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CIRCULATION: NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COUNCIL == A3 - PC NW 06 04
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MS/JMC PC NW 06 01
31 May 2006
CIRCULATION: NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
— Dear Executive Officer
RE: HORIZON FAILURES
As a result of our ongoing work with Post Office Ltd on Horizon failures the
Operations Control Team have produced the attached article which we intend to
distribute with the next Branch Secretaries Circular, (with an NFSP introduction),
before it is published in a later “Subpostmaster’,
I have commented on the fact that the article does not make reference to the Global
System for Mobile Communications (GSM) solution that Post Office Ltd hope to
introduce as a back-up this month. The team want to cover the GSM mobile solution
at a later stage once they understand how it is operating.
Yours sincerely
MARILYN STODDART
Assistant General Secretar
National Federation of SubPos
324 + Fax: 01273 465403
sporg.uk
On Line Services
As more and more transactions with Post Office branches are
carried out on line it is critical that we provide a stable, fast and
reliable on line service.
Post Office Ltd’s Operations Control team works very closely with
Fujitsu to improve the service we provide and drive up branch
availability. Did you know that in April 2006, our daily average was
more than 99.7% of branches able to carry out on line transactions
— up from 97.75% in August 2004. This equates to an average of
345 branches per day experiencing problems with on line services
a couple of years ago, reducing to 38 this April. What's more, 85%
of all on-line service calls in April were resolved within 24 hours.
The graph below shows the improvements made in the last six
months.
(insert graph on separate attachment)
Despite increased availability we are not satisfied, however, with
99.7% and want to drive that figure higher and higher. Within
Operations Control we have two distinct teams working closely to
improve on line services. We have a robust central network
infrastructure but know that this can sometimes fail. Our Live
Service team will deal with the immediate impact of a network
failure like the one experienced on Tuesday 2 May. The Live
Service team’s primary aim is to work with our service providers to
restore service as quickly as possible whilst communicating with
key interested parties within Post Office Ltd.
The second team within Operations Control looking closely at on
line services is the Service Improvement Team. Service
Improvement's responsibility is to look at the lessons learned from
major incidents and also work in partnership with suppliers to pro
actively identify service improvements. We have two Service
Analysts dedicated to dealing with individual branch issues. This
small team has a daily conference call with Fujitsu and Cable and
Wireless (our Internet Service Provider) to discuss problem
branches, liaise with the branches themselves and other teams
within Post Office Ltd to ensure a resolution as quickly as possible.
\f your branch ever loses on line services you should first contact
the Horizon Service Desk (HSD) on
option 2. They will carry out some initial diagnostics, which could
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include asking you to assist by unplugging pieces of equipment to
establish the root cause. This is important to establish if it is the
“voice” element of your telephone line (PSTN), kit within the branch
or the Horizon kit itself that could be faulty. Resolving broadband
service issues that require action from BT can be problematic.
Currently, two different BT departments deal with faults depending
on if they are internal or external to the branch. These teams work
independently and each has service levels such that resolution can
take anything up to 40 working hours. It is vitally important that
you provide access to the branch for any engineers calling to
resolve faults. If an engineer is turned away it will delay resolution
and, for BT engineers, your job will be put back to the bottom of
the pile and they will reset the service level clock back to zero.
Post Office Ltd and its suppliers fully understand the
inconvenience that can be caused by an engineer visit to branch
but sometimes short term pain can lead to long term gain.
Because of this complexity, we are currently working with our
suppliers and OFCOM to try and simplify the process for engaging
BT and, more importantly, speed up fault resolution. Through the
work done in this area over the last year, we’ve seen the
percentage of problems resolved within 24 hours increase from
78% to 85%. That improvement is as a result of the high focus
that we put on driving up on line service availability and improving
the fault resolution processes.
The vast majority of Post Office branches have ADSL broadband.
This service “piggy backs” on the branches PSTN line. Have you
ever been approached by an Internet Service Provider offering
broadband at “competitive rates’? If so, you must NOT take up
this offer and cancel your current broadband unless you are
prepared to have another PSTN line installed at your own
expense. If the current broadband is cancelled you WILL lose on
line services. The process for restoring the Horizon ADSL can
take weeks to complete and is dependant upon BT having capacity
in their exchange to re provide the service. We seem to be having
a spate of these recently and one particular branch was without on
line services for more than a month as a result of cancelling the
Horizon broadband service.
One final tip regarding BT. HSD or the Service Improvement team
may ask you to provide your BT account number — this is vital if we
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are arranging BT engineer visit both to the branch or the exchange
as they will not act without it for data protection reasons.
So you can see that on line service availability has high focus
within Post Office Ltd. You will shortly receive more information
concerning investment to improve on line service resilience within
branches, the first stage of which has just been implemented and
early results are being analysed. We will continue to work in
partnership with our suppliers to drive up branch availability and
will continue to push the bar higher as we are acutely aware that
this is what you need.
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