6‑5

6 Games Management Operation Centres

Technology Service Management and Incident
Response Performed by Technology Call
Centre of the Tokyo 2020 GamesKAWATA Masahiko

The Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 followed the management process based on ITIL ® to provide
technology services to Games stakeholders in line with past Games In particular regarding the quality of services wedefined unified SLAs for various types of services to provide a quick response to important events such as competition
management In addition we set up a Technology Call Centre to serve as a contact point for technology inquiries fromGames stakeholders who were the equivalent of customers to achieve uniformity of response and improve response
quality through centralized management
Keywords：Tokyo 2020 Games Service management Incident response Call centre

1．Introduction

and during the Games To provide high‑quality IT
services and appropriate incident response for these

The Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020

customers we adopted a management process based on(hereinafter referred to as the “Tokyo 2020 Games”)

ITIL ® (Terminology) for the Tokyo 2020 Games just as in past

were held over approximately one and a half months

Games Specifically the Technology Functional Area

featuring 55 sports and 878 competitions This is an(TEC FA) which is the operations department for IT

unprecedented scale for a sporting event This article

services was structurally divided into three tiers The

provides an overview of the service management andfirst tier was the Technology Call Centre (TCC) which

the incident (Terminology) management of technologies thatserved as a single point of contact for all IT‑related

supported this large‑scale event

matters and accepted inquiries by phone and e‑mailThe second tier consisted of venue IT teams assigned toapproximately 190 venues

facilities

and bases of

2．Technology Service Management at
the Tokyo 2020 Gamesvarious sizes such as competition venues to provide

Approximately 400 000 people involved in the Tokyo

operate actual equipment such as problematic target

2020 Games including athletes officials from national

equipment A Technology Operation Centre (TOC) (1)and international federations broadcasters media andwhich controlled the entire Games in terms of technol-press participated in the Tokyo 2020 Games both before

face‑to‑face support to the Games stakeholders andogy in cooperation with the first and second tiers madeup the third tier (Figure 1)

KAWATA MasahikoTechnology Services Bureau The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic
and Paralympic GamesThe Journal of The Institute of Electronics Information and Communication Engineers Vol 105 No 8 Supplement pp 327‑332 August 2022
© 2022 The Institute of Electronics Information and Communication Engineers

Next we classified operational incidents according toseverity levels : Severity 1 to Severity 4 (the smaller thenumber the greater the severity) depending on the
degree and scale of the impact For example issues thatSpecial Issue : Technology and Innovation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020327

Table 1

SLAs Applied at the Tokyo 2020 Games
Critical Period

Response
Time

ResolutionTime

Non‑Critical Period
Response
Time

Resolution
Time

Severity 1

5 minutes

1 hour5 minutes

4 hours

Severity 2

5 minutes

2 hours

15 minutes

6 hours

Severity 3

30 minutes

4 hours

1 hour

2 daysSeverity 4

1 hour

6 hours

2 5 hours

3 daysServiceRequest ＊1 hour8 hours

8 hours

5 days＊ “Service Request” classifies requests that do not involve
problems such as failures

Figure 1

Hierarchy of IT Service Operations

tive of the type of service or target user In addition as
an arrangement specific to the Games the period during
incidents that force suspension ofand immediately before the Olympic and Paralympic

competition or incidents that are covered in live

affect all users

Games was referred to as the “Critical Period” While thebroadcasts and news are classified as Severity 1 As aperiod more than one month before the Opening

Service Level Agreement (SLA) (Terminology)

we setCeremony of the Olympic Games and the period ofindividual response time (time taken from receiving antransition from the Olympic Games to the Paralympic

incident inquiry to the first contact with the user) andGames was referred to as the “Non‑Critical Period” Weresolution time (time taken to resolve the problem

applied different SLAs to each of the two periods Table

including interim measures) targets for each severity

1 shows the SLAs applied for the Tokyo 2020 Gameslevel We standardized the SLAs so that they were

All incidents were registered in an incident manage-

determined uniformly by Severity level only irrespec-

ment tool provided by a cloud service Anyone working
in technology can access this registered information toview and update its contents The tool automatically■measured the time elapsed since registering an incident

