23 June 2016: Update call 34
Update call for stakeholders
This document summarises the key issues discussed during the 34th Open Water update call.
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These are regular calls that are open to stakeholders in the Open Water Programme . The call
was held on 23rd June 2016 and was chaired by Adam Cooper, Ofwat. Also on the call was Ben
Jeffs (MOSL).
Update from Ofwat (Helen Robinson-Gordon)
Thanks for joining the call. My name is Helen Robinson-Gordon. Adam was not able to make the
call today as he had a clash with an Ofwat Board meeting. Ben will provide the MOSL update
following my piece.
Credit Terms
We published the consultation and responses are expected by 7 July. Thank you for your taking
some time to go through this important piece of work. The arrangements agreed here will be put
into the market codes and form the approach that the market will open with.
Readiness (Targeted Review)
Our Finance and Governance team have put out a questionnaire for the Targeted Review. The
period for response is very tight (4 July) and Adam noted on the last call this review is
complementary to other forms of assurance and does reflect Ofwat’s regulatory role. It shouldn’t be
confused with the Assurance Framework or MOSLs market entry work.
Self Supply
Ofwat’s approach to developing the self-supply licence is being discussed today at the Board
meeting. We have no expectation of this being a difficult area and envisage this being a variation to
the WSSL.
The follow up to the Instrument of Appointment workshop will be a soft consultation soon (this may
have gone out Wednesday) to pull together the comments from the discussion and to provide
drafting for some conditions as requested by attendees.
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At the current stage of the programme, these calls are intended for current suppliers, potential entrants and
relevant public bodies (for example, statutory representatives or regulators). We will make the notes from the
calls accessible to all on our website and will consider requests from other interested parties to join the call,
but please note these may not always be accommodated depending on the number of participants and the
subject of discussion.
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23 June 2016: Update call 34
RMOMG met yesterday and the key messages will be published soon. There was some good
discussion about the updated risk log and dashboard all of which link closely to the discussions on
the response to the independent review (still in development).
Open Water Communications
Last week, Claire Forbes, Ofwat’s Senior Director for Communications and myself, met with your
senior communications leads at a lunch kindly hosted by Water UK. The purpose of that meeting,
apart from introducing ourselves, was to talk through the expectations of the Open Water
programme, as far as communication and engagement for RMO is concerned and how, from a
strategic perspective, Ofwat sees customer engagement as a priority.
We talked about the RMO Comms Group members, what activities had so far been undertaken
and where the water companies felt they were in terms of their own engagement and
communication plans and activities.
There was a unanimous voice for closer working and support from the Open Water programme to
define what ‘good’ or ‘successful’ customer engagement looked like and how those outcomes
could be achieved. We agreed to share our draft communications plan with them and for them to
add in comments and activities so we could hold a single overarching plan.
We then went on to share with them our plan for a national above the line campaign to raise
awareness of the retail market opening and what that could mean to specific audience groups –
particularly SMEs and the charity sector.
The campaign, to run in early 2017, would be there to compliment any local marketing activity and
its aim would be to offer all eligible customers access to information to help them make an
informed choice. The cost would be borne by the water companies and new entrants.
Linked to this was a discussion about developing the Open water website to make it a site which is
seen as authoritative, informative and a trusted source of reliable information. This is already
underway and we will be sharing the updates at the second communications forum on the 28th
June.
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23 June 2016: Update call 34
Update from MOSL (Ben Jeffs)
RMOMG
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A number of items were covered at the Management group:
o New dashboard
o Clearly biggest area of risk, alongside MOSL and CMOS readiness, is participant
readiness for the start of the shadow market
o Self-assessment reporting, which was presented to last month’s WRG
Assurance group
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The Defra-led Assurance group met this week. Two areas of advice:
 The need to be considering assurance and transitional activity beyond 3
April next year
 Importance of looking at contingency in the programme and identifying risks
that might get in the way of everyone being ready and everything being in
place and what action we can take early enough to navigate around them,
e.g. data protection
 The Assurance group is considering these issues under Richard McDonald’s
Chairmanship.
 There is a workshop between MOSL, Defra and Ofwat tomorrow (Friday 24
June) to start look at contingencies
Independent Review
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Due to be published within the next month, the programme partners will publish a letter in
response
Board meeting this week
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198 working days to go until Market Opening and 72 until shadow market operations.
Outstanding issues and delays in exiting SIT, albeit the system is available and we have
started training, uploading data, etc.
