2000 Contract. That\'s Not a Problem. We Can Lease That
Equipment from The Contract and That Option Is Available to the Field
Offices If They Choose to Do That. If They Have Their Own Equipment,
They\'re More than Welcome to Use That, and We Encourage That as Well.
Obviously That\'s an Effective Use of Our Resources, but You Do Have
Access to a Leasing Cost to Fill Those Needs. One Thing I Would like to
Point Out Is That Not All Equipment Needs Are Going to Be Provided
Through the Contract. Sometimes, as You Go Through Your Network
Architecture, You Are Going to Find Through Consolidation or Some Other
Reason, You\'re Going to Have Some Equipment Behind Your Customer
Premise Equipment That Needs to Be Changed. So You Need to Make Sure You
Take a Close Look at That. Again, You\'ll Have to Fund That Locally. So
Make Sure You Do Your Planning in Advance and You Have Your Budge Net
Hand. ‑‑ Budget in Hand. As Everybody Is Talking About, We Want to Make
this as Painless And Transparent as Possible. So Wherever Possible,
We\'re Going to Try to Do Data Circuit Cutovers in Parallel. BLM Has
Some Sites That May Not Be Possible Simply Because Circuits May Not Be
Available in Some of Our Locations. I Know There Has Been a Number Of
Locations Where We Couldn\'t Get the Kind of Circuits We Wanted Because
They Weren\'t Available. But Wherever Possible We Will Do A Parallel
Cutover. In Those Instances When it Is Not Possible, We Will Have to Do
A Flash Cut and Do on it a Weekend and Keep Disruption down To a
Minimum. That Will Be a Prime Consideration. One Last Point, on Alaska,
I Mentioned Unique Locations. Alaska Has a Few of Them. At Times They
Pose a Problem in Providing Services but I\'m Glad To Report That Mciw
Is Partnered With Gci up in Alaska. We Listened in on a Presentation A
Few Weeks Ago, and it Looks Like They\'re Going to Be Able to Provide a
Wide Range of Services Up in That Area. They Have Given Us a List of All
The ‑‑ of the Department of Interior Contacts ‑‑ Excuse Me, Points of
Presence in Alaska and Shown Us All the Services Are Available and it
Looks like We\'re Going to Come out of That Looking Pretty Well. Frame
Relay, All Our Dedicated Services Should Be Very Easily Provided up
There. So That\'s Good News. I Will Close Out, as a Summary, What Are We
Going to Do? As a Strategy, We Will Phase out The X‑25, Convert Our
Interlata Circuits, the Old Fts‑2000 Circuits in the Fourth Quarter Of
Fists Cull Year \'99. The next Big Step for Us to Is Review All the
Existing Frame Relay Circuits We Have in the Intralata Areas and Do Some
Circuit Optimaization, Look at Co‑location Opportunities and Some of the
New Exciting Technologies. Last but Not Least, Plan for Your Equipment
Needs, Do a Good Site Inventory That\'s Very Important That You Know
What You Have on Your Network. That\'s All I Have. I Will Pass it off
Back to You, Robin.

R. Stoebe: Thank You, Ken. Now Let\'s Take a Look How the Field Offices
Will Be Managing The Transition to the New Contract. To Give Us That
Field Perspective, Deb, Why Don\'t You Share with Us Some of the Things
Going on in Montana.