Terminology®

Incident
In ITIL an incident is usually defined as an
event that affects business continuity or users due to an
outage of IT services/IT systems or deterioration in service
quality At the Tokyo 2020 Games in addition to theseincidents user requests for the use of IT services/IT
systems were also treated as incidents under the term“Service Request”
ITIL ®
Information Technology Infrastructure Library
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is aset of books that systematize best practices in IT service
management It is the basis for the international standard
ISO/IEC 20000 (JIS Q 20000 in JIS)
SLA
Service Level Agreement An agreement between a service provider and its users regarding the level ofservice (definitions scope content goals to be achieved
etc )
CTI
Computer Telephony Integration Integrating
computers with telephones PBXs (private branch exchange) and other telephone‑related equipment improves
the efficiency of call centres and other facilities
IVR
Interactive Voice Response A system that provides a pre‑prepared voice announcement for incoming calls
to a call centre or assigns a response to an operator by having
the user enter a number corresponding to the reason for theincoming call■328

By checking the time elapsed for each incident in real‑time the incidents were managed to comply with the
SLAs shown in Table 1

3．Transition to the TCC System
This section gives a detailed description of TCC
which served as the primary contact point for incident
response
As mentioned above we used a dedicated incident
management tool for incident response at the Tokyo
2020 Games the same tool used in previous Games
However while the Rio 2016 Games introduced the tool
31 months before the Games opened the Tokyo 2020
Games began using the tool in February 2016 approximately 22 months earlier than the Rio 2016 Games This
early launch of the tool effectively improved the
proficiency of the Organising Committee in operating themanagement tool
Initially the primary contact point for the incident
response was the internal support desk supporting the

THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRONICS INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERSIT infrastructure system within the Organising Commit-

to handle inquiries and they handled more than 7 000

tee But because a large volunteer portal site wasinquiries in Julylaunched as an external service in August 2018 the TCC
started acting as the incident acceptance desk in July a

4．TCC Operations

month before the launch (Note 1) At this point the TCCʼscustomer base was still limited to internal members of

41

Incident Response

the Organising Committee who were Games stakehold-

TCC linked received inquiries to one of the 286

ers so the TCC was set up in a section of the Organising

services registered in the Technology Service Catalog

Committee office and began its operations with a staff ofand registered the contents of the inquiry in the incident

seven operators However since it was known thatmanagement tool along with information such as themany of the incident inquiries during the Games woulduser who made the inquiry and the location where thebe in English bilingual operators with English skills

incident occurred The service owner provided Service

were assigned to the TCC from the beginning At the

Acceptance Criteria (SAC) for each service includingtime the number of incidents received per month was

an overview of the service escalation points FAQs andapproximately 400

basic confirmation items Based on this information an

In April 2019 to respond to the holding of test events

appropriate judgment of which service the queryto accumulate know‑how of Games operations and thebelonged to was made and TCC provided the primary

expansion of the number of staff in the Organising

response

the TCC moved from its base at the

TCC utilized the dashboard function of the incident

Organising Committee to a dedicated facility equippedmanagement tool to display the number of inquiries

with call handling facilities

waiting to be received the number of inquiries for eachCommittee

and statistics and callrecording functions including CTI(Terminology)

The TCC

major venue and service

the number of pending

was expanded to provide full‑scale call centre support

inquiries and the percentage of SLAs achieved on a

In 2019 the TCC had 11 operators and handled alarge monitor in real‑time so that everyone in the TCC

maximum of 1 250 incidents per month including the

could always understand the situation at the time

test event period

TCC required that the name and organization of the

TCC was expanded in preparation for the Tokyo 2020

user inquiring be recorded at the first reception For

Games However due to the decision to postpone theusers from overseas telephone inquiries were naturally

Games by one year in March 2020

TCC had to

conducted in English At the Tokyo 2020 Games the

temporarily reduce its size and structure including theIVR (Interactive Voice Response) (Terminology) system wassuspension of call reception One year later in April

not used to sort languages

2021 the TCC resumed primary contact operations on

numbers were provided for Japanese and English

but dedicated phone

the same scale and with the same content as was initially

However there were many cases in which the operator

planned for the Tokyo 2020 Games Based on the original

had difficulty understanding calls from English‑speaking

plan the Alternative Technology Call Centre (ACC)

users due to a very thick accent or unfamiliar names

was established in Kyoto about 360 km away from the

For these reasons TCCs had to spend a lot of time on

TCC to ensure the ability to handle incoming calls

initial interviews with users which has caused theduring the peak of the Games and to continue reception

TCCʼs reputation for customer satisfaction to decline inoperations in the event of a failure Therefore TCC andpast Games The Tokyo 2020 Games used a database of

ACC operated side by side from April until the end of theGame stakeholders that managed user information

Paralympic Games in September In addition the TCC/

linked to accreditation numbers to identify users By

ACC operated 24 hours a day in conjunction with the 24‑

having users provide their accreditation numbers thehour operation of the TOC from July 12 During theuser information retrieved by searching the Participant

Games up to 32 operators at the two sites were available

Database could be automatically registered in theincident management tool In addition since the usage of(Note 1) The Volunteer Portal was a service used by many applicantsfor volunteer positions at the time and the Volunteer Contact Center(VCC) which was organized separately was responsible for directly
responding to applicants The TCC responded to inquiries by receiving
escalations from the VCC

cell phones such as smartphones has increased thepercentage of individuals that can be identified by theircalling numbers we have devised a way to speed up theprocess of accepting inquiries by automatically search-Special Issue : Technology and Innovation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020329

ing the incident management tool by calling numbers

COVID‑19 from the perspective of technology services

and displaying candidates of usersʼ past inquiries

However the system and the operation of infection

through CTI linkage

control measures were not finalized in advance due toEven so there were several difficulties for the callthe effects of daily changes in COVID‑19 compliancecentre to acquire knowledge in advance and increase its

policies at various levels including the government andproficiency in handling inquiries for events such as thechanges were required even during the Games The

Olympic and Paralympic Games where services did notmain functions of the system were to manage immigra-

start until the Games period or that some Gamestion for overseas stakeholders and to manage the healthstakeholders such as members of the press did not

and test results of all Games stakeholders including

arrive in Japan and participate in the Games until justresidents in Japan and users were just anyone involved

before the Games period Operators who joined the callin the Tokyo 2020 Games

centre at an early stage of its setup were allowed toconstraints the system went into complete operation

experience work on‑site for example working with thewithout properly disseminating its operations resulting

second‑tier venues IT team at the test event toin a very confusing situation immediately after theunderstand the situation of users who inquired about thesystem was put into operation

event but even this was not sufficient

received many inquiries from members of the press

Howeverdue to time

In particularwewishing to visit Japan and by the beginning of July
42

Support for Routine Operations

more than 1 000 inquiries remained unresolved

Although this section has focused mainly on incident

As mentioned above since the target users of the

responses such as failures and defects many of the“Infection Control Business Support System” were wide‑

inquiries received by the TCC included Service Re-

ranging and the system was out of the TCCʼs scope ofquests which were requests for permission to use a

responsibilities a dedicated call centre was set up for theservice or to set access privileges Service Requests

system But because the TCC could assign some of its

accounted for approximately 65% of all incidents

operators to the dedicated call centre we were able toAmong these requests to create an account to use eachbegin reception operations in a short period Since theservice accounted for about 12% of the total number ofcall centre used the same incident management tool as

incidents This was the same trend seen for technology

the TCC and the operators who had experience handlingservices in previous Games

Routine tasks such as

incidents at the TCC had the appropriate awareness foraccount creation have well‑established work procedures

the Games stakeholders they could handle inquiries

and do not require a particular operator to perform

efficiently and effectively Specifically the number ofthem Therefore to increase the responsibility of theunresolved inquiries dropped to 260 on July 14 and thesecond and third tiers of the IT service operations

number of pending incidents reduced to fewer than 100

hierarchy in handling more technical incidents routine

after July 24

tasks such as account creation were assigned to the
TCC/ACC at the Tokyo 2020 Games This was also anefficient way to use operators during night shifts when
the number of incoming inquiries was lower As for theaccounts created for the Tokyo 2020 Games 7 772

5．Incidents at the Tokyo 2020 Games
Finally the following table shows the total number ofincidents during the Tokyo 2020 Gamesaccounts were created between May 2021 and Septem-

127 034 incident tickets (Note 2) were issued for theber 2021 (this did not include accounts for staff of theTokyo 2020 Games between February 2016 and Septem-

Organising Committee) of which 4 963 accounts wereber 2021 A breakdown of the tickets is given below

provided to volunteers using the technology services(Table 2 Figure 2)
The highest number of incidents in a single day

43

Support for the Infection Control Businessoccurred on July 5 2021 with 936 incidents recorded It

Support System

was the busiest period as the Opening Ceremony was to

Although the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019be held 20 days later and the staff was deployed to the(COVID‑19) was unique to the Tokyo 2020 Games an“Infection Control Business Support System” (2) was
hastily developed and introduced as a response to330(Note 2) Incidents registered in the incident management tool were
issued incident tickets with individual incident numbers for identification

THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRONICS INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERS

Figure 2

Progress in the Number of Incidents per Day Throughout the Entire Period

Figure 3

Table 2

Number of Incidents per Day during the Duration of the Games

Number of Incidents per Severity throughout the Entire
PeriodSeverity 1

Severity 2

Severity 3

Severity 4

ServiceRequest

120

272

5 319

41 44779 876venue to prepare for the Games

Howeverthebreakdown shows that there were 585 Service Requests
330 Severity 4 incidents 20 Severity 3 incidents and 1

Table 3

Number of Incidents per Severity during the Duration of
the Games
Severity1

Severity2

Severity3

Severity4

ServiceRequest

7/12〜8/8

12

35

1 091

6 755

9 809

8/8〜8/19

0

0

46

577

1 818

8/20〜9/5

0

4

236

1 229

2 324

Total

12

39

1 373

8 561

13 951

Severity 2 incident so there were not many severe
incidents
For a detailed look at the incident situation the period
covered was narrowed down to the period known as the

Table 4

Number of Incidents during the Duration of the Rio 2016
Games

Critical Period which is the period during which theGames were held : July 12 2021 to September 5 2021
(including the Non‑Critical Period during the transition

2016/7/25〜8/21

Severity1

Severity2

Severity3

Severity4

ServiceRequest

30

203

3 256

8 456

17 445Special Issue : Technology and Innovation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020

331

Table 5

Quality of Primary Response of TCC
Jun

July

Aug

Sept

99 4%

97 2%

98 6%

99 9%

98 8%

93 4%

97 0%

99 7%

Calls answered
within 30 seconds

99 8%

99 7%

99 9%

99 9%

Call abandonment
rate

2 1%

4 6%

3 2%

2 6%

Average callduration (s)

287

377

374

291

69 1%

65 7%

59 0%

65 0%

SLA Compli- Response Timeance Rate
Resolution Time

Call Response
Quality

Incident resolution rate by TCC

from the Olympic Games to the Paralympic Games)

6．Conclusion(Table 3 Figure 3)
The highest number of incidents during this period

The Tokyo 2020 Games had to be held without

was 920 on July 14 second only to the highest number onspectators due to the implementation of COVID‑19

July 5 However July 24 was the most distinctive day ininfection control measures Although the size of thethis period with 5 Severity 1 incidents and 7 Severity 2

Games was smaller than initially expected the number

incidents making it the day when the highest number ofof Games stakeholders using the technology services

high severity incidents occurred (Also 102 Severity 3

provided by the Organising Committee did not decrease

incidents occurred making it the day with the highest

significantly compared to previous Games Even under

number of Severity 3 incidents overall ) This was the

such circumstances the number of incidents including

day following the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic

high severity incidents was lower than in previous

Games coinciding with the start of multiple competi-Games The SLA compliance rate by the TCC thetions Looking at the incident occurrence situation of the

primary point of contact for incident response was well

Rio 2016 Games (Table 4) for example if we compare

above 90% Based on the above we believe that thethe 27 days from July 12 2021 to August 8 2021

Tokyo 2020 Games achieved stable operation of technol-(Tokyo) and from July 25 to August 21 2016 (Rio deogy services

Janeiro) the total number of severe Severity 1 andSeverity 2 severe incidents was 233 in the Rio 2016
Games while it was reduced to 47 in the Tokyo 2020
Games

which is about 1/5

The total number ofincidents during this period was 17 702 (Tokyo) and

References
(
(

)
)

Y. Nakamura and T. Yoshida, Technology Operation Centre, 2022.
T. Tachi, A. Usui and F. Nakayasu, Introduction History andOperational Performance of the Infection Control Business Support
System “Tokyo 2020 ICON”, 2022.

29 390 (Rio de Janeiro) and the ratio of Severity 1 andSeverity 2 incidents to the total number of incidents was
about 0 8% in Rio de Janeiro and about 0 3% in Tokyo
Table 5 shows the quality of the TCCʼs primary
response to incidents at the Tokyo 2020 Games
including SLA complianceand both response andresolution times far exceeded the target SLA compliance
rate of 85%(Received February 28 2022 ; Revised March 15 2022)

KAWATA Masahiko
KAWATA Masahiko graduated from Osaka
City University in 1990 with a Bachelorʼs
degree in Mechanical Engineering and has beena member of the Technology Services Bureauof the Tokyo Organising Committee of the
Olympic and Paralympic Games since April
2015 He is currently with NEC Solution
Innovator Ltd in the Smart Society Solutions
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