POL00028564
POL00028564
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.—) 28 ocr 1999
22
Electronic memo
To Chris French/POSTOFFICE@POSTOFFICE
cc Naresh Mohindra/POSTOFFICE@POSTOFFICE, Keith K
Baines/POCL/POSTOFFICE@POSTOFFICE, Ruth
Holleran/POCL/POSTOFFICE@POSTOFFICE, Mark
Stocks/POSTOFFICE@POSTOFFICE, Andrew
‘Simpkins/POSTOFFICE@POSTOFFICE, Jeremy
Folkes/ITS/POSG/POSTOFFICE@POSTOFFICE
Hard Copy To
Hard Copy cc
From John Meagher/POCL/POSTOFFICE
Date 28/10/99 16:08
Subject Reference Data
Chris
At yesterday's Delivery Meting the Pathway progress report identified a number of reference
data concerns with respect to:
e "the quality of Reference Data supplied by POCL and the errors being made"
e "the ability of the RDS system to produce incremental data for SIP16"
e@ "the total number of PinICLs outstanding on POCL"
We agreed at the meeting to action the appropriate people to progress these individual
concerns, however, Pathway advised that, in addition to the above, they had a major concern
with a fundamental aspect of the reference data design and their ability to support it. They
indicated that this concern if not addressed could become rollout limiting.
I agreed to discuss this with Pathway outside the meeting with a view to understanding and
addressing their concern. I met with Steve Muchow, Mike Coombs and John Dicks and noted
the following in addition to the concerns above:
e@ Pathway are concerned with POCL not maintaining the agreed lead-times between receipt of
data (notification of change) and activation of data (implementation of change).
e@ Pathway are waiting for a Reference Data business rules document which is in development
by Geoff Darby and would welcome the earliest delivery of the document.
e@ However, the most significant issue for Pathway is that the current design (agreed by all)
for the provision of data changes from Post Office to Pathway results in the delivery of large
volumes of data which contain no actual change for Pathway.
Again, I have ensured that the first two bullets above are being pursued but the third bullet is
considerably more important. My enquiries to-date suggest that Pathway have recently become
aware through the empirical evidence of live running that the volume of reference data changes
is far greater that they anticipated and possibly greater than they have the ability to manage. I
have asked Mike Coombs to document the exact problems that Pathway are experiencing and
the associated risks they are facing. On receipt of this information I will convene a session to
explore the options available.
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Whilst clearly there is risk here for all, my-inclination is to position this as follows: The Post
Office are complying with the agreed design. Pathway have discovered that they may have
undersized their system. If our investigations confirm these two assertions then either Pathway
can increase the size of their system and/or redesign how they process received data or POCL
can redesign and implement a change to our Reference Data system which will reduce the
volume of non applicable data that is passed to Pathway. Given that the design oversight
would appear to be on Pathway's side, we would probably suggest that Pathway raise a change
request which we could impact for cost and time
I will keep you informed.
John