D. Weigel: Thanks, Robin. After Reviewing Our Inventory We Determined We
Would Be Better Off Getting ‑‑ Eliminating the T‑1 Digital Voice
Circuits, Replacing Them with V‑net or 1‑plus Dialing. I Will Be
Removing Some Four‑wire E & M Circuits and Those Offices Will Benefit
from From Direct in Dial. That Frees up Time from a Person Answering the
Phone and Transfering Calls. We Mentioned the Services Are Going to Be
Run in Parallel. This Requires Purchases of Additional Trunk Cards, Such
as Did, Analogue. It Also Requires a Site Visit to Each Office. In
Montana, It\'s a Large Geographical Area. So We Will Be Working Weekends
And Evenings Often Just to Get To One Point. As Far as Data Goes, We\'re
Looking at What Cisco Has to Offer En Routers, Changing Out, A Trade‑in.
They You Willly Have a Router That Has Channel Service Units In It, as
Posed to by ‑‑ Opposed To Buying Many Pieces of Equipment, it Will
Reduce What We Have in Our Equipment Rooms. Following the Transition
Plan That Debbra Alluded to Has Helped Me Pinpoint Some of Our Difficult
Offices Where We Do Have Facility Problems. Ken Was Saying That We Will
Transfer on the Fly. That Is Particularly True in Our Resource Area
Offices along the Northern High Line in Montana Where We Have Local
Exchange Carriers, Various Local Exchange Carriers. On Top of That, the
Montana State Office Is Moving. Some of the Issues That Concerns Me Is
There\'s Two of Us in Montana Doing the Moves. That Would Be Troy
Lafleur and Myself. We Will Have Dual Hats. I Will Be Acting as a Cor
and Troy Will Be Acting as a Physical Inspector. We Have Also Had to
Expedite and Get Prior Approval to Convert to Mci Worldcom and this Also
Involves Coordination with U West, Our Local Carrier and Mci Worldcom. I
Might Add That Mci Has Been Very Helpful to Me in Establishing
Installation Dates And Working with Uswest. In Order to Help Our
Workload, I Am Looking at Contracting Installation of the Routers and
Programming. I Have Already Contracted the Use Usual User Support Work
Troy And I Both Offer. That Has Freed up Our Time. During the Move, We
Will Install A New Pbx and Train the Users as Well. Ken Did Mention That
We Have Point‑to‑point Circuits or Dedicated Circuits in Our Data And
That Is Most of Concern to Me at this Point Because Data Supports More
Users than Just The Voice at the State Office. If We Take a Look at Our
Existing Diagram, You Can See That the Dashed Lines Represent A
Point‑to‑point At&t Circuit. In Addition, We Have Two More Circuits
Between North Dakota And South Dakota, and the Billings Dispatch Center
and the State Office. We Are Looking at Converting Those Circuits to Mci
Worldcom Frame Relay and If We Put up the Second Flip Chart, You Will
See That We\'ve Added an Additional Frame Relay Circuit. We\'ve Balanced
the Network by Combining Butte and Mile City Coming into the Left and
Lewistown and Dickenson Coming Into the Right. In the Outlying Areas
There Are Already Frame Relay Circuits and They Are in a Cloud. So Even
Though it Looks like a Lot of Work I Am Looking Forward To the Change,
I\'m Looking Forward to Updating Our Existing Services, and the Newer
Technologies That Are Offered Will Provide a More Cohesive Service to
BLM as a Whole.

R. Stoebe: Good. Thanks, Deb. Before We Move On, I\'d like to Mention to
Our Viewers in That a Few Minutes We\'ll Be Going to a General
Question‑and‑answer Segment. So If You Have a Question or a Comment for
Our Panel Here in Phoenix, or for Doug Hodge in Washington, D.c., Now
Would Be a Good Time to Give Us That Call Or Send Us a Fax. I Would like
to Shift Our Focus Somewhat and Move to Our Final Topic, Sharing with
the Forest Service. So Let\'s Go Back to Washington, D.c. and Doug
Hodge. Doug, How Are the BLM and the Forest Service Working Together On
Fts‑2001 Services at Co‑location Sites?

D. Hodge: Well, Robin, We\'ve Already Begun to Work Together. A Lot of
What I\'ll Say Today Will Sound the Same as What the Team Has Already
Mentioned. We Have up to Now Exchanged Our Agency and Bureau Draft
Tactical Plans. We\'ve Exchanged Websites for Directory Information for
a List Of Our Sites. We\'ve Exchanged Points of Contact So That in Our
Regional Offices the State Offices Will Have Someone to Talk To. We\'re
Having this Video Conference Today. We\'re Having a National
Telecommunications Meeting in The Forest Service at the End of This
Month. We\'ve Invited the BLM to Participate. And We\'ve Set up a Work
Group Under What\'s Called the Service First Initiative Where the BLM
And the Forest Service Are Looking at Ways to Share. And That Includes
Debbra, Ron Strong, Jane Handly Who Is My Supervisor and Myself. The
Forest Service Has Stress to Do Our Telecommunications Manager and Our
Regional Irm Directors That We Will Explore Sharing with BLM and Other
Doi Agencies. It\'s Not Mandatory to Share, but We Have to Explore the
Options. As We\'ve Already Mentioned, We Have the Gao Audit That Says
That We Should Share Where We Can, and We\'ll Be Working with Jim\'s
Group, Doi, to Close out That Audit, Investigate Sharing Where We Can
and Try to Finish Up That Mou. We Know We Have about 45 Sites Right Now
Where We\'re Co‑located And We Share Some Kind of Telecommunications
Service. We Know We Have More, but We Just Don\'t Have Those on Our
List. We Are Co‑located in Such Places As Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Utah,
Washington, California, And More Are Being Pursued. But We Want to Be
Partners in Transition Where We Can. I Want to Go over What the Usda
Plans and the Forest Service Plans for Transition. A Lot of it Will Be
the Same. We\'re Required to Have Our Billing Hierarchies in Place
Before We Can Place Any Orders. So We\'re Working on That Right Now.
It\'s Very Similar to Your Hierarchy. We Didn\'t Break it down by
Service, but We Break it down to A Location. We Have to Get Trained.
I\'ve Just Come Back from Two Days of Dar Training, and the Operations
and Administration Training. Very Good Class. We Had Very Few Glitches.
And Our National Meeting in Two Weeks, Our Forest Service Dars Will Be
Receiving the Same Training. And Then We Have to Get Our Transition
Plans Done and Submitted to Usda. They Have to Approve Them Before We
Can Place Any Orders. Usda Chose Centralized Billing. That\'s Mandatory
for Us. And They\'re Also Working on Hiring One of the Gsa
Telecommunication Management Systems Contractors to Help Us In Our
Transition. Talk about a Little of Our Strategy ‑‑ Each Forest Service
Region Has a Tactical Telecommunications Plan. They Will Work Directly
with the BLM State Offices in Their Territories. We Plan to Order Our
Calling Cards First, Get Our Pic Codes Established for Our von
Locations, and Our Trunk Lines, We See Some Leakage Now on Some Lines
and So We\'re Going to Pic Everything We\'ve Got. We Have Our 800
Numbers to Convert and We\'re Also ‑‑ We Are Going to Look at Local
Access Issues. We Found in Some Cases in the Remote Parts of Oregon and
Other Places That Access Is Not a Simple Issue. It\'s Fairly Costly in
Places. So We\'re Attempting to Get a Five‑year Pricing from Mci and
Also a Location ‑‑ or the Npanxx Information of the Mci Points of
Presence So That We Can Go out And Do Our Comparisons for Access. We
Plan to Cut over Our Forest Service Backbone Circuits Fairly Quickly. We
Also Have Our Eye on the Horizon. There\'s a Financial Application
Coming October 1st That\'s Going To Be a Big Drain on Our Network, So
We\'re Looking at Increasing Some of Our Backbone Circuits. We\'re Going
to Try and Use a Parallel Cutover, but We Know in Some of Our Rural
Areas They Just Don\'t Have the Pairs of Wires to Add Additional
Circuits. So We\'re Going to Have to Do a Flash Cutover in Some of Those
Places. As Ken Mentioned, the Forest Service Is Getting out of the X‑25
Business Also. We Have Disconnected Every One Of Our X‑25 Circuits in
That Fact All Our Dgs You Are down as We Know. We\'re Strictly Running
the Internet Protocol. Our Circuits Are Dts or Frame Relay. And We Do
Not Use X‑400 Anymore, Either, for Messaging. The Usda, We Have to Work
with Them Also. They Are Attempting to Optimize Service in 21 Cities
Around the U.s.. Those Are the 21 Largest Data Services ‑‑ Cities, I
Guess Is One Way to Put It, and We\'re Going to Get Our Internet Access
Through Those 21 Cities. And Our Regional Transition Plans must Show Doi
and BLM Sharing Opportunities and How They Addressed Them. I\'m Also in
Charge of the Video Transition. We Don\'t Have Any Plans at the Moment
to Transition Our Old Cli Eclipse and Gallery Systems. We\'re Going to
Investigate What Mci Is Offering, and as of Right Now We Only Have 12
Sites with Video. Some Examples of Where We Are Sharing or Going to Try
and Share, We Know We\'ve Already Talked about Alaska, Our Alaska Region
Uses Doi Net for Internet Access, Both Inbound and Outbound. We Hear
Much Mci May Be Lighting Up the BLM Federal Center ‑‑ or Denver Federal
Center and We\'re Anxious to Run Some Fibers to And That Get Access
There. Portland, Oregon, the Federal Building There, We Have Our
Regional Contact Working on Sharing with the BLM Office and The Corps of
Engineers, Any Other Government Agencies That Are There, Trying to Get a
Ds‑3 Access and Cut the Costs. We Know We\'re Sharing in Nfse, The
National Agency Fire Center In Boise. I Believe BLM Provides Our Voice
Support There and We\'ll Work Closely to Try to Get a Smooth Transition
There as Well. Northern California, We\'re Sharing T‑1 Network There,
Investigating Where We Can Share Our Transitions. We\'ve Even Got Some
Local Access Problems, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Where We Share a BLM
Circuit out Of Town Because There Are No Pairs of Wires There. Anyway, I
Just Want to Close by Saying We\'re Going to Work with BLM and Doi to
Share Where it Makes Sense. We\'re Looking Forward to a Smooth
Transition. And We\'ll Adjust Time Lines Where We Have to So That We Can
Make Sharing a Reality. That\'s All I Have. Any Other Questions That
Come In, I\'ll Be Happy to Answer Them.

R. Stoebe: Ok, Thanks, Doug. I Hope Can You Hang Around a Little Bit
Longer Here. That about Concludes Our Discussion of Today\'s Main
Topics. Now It\'s Your Turn. We Have Reserved the Rest the ‑‑ Reserved
the Rest of the Show to Hear from You. Give Us a Call or a Fax. Before I
Go to the First Fax, Which Is on its Way to Me, One Question I Know from
the Field And We Discussed this a Little Bit Yesterday, Was the Topic of
Funding and I Was Wondering If Ken and Debbra, You Could Expand A Little
More on What Kind of Expectations the Department and The Bureau Have for
the State Supplying the Funding and Where The Bureau Is Going to Supply
Funding.

D. Deaver: Sure. Let Me Take a Stab at That One. All Fts‑2000 Costs Are
Controlled or Managed at the Ni‑100. Ron Strong Is the Bureau
Telecommunications Manager. We Have Helped the Budget for Fts‑2000 at
That Level. It Will Remain at That Level and We Will Continue to
Exercise Centralized Billing. All the Bills Will Come into Our Office
for Evaluation. We\'re Going to See What We Can Do in the Future about
Distribution of Some of the Information to Each State Center. That\'s
Why We\'ve Established Our Hierarchy Codes. Ken, Do You Have Anything to
Add?

K. Wilbert: Well, the Other Side to the Services Is the Equipment. To
Summarize What I Said Earlier, Equipment Normally Is a State Office or
Local Office Responsibility, and in the Case Of the Mciw Contract,
Though, We Have ‑‑ We Will Fund a Leasing Of That Equipment Through the
Contract and That Money Comes Out of the Top at Our Level as Well.
That\'s Your Choice. Let Us Know Which One You Prefer And We\'ll Go
Ahead That Way. Thank You.

R. Stoebe: Thanks. We\'ve Got a Call In. I Have Steve from Cedar City,
Utah. Hello, Steve?

Caller: Good Morning.

R. Stoebe: Do You Have a Question for the Panel?

Caller: I Have a Question for Mci. One of the Main Problems from Way
down at the Field Level Technician, One of the Problems When There Is a
Trouble, Always On Friday Afternoon on a Three‑day Weekend, with At&t,
You Would Call into a Central Place and What in Invariably Would Happen
You Would Have a Finger‑pointing Game. How Do You Do it over the
Internet Is the Whole System Is Down and ‑‑

D. Moscatelli: Thanks for the Question. I Failed to Mention That There
Are Other Options Available for Doing Those Service ‑‑ Those Trouble
Tickets. You Can Always Call Them In. You Can Always Fax Them In. We
Have a Single Number That Will Be Posted on Your Website. It\'s a
Toll‑free Number That You Will Be Able to Call for Everything from Your
Trouble Tickets to Billing Disputes to Whatever Else Is on Your Mind
Regarding Your Contract. So That Will Always Be Available To You If by
Some Chance You Are Not Able to Access Fts Net Through Your Network.

