UK Porting - Chairman’s Report #3
Introduction
I am pleased to report that the project continues to progress well overall. There have been some significant hurdles identified, however, solutions are being sought or are available for the issues causing the hurdles. The engaged Members continue to work hard to achieve the project milestones. The Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) has been evaluated and five potential vendors have been selected to move to the next phase. The Request for Quotation (RFQ) (formerly known as Invitation to Negotiate & Request for Proposal) is in the final stages of preparation. To create the best quality document the RFQ issue date has been delayed slightly (target next week). After much discussion a Governance model and funding model have been tabled for the new commercial entity ‘PortCo’ and are in active Executive discussion.
The overall project status is AMBER due to the Governance model for ‘PortCo’ not yet being finally agreed and the RFQ running late and still not complete.
The overall programme however remains substantially on track even though some interim deliverables are later than the plan envisaged.
Progress Update
1. Governance
Governance activity has focussed on creating the governance for ‘PortCo’ and deciding which entity; ‘PortCo’ or the already established interim UKPorting, should issue the RFQ to vendors.
The Commercial Group has established a model for ‘PortCo’ governance after many weeks of work. The Commercial group believed that consensus on the approach had been achieved; however, a small group of fixed operators have been unable to accept the work already done and intend to put forward alternative governance proposals. This is very disappointing and needs to be resolved quickly as the majority of Executive Members believe that all the issues had been investigated and a reasonable outcome articulated.
The Executive has decided, for pragmatic reasons of timing and logistics, to issue the RFQ through UKPorting initially with clear guidance to the vendors that ‘PortCo’ will be the recipient of quotations.
2. Work Groups
a. Policy – The Policy group is currently working on capturing and reviewing the Inter-Operator Communications (IOC) business requirements.
b. Commercial – As outlined above, the major Commercial activity has been around the creation of the new commercial entity ‘PortCo’ and the governance needed to operate ‘PortCo’. In addition, major support and input is being made to the RFQ process – the amber status reflects the unresolved issue of the governance model still being debated by the Executive.
c. Programme Management – The Programme Work Group continue to enhance the granularity of the plan. A re-base-lined plan has been issued; a Change Request Process had been introduced and tested successfully; the Sharepoint DMS system to enable structured document management was launched last week. The Programme Management WG were pulling together a resource plan to further identify key points where resources will be required to give WGs time to react to the increasing workload.
d. Procurement – The current focus and work is mainly on the RFQ production and preparing this for distribution. An updated and revised draft was issued for comments on 13 th May (Version 2.6) – target date for issue is now week beginning 26 th May. A combined Technical/Procurement Workgroup took place on 15 th May to work through the technical sections in order to answer outstanding issues on the requirements and how these should be presented.
e. Technical – The Technical WG are developing the requirements for the Centralised Data Base (CDB) population and migration for the porting process as well as direct routing. They are also putting considerable input into the RFQ review and input.
A workshop was held to agree preferred options for CDB population of mobile numbers and the mobile porting process switchover from donor to recipient led. Another workshop was held to agree a mechanism for CDB population of fixed numbers and ongoing maintenance thereof.
Considerable effort is being expended on developing the RFQ.
f. Business Processes – The Business Process WG are working on the high level process description for mobile and fixed number porting which is due for completion at the end of May. This includes the key process features such as Process Flow; Types of Account; Authorisation and Validation data; Porting Form; Porting hours of availability; SP addressing and routing and SIM Possession check.
I would like to thank the wide range of contributors we have working on the project. Given the aggressive timescales and complexity of the activities I am pleased with progress.
Peter McD. Black
Chairman UKPorting
Green means no issues have been identified that will impact the plan.
Amber means some issues have been identified that are being dealt with that could impact the plan if not resolved.
Red means issues have been identified that could impact the plan that no solution is yet available for.