Hilary Stewart
Audit Manager
National Audit Team
Post Office Counters Ltd
Soresby Street
CHESTERFIELD
S49 IPF
234 June 1998
Dear Hilary,
AUDIT DATA RETRIEVAL SCENARIOS
You will recall that the subject of audit data retrieval scenarios has been raised at
the last two Panel meetings and on both occasions we have struggled to
understand exactly what it was that we were trying to define. It is becoming
clear, as the design for the audit solution emerges, that there is a need for POCL
(and BA) to provide some guidance to Pathway as to the nature of the retrieval
requests that they might want in the future.
This is not easy.
Para 9.1 of the Audit Data Retrieval Requirements document establishes a format
framework of likely TMS based requests and 11.4 the potential date spread.
What is needed now is more detail of the <events> that might be of interest. By
<event> I have in mind ‘a NINO’, ‘a beneficiary’, ‘a PUN’ or something similar.
Thus the frame example given in Para 9.1 could be expanded to :
Between <this date> and <that date>
and for <all outlets>
show all instances of <this NINO>, or
Between <this date> and <that date>
and for <this outlet>
show all instances of <payment authorisations>, or
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Between <this date> and <that date>
and for <this group of outlets>
show all instances of <unencashed payments>.
The above are examples only and show the type of requests that I believe will
form the basis of audit data retrievals. Do they accord with your current
thinking?
The date spread issue is to do with the volume of, particularly, TMS data that has
to be retrieved from the audit archives and made available for the
extraction/selection tool. Clearly the bigger the date spread the larger the
volume and this will be exacerbated if there is a broad outlet selection associated
with it. Current thinking (Para 11.4) has identified anything from 3 days to 3
months or even longer. Can we get greater precision into this?
Finally, my initial feeling is that BA’s primary search key is going to be NINO
whereas POCL’s will be Outlet. Can you confirm that?
Ihave asked Frank Womack, the audit archive designer, to give us a short
presentation on the emerging design at our next meeting on the 9" July. I want to
make best use of his time on the day and would like to progress this matter
during that session.
Yours sincerely,
Jan Holmes
Pathway Audit Manager
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