R. Stoebe: Does That Answer Your Question, Steve?

Caller: the Second Part Is How Do They Deal with Finger‑pointing
Sometimes You Get in ‑‑ It\'s a Local Lec, Not Your Large Ones, Saying
It\'s Not Our Fault, It\'s Mci Fault or It\'s Your Local Equipment and
There\'s Three or Four Teches Involved.

D. Moscatelli: That\'s a Very Good Question and It\'s a Question That
Comes up Often. What Mci Has Done, and We\'ve Made Substantial Steps in
Establishing a Relationship with The Lecs, Granted, We Are Two Different
Companies, but We Work Together Very Often. I Mean, We Had Situations,
for Instance, with One of the Lecs Out in the ‑‑ the Primary Lec Out in
Denver and We Were Able To Work Together. They Have Assigned an F Fts
Rep To Work Specifically with Us to Accommodate Our Needs. We Have a
Carrier Group Within Mci So That We Can Quickly Escalate Problems up the
Pole. So There Is a Lot of Visibility There. The Other Thing That I
Didn\'t Mention Is You Will Be Able To, Even If You Call in Your Trouble
Ticket, You Will Be Able To, Once Your Fts Net Link Is Back And Working
Order, You Will Be Able to See at Any Time of the Day or Night the
Status on That Trouble Ticket. So You Will\' Be Able to Open That or
Review That, Let\'s Say You Open it on the Phone, You\'ll Be Able to
Review and it See That We\'ve Spoken with the Lec, This Is the
Engineer\'s Comments, This Is the Date or this Is the Time That We
Expect for the Problem to Be Resolved. This Is What the Problem Is, et
Cetera. Does That Answer Your Question In

Caller: Yes. I Kind of Had a Follow‑on Question and it Might Not Be Mci
That Wants to Answer. It Might Be Debbra. I Don\'t Know ‑‑ I Don\'t Want
to Quote it as a Problem, but One Of the Issues Is When You\'re Having
the Large Fires in the Summer, We\'ve Requested Fts Service from ‑‑
Again from the Field Level, and It\'s Either Been, No, It\'s ‑‑ It\'s a
Real Long Response Time. And I Understand You Get into Provisioning and
the 30‑day Window. I Was Wondering, Does Mci Have Any Provisions in the
Contract To Handle Emergency National Incidents Where You Would Request
Services or Are Still Always Going to Go with the Local Lec and Pay High
Telecommunication Costs?

D. Moscatelli: We Do Have Many Customers That Have Emergency Needs like
That. As I Presented, Those Were the Standard Installation Intervals. We
Are Very Willing to and Very Equipped to Work with You on Accommodating
Any Emergencies That Come Up. We Work with a Number of Other Customers
Have That Maybe Similar Situations. It\'s Not Perhaps a Fire, but We
Work with the Faa Right Now, and I Can\'t Tell You How Critical That
Network Is. There Is Literally No Downtime Available and When They Need
Something Up, They Need Something up Very Quickly. We Just Went Through
an Exercise With the Department of Defense In Kosovo and We Had to
Quickly Accommodate Them Within a Matter Of, I Believe, it Was 24 Hours.
We Had to Get Some Circuits into A Very Odd Location and We Were Able to
Accommodate That as Well. So, Yes, We Do Have the Resources and We Have
the Process in Place to Accommodate Those Sorts of Requests.

D. Deaver: and I\'d like to Add, If I Might, Steve, this Is Why It\'s So
Important That We Do Our Transition Planning, That You Get this
Information to My Counterpart, My Point of Contact In the State of Utah,
Which Is Jaw Nell Thompson, That We ‑‑ They Need to Put These Locations
In Their Transition Plans That You Do Support Fire, That We Review That,
and That We Get That Information to Mci in My Discussions of Ordering
Services, and They Are Well Aware That We Have Centers That Do Support
Fire. We\'ve Talked about That with Them. We\'ve Talked about Our
Concerns Of Getting Service in and That We Need Circuits That Are Large
Enough to Handle the Traffic. So, Please, Don\'t Forget to Put This in
Your Plans And, Yes, We\'re Already Well Aware of Some Of Your
Situations. So Thank You for Bringing it Up.

Caller: Debbra, I Understand What You\'re Saying, but Sometimes
Emergency Could Be at A High School, and There\'s No BLM Circuits There
or Nothing And That\'s Where in the past I Have Seen Problems, They
Decide To Put up the Incident Command Center There and Red Cross Center
and All of a Sudden You Want X Number of Phone Circuits, You Want a T‑1
in for the Gis Systems and They\'re Not in Typical BLM Offices and
That\'s Where the Problem Is. I Don\'t Know How to Plan for That. I
Don\'t Know. So ‑‑

D. Deaver: and in That Particular Case I Would Be Working with You and
Mci to See What We Could Do. Since Denise Just Mentioned They Supported
the Kosovo Effort, I Think I Would Consider this a High Priority, and We
Would Certainly Work on Supporting You And See What We Can Do. That\'s
the Best Answer I Have For You Right at the Moment.

Debbra, Perhaps What We Can Do in Addition Is Follow up a Discussion
with the Fire Center Management, and Perhaps as Part Of Their Transition
Plan, Part Of Our Normal Operating Plan, We Come One Some Procedures
Where We Can Quickly Escalate this Through the Process. So We\'ll Make
Sure We Bring That Point Home.

D. Deaver: Thank You.

J. Dolezal: I Would like to Also Add That We Have the Resources of the
National Communications System for Emergency Responsiveness, and Our ‑‑
We Are Able to Escalate Orders or Initiate Emergency Provisioning
Through the National Communications System. It Bypasses a Number of
Hurdles For Getting Emergency Services In, and Basically It\'s Saying
That We Need the Services Now And Without Regard to Cost, Get Them in
and on an Expedited Basis.

R. Stoebe: Ok. Does That Cover it for You, Steve?

Caller: Now, Switching Topics, So under the Internet Service That Mci Is
Going to Provide, How Does That Mesh with The Requirement That We\'re
All ‑‑ Have to Use a BLM Trusted Network? How Is That Going to Lash up
From the End Field User?

K. Wilbert: I\'ll Take That Question. I Understand That Question Is If
We\'re Using Internet Services From Mci, Is in That Conflict With Our
Security Policy? Currently Our Internet Services Are Provided Through
Doi Net, And There Are ‑‑ They\'re Reviewing That as Part of the
Proposal for Doi Net. So If There Was a Transition, it Would Not
Concordance with and That Our Normal Security Architecture Would Take
That in For Account If There Are Any Other Changes, Changes in Our
Security Architecture as a Result of a Change in the Doi Net
Architecture, There Would Be A Much Longer ‑‑ My Answer Would Be a Lot
Longer, Because I Have I Would Have to Go Through a Review Process. But
Again That\'s an Issue We Will Bring up to Irmac If That\'s An Issue.

Caller: the Bottom Shrine You Can Use Mci Facilities If You Think ‑‑

K. Wilbert: Right Now Our Commitment Is to Doi Is to Use The Internet
Services Provided Through Doi Net. If That Changes with the Proposal for
Doi Net, Because That Was a Package, Obviously We Will Be Looking at
Other Alternatives. For Instance, We Could Be Sharing with Other
Agencies, and So We Could Use the Mciw Service. Jim, Do You Have Any
Comments to Add to That?

J. Dolezal: No, We Are Looking at Enter Set Services Under Mci Contract,
and We Haven\'t Settled on the Architecture. It Takes Considerable Study
and Review as Far as the Implications of Internet Access And What Is
Optimal for the Department and for the Bureaus, And this Ties in with
Our Review Of Doi Net and How We Are Going To Transition Doi Net to Mci
Worldcom.

R. Stoebe: Anything More, Steve?

Caller: Thanks for Your Time.

R. Stoebe: Thanks for Your Questions. They Are Good. I Have a Fax from
the Wyoming State Office. I Think this Is Going to Be for You, Denise.
So Pay Attention Here. Regarding the Video Conferencing Equipment We Now
Have to Call At&t When We Want to Lynn Took More than One Site. This
Normally Has to Be Done Weeks Before. At&t Will Give Us a Number to Use
When We Use Linked Sites. Will Mci Worldcom Have Something Similar and
Hopefully Simpler?

the Answer Is Yes. They Always Tell Me in That Sales Training, the
Answer Is Always Yes. The Way ‑‑ We\'ve Been Asked this Question Before.
Our Video Conferencing Rooms Are Set up Very Quickly. They Can Be Set up
in Definitely Less than 24 Hours. What We Do ‑‑ and it Depends on ‑‑ If
Everybody Is on ‑‑ First Of All, If Some of the Conferences Are on the
At&t Network, That Is a Private Network That Is Closed, They Would Have
to Call out to the Mci Bridge and Then We Would Bridge the Parties
Together at That Point. But to Do That, There Is an 800 Number, There\'s
a Toll‑free Number Service Provided, and That Toll‑free Number and That
Set‑up for That Conference Is Done Very Quickly. Again, It\'s Within a
24‑hour Period. Many Times I\'ve Done it Within An Hour. But, Again, it
Depends on the Number of Parties. So the Answer to That Is, Yes, It\'s a
Very Simple Process.