In response, MOSL has re-escalated the programme to CGI at a global level (George
Schindler, COO):
o Defects blocking ability to complete System Integration Testing of the settlement
engine and start User Acceptance Testing
o High degree of confidence in the settlement engine itself. Very closely involved in
the factory acceptance testing using our reference model to test the engine. The
issue is now integrating the engine being built by Bridgeall with CGI’s core CMOS
system.
o UAT has started on the LVI and HVI interfaces and that continues to progress well
against the revised schedule of delivery before the end of July
Management actions:
o Samir Rahim, MOSL’s IT Director, is currently based in Groningen to work closely
o
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with the team and will be there until the ‘closeout’ of UAT testing at the end of July
MOSL has taken all UAT resources and relocated those teams across to Groningen
to work alongside developers of the system; the database specialists and testers
23 June 2016: Update call 34
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MOSL has relocated the settlement test team from Poland to Groningen to reduce
cycle time to meet deadline end of July with the functionality participants needs to
do market entry assurance testing in Aug/Sept and test processes end-to-end
UAT volunteers have given MOSL the ability to run testing on their data sets for
revenue assurance purposes, so we know the system gives a known quality
outcome at the end of July
Progressing well as a result of the measures that are in place. MOSL will be in a
better position next week to say with confidence whether 31 July (exiting UAT) is
still on track.
MOSL is increasing its use of videoconferencing and plans to introduce
audio/video/webex facilities for some meetings to make them more convenient,
particularly for smaller members.
Software deployments are being increased from once a week to three in order to
rapidly iterate the development and defect-fixing process in order to minmise the
number of tests being blocked and increase confidence in the end of July deadline.
Processing times have reduced from a 3 day turnaround (initially) to four hours.
Interface training sessions have been completed for two retail and two wholesale
companies. We have also trained 65 delegates from 26 market participants
Shadow market workshop
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Shadow market workshop was held this week to consider what is left to do ahead of
October
Currently in data iteration cycle two, which is going well in data protection terms, is allowing
companies to start send unmasked data. One company has loaded whole data set to 99%
success.
MOSL remains committed to working with participants to ensuring everything in place to
have the largest number of participants in market from start and as much of their data as
possible.
Bi-laterals working group
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Working group met this week and is due to publish its bilaterals specification this week,
which we’ve agreed with the participants that proposed it
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Proposal is that it’s a voluntary scheme and that over time we look at how the market
moves towards it possibly being a universal standard. Some MPs have invested in portal
tech, bilateral interfaces, etc, so we believe it’s only fair that this is done over time.
Thanks to everyone for input; we have tried to incorporate all of the 250 comments in and
75% agreed with only a handful rejected.
If you have any changes going forward please let us know and we’ll seek to ensure that
there is the right level of consultation with all of the current parties that have signed up to
them.
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Trade effluent meeting
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The first trade effluent meeting was held and another one is planned on 15 July. MOSL
stepping forward and facilitating industry discussions on topics that are important to our
members.
MOSL is mindful though that this is a market that needs to evolve, but that it has a
legitimate role to play to help facilitate discussions to help resolve shared issues.
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ICP meeting
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At the recent ICP meeting 7 change proposals were discussed of which 3 were
recommended by ICP: WRC35, 36, 37, but 38 was rejected and WRC03 for retail exit sent
for consultation. Please see the web site for more information.
Change
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In order to close out the system we’ve issued our release plan that sets out a couple of
things:
o Continue to iterate the system in terms of closing out defects and delivering scope
of CMOS as its’ currently defined in order to accept the system
o Planning releases in the shadow market which will incorporate the final changes
that have already been agreed by the ICP and signed off by Ofwat not yet in the
current baseline. Also planning release just prior to the start of the live market
Not a huge scope for making major systems ahead of live market. The shadow market is
for closing down and ‘bedding in’ the systems and create stability in the database. We’ll
consider the changes considered by Ofwat to be urgent or critical by the market, but
obviously we need to move toward more planned approach
MOSL approach is that we’re ‘freezing’ the baseline that we’re currently working to, to the
changes that have already been agreed. The release plan sets out how well incorporate
that into system releases.
Potential changes will still be discussed. It will be up to companies to make representation
to Ofwat on urgency but in order to give confidence that systems and database stable we
need to be firm on changes being incorporated into pre-market baseline
Data protection
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We have now received the privacy impact draft assessment from DAC Beachcroft
Also looking at and have in design the environment changes to the member participant
sandpit (MPS) that allow us to put in place the same controls that are in the data validation
sandpit (DVS) where participants can test end to end processes. We are looking at costs
and how quickly we can change that environment. We hope to give update/thoughts next
week and will ask the industry for comment on our proposals
Pleased that work done with David Strang (Water UK) is helping to get unmasked data into
the system.
Cyber security
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We are grateful to Steve Tripier (Anglian Water) for carrying out a review of our cyber
security. We are currently going through his recommendations
In broad terms the report demonstrates a high degree of confidence in CMOS but
recommends that we put some policies in place to deal with employee issues around
dealing with CMOