Technology
1. The technical problems La Plaza has experienced the past 4 - 6 weeks
were caused by power outages due to stormy weather, inadequate coveage by
technical staff, and system problems with ANS, our Internet provider. To
ensure La Plaza has as close as possible 24/7 coverage of the system, the
following technical coverage procedures have been established:
a. Customer Reports
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During business hours, customer reports will be handled by the
Help Desk.
After business hours and on weekends, customer reports will be
directed to the System Problem Report (SPR) voice-mail box. To be most
helpful, customers will be asked to leave a message with the answers to as
many of the following questions as possible:
1) date and time you are calling
2) are you dialing into Taos, Questa, or Penasco
3) what error messages are you receiving
4) does your modem connect to a La Plaza modem
5) can you login using your username and password
6) can you get your email
7) can you browse the Internet
b. Technical Monitoring Procedures
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Technical staff members will have system Monitoring, Maintenance,
and Reporting (MMR) responsibilities. These responsibilities will be
rotated among the technical staff, usually on a weekly basis, excepting
vacations, holidays, etc... When on MMR duty (upon approval by the ED),
the staff member will either reduce the normal work week office hours by
20, or the staff member will be compensated an additional 20 hours for
that work week. (The additional cost for the technical monitoring is
approximately $3500. These dollars pay for the additional coverage of 280
hours in the remaining months of 1998.)
Monitoring procedures: ( specific tests will not be specified for
security reasons)
1) check the System Problem Report (SPR) voice-mail and
investigate relevant problems
2) dial-in the Taos digital
3) DNS test
4) Connectivity test
5) Mail server test
6) Mail Queue test
7) WWW Test
8) System Activity tests
Maintenace procedures:
1) problems detected via Monitoring will be investigated and
resolved via remote access if possible.
2) problems which require a site visit (Taos) will be resolved, if
detected prior to
10 PM; otherwise, the problem will be resolved no later than 8:00 AM the
next day.
Reporting procedures:
1) problems will be reported to customers viathe SPR voice-mail
a. Nature of the problem
b. Expected time of resolution, if known
2) problems will be reported to customers via e-mail if e-mail and
connectivity are accessible
a. Nature of problem
b. Expected time of resolution, if known
MMR Schedule Guidelines:
Monday - Friday: 8AM, 8PM, 10PM
Saturday and Sunday: 8AM, 12PM, 4PM, 8PM, 10PM
Since implementing the procedures, the system has been monitored and only
one incident has required staff maintenance after hours. The problem was
resolved and the users were notified withing 8 hours of the resolution.
2. I met with Jeffery Morgan, Presbyterian Medical Services Foundation
Director, on July 15 and discussed the request for donation to resolve the
Questa connectivity problems. See report sent to the Board via email on
July 22, 1998 with the connectivity costs for moving and installing the
server, personnel costs, and proposal for public access in Costilla. I
spoke with Mr. Morgan on July 28, 1998 and he was meeting with the PMS CEO
to discuss the proposal.
3. Questa Health Clinic Director, Gene Goetz, and I interviewed and hired
a Community Outreach Trainer to replace Ruby Garcia at the Questa Youth
Center. Renee Martinez started work on August 1 and has begun receiving
training from Loretta Suazo regarding curriculum for Internet classes and
facilitating the public access at the Youth Center. Renee is a full-time
student at UNM Taos, her class schedule allows for 16 hours at the Youth
Center and 4 hours at the Health Clinic. The public access schedule will
be 4 hours in the evening (M-T) and 4 hours on Friday at the Clinic.
4. I have been attending the Taos County Telecommunications Task Force
meetings the past several months and again on July 22, 1999. The Task
Force is working closely with USWest to develop a business case for USWest
to install Frame Relay service at the USWest Taos Central Office. USWest
states the Frame Relay will provide the availability of more advanced,
less expensive telecommunications data services in the Taos region.
USWest also states Frame Relay will significantly reduce the cost for
high-sped data lines and provide more dedicated circuits.
The Town of Taos has engaged Patrick Finn, VisionArt, Inc., to
develop the business plan. I received a request for a letter of support
for the Frame Relay installation. I am reluctant to send a letter as
there has been no engineering evaluation of the proposed Frame Relay by
USWest. The only contact with USWest is Patrick Finn and the Town
Manager, Gus Cordova, neither of whom are engineers. I do not know if
Frame Relay is the premium connectivity service for Taos County.
I am requesting knowledgeable Board members to attend the next Task
Force meeting and evaluate the proposal. I inquired with Gus Cordova, if
there could be a Task Force meeting without USWest so discussion could be
held without the telecoms input. Mr. Cordova stated such a meeting could
be help; however, he has not scheduled the meeting.
Community Development/Outreach
1. Barb Hau and I met with staff from American Medical Institute and the
UNM Albuquerque Cancer Research Dept. to discuss the project being
submitted to the National Cancer Institute for the cancer research in
Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. AMC will develop the RFP and
submit for approval. La Plaza will be a collaborative agency by providing
the use of the free public access sites in Taos, Questa, and Penasco for
the training and testing of the research curriculum.
The project will test using web-based communications to prevent and
intervene with cancer using diet information. The targeted population is
adults in rural communities.
La Plaza will realize dollars for personnel, office space, and
Community Outreach trainers. We will request dollars for technology in
years 3 and 4 of the 4 year project.
2. "Wacky for the Web" computer camp is being held at La Plaza, 8-10 - 14
for 6 kids, ages 12 - 14. Nancy Montano and Loretta Suazo have developed
5 days of training in Internet services, web design, digital camera, and
research for school projects.
Monthly Statistics:
1. Dial-in stats for July,98
Total # Users: 1727
Total # dial-in: 1279 (74% of total users)
Penasco # Users: 57
Peansco # Sessions: 2495
Questa # Users: 93
Questa # Sessions: 3371
Taos # Users: 1162
Taos # Sessions: 61438
Taos Total Time: 21936.24 hours
2. Classes offered at La Plaza
Easy Web Page Design - 7 attendees
HTML - 4 attendees
Public Orientation - 8
Intro to Email - 8
Intro to WWW - 6
Total - 33 attendees
3. Public Access Users:
La Plaza 935 users
San Cristobal 25 users
Penasco 302 users
Questa no data submitted
4. New Registrations for July
Primary Accounts - 91
Secondary Accts - 14
Reactivated Acct - 10
Scholarship Acct - 1
Staff accts - 2
Total 118
5. Closed Accounts in July
10 indicated they were moving
2 indicated not using
2 poor service/unable to access
1 can't afford
20 no reason given
40 due to past due balances of 50 days
75 total
6. Deleted Accounts Reactivated Acct
August 40
July 41 8
June 33 5
May 64 14
April 50 9
7. Past Due Notices
sent 91
collected 43
deleted 40
other 6
8. User Fees
Projection for July $19000
Collected in July $20671.70
Financial Report
To be mailed under separate cover to Board members.
Judith Pepper, Executive Director, La Plaza Telecommunity