R. Stoebe: Ok. Thanks, Denise. We Have Some Time for Some Closing
Comments. I Think, Jim, Did You Have a Few Words You Wanted to Say?

J. Dolezal: Yes, of Course, I Do. Doug Had Mentioned the Gao Odd And it
I Think Debbra Had Mentioned the Audit Also. It Just So Happens That Gao
Is Coming by My Office next Wednesday, and They Are Monitoring Our
Sharing Efforts Considerably. The Ultimate Goal Is Cost Reduction. One
of the Good Things about the Fts‑2001 Contract and Mci\'s Capability Is
That We Can Share The Cost of Shared Facilities Very Easily. We Don\'t
Have to Do Memorandums Of Agreement Between the Facilities at the Local
Level. We Can Just Simply Tell Mci That The Forest Service Would Be ‑‑
Bill Should Be Billed 30% for That Particular Access and the BLM the
Other 70%. So the Contract Makes it Easier For Us to Share. Other Things
I Want to Mention, We\'re Planning a Doi Transition Workshop for the
Week of the 21st of June. I Think Debbra Mentioned This. It\'s Going to
Be in Denver, and The Purpose of That Workshop Is For Mci to Present the
Transition Plan That They Have Developed, or I Should Say Are Developing
at this Point, So That it Can Be Presented to All Bureaus Within the
Department And I Expect Forest Service to Be There Also. That Transition
Plan Is Very Key To Our Transparent Transitioning Of Services to Mci and
It\'s Going to Provide the Baseline For a Coordinated Effort So That We
Can Transition Quickly and Effectively to Mci Services. That\'s Really
All I Had to Say.

R. Stoebe: Thanks, Jim. Ken, Did You Have a Few Final Words for Us?

K. Wilbert: Just a Quick Comment. This Effort Is Going to Be a Lot Of
Work for the Field. I Know Deb Has Pointed That out Very Effectively.
There\'s a Lot on BLM\'s Plate. So When You Go Through the Exercise of
Doing Your Planning, Make Sure You Look at All the Options. Don\'t Just
Assume a Straight Swap out of Your Circuits. Take Advantage of Some of
the New Services, Take Advantage of Some of the New Technologies So Can
You Reduce Your Future Workload. Thank You, Robin.

R. Stoebe: Thank You, Ken. Debbra, Did You Have Something To Say?

D. Deaver:, Yes, Please. I Want to Thank the Participants That Called in
or Faxed in Information. You Had Some Very Good Questions For Us. We\'ll
Certainly Be Looking into Some of Those Issues, Questions Come in
Constantly. Mci, the Department Has Been Working Very Closely with Us to
Get Those Questions Answered. And for Me to Get of Information Out to
You. I Think We\'ve Demonstrated to You Today by All the Participants
and the Variety We Have Here That We\'re Very Committed to
Transitioning, That We Do Have an Approach in Place And That We\'ve
Started into Numerous Dialogues Between All Of Us. This Will Come
Together. It Does. I\'ve Been Through Transition Before, as I Believe
Ken Has, And it Will Work. The Department Has Been Working Closely with
Us. They\'ve Been under a Limited Staff, but They Have Provided Us
Information as Quickly and as Timely as They Can. We\'ve Had Numerous
Conversations With Mci Worldcom and I Wanted To Share with You, I Sent
out an E‑mail Message Before I Left Town to Come down and Work on This
Broadcast That I Received a Voice Mail Message from the Survey, the Site
Survey Staff. One of the Individuals That We Have Been Working with Has
Been Very Impressed with the Feedback She\'s Been Getting as She\'s Been
Working with All of You in the Field. These Are the Initial Steps That
We Need to Take. We\'re Building Our Initial Configuration and Our
Baseline, But She\'s Getting a Very Good Response. So I Appreciate You
Folks Working with That Particular Section. The Plans Are Starting to
Come Together. I Received a Few of Them in My Office. I Hope Today\'s
Broadcast Will Give You a Few More Tips on Some Things You Have
Forgotten to Take a Look at or Some Areas That You Can Share on Our
Conference Calls with Your Counterparts. Ni‑100 Is Going to Do Their
Very Best to Support You in this Effort. We Will Keep You Informed and
Thanks for Participating and Thank You, Robin.

R. Stoebe: I Have One More Call Coming In. This Is from Ron in Phoenix.
Ron, Welcome to the Forum. Do You Have a Question for the Panelists?

Caller: Yes, I Had a Question About Bandwidth. As We All Know, as More
of These New Technologies Come on Line, We\'re Requiring More and More
Bandwidth, and One Example Is Video Streaming. I Just Wanted to Ask the
Question If We\'re Really Considering Expanding Our Bandwidth, and Are
We Taking Into Consideration Some of These New Technology Requirements
as We Look at Fts‑2001?

R. Stoebe: Who Would like to Grab That One?

D. Deaver: I Will. Definitely We Are Looking at Those. Video
Conferencing, That Issue Will Come up When I Start Addressing That Issue
with You. That\'s an Area I Still Need to Do Some Work in but Will Be
Happy to Work with You. Anything Else from the Panel?

K. Wilbert: We\'ll Also Be Looking at Bandwidth Issues as We Go Through
the Study ‑‑ the Proposals Being Presented for Our Backbone Run. So ‑‑
as Part of That Study, We\'ll Have to Look at Your Future Requirements
as Well. We\'ll Be Getting That from Your Transition Plan. Make Sure
That\'s Highlighted in There. Thank You.

Caller: We\'re Really Wanting To Make Sure We Get it onto the Desktop as
Much as Possible, Training Materials, Training Inform and These
Technologies Are Handing Us Opportunities to Do That.

D. Deaver: as Far as Moving Into Desktop Video Conferencing, I Think
That\'s a New Area for The Bureau, but I Appreciate You Bringing up the
Issue. This Is Something That We Do Need to Be Reviewing and Looking At
and I Need to Know If Any of The Other States Are ‑‑ Have This
Information in Their Transition Plan. Are You Looking at Desktop Video
Conferencing and Are You Looking At Installation of a Video Conferencing
Room. Like Ron Pointed Out, We Definitely Need to Look at Video
Streaming. Thanks.

R. Stoebe: Anything Else, Ron?

Caller: No, That\'s All.

**Everything You Wanted to Know about Personnel \....**

A Telecast Originating from the BLM National Training Center

April 29, 1999

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

R. Stoebe: Thanks for Calling In. Ok. That about Wraps it up for this
Edition of Irm Forum. I Would like to Especially Thank Doug in
Washington for Joining Us. We Appreciate That. We Look Forward to
Working Closely with the Forest Service. I like to Thank Our Studio
Panelists for Their Par Dis ‑‑ Participation. We Would like to Remind
the BLM Satellite Downlink Coordinators To Complete the Standard
Broadcast Viewer Roster and to Fax it into NTC Immediately Following Our
Show. Or You Can Use NTC\'s Automated Viewer Reporting System on the NTC
Homepage at www.ntc.blm.gov/satnet. All of You Will Be Receiving an
E‑mail Today Ask You Asking You To Complete an Evaluation of the Show.
We Appreciate You Taking the Time to Film it out and Send it Back to Us.
We Hope Today\'s Program Has Given Abetter Understanding of Our
Transition to the Fts‑2001 Contract. Thanks for Watching and So Long
From Phoenix.

Announcer: to Help Your Office Participate in Future Telecasts, See the
BLM Satellite Downlink Guide and Visit the NTC Homepage on the World
Wide Web. NTC\'s Internet Address Is www.ntc.blm.gov. Transcripts of
this Program and Other NTC Broadcasts Are Available on the Homepage. For
More Information on Upcoming Distance Learning Events, as Well as
Traditional Courses, Call the Training Center at 602‑906‑5500 or Visit
the Homepage. This Broadcast Has Been a Production of the BLM National
Training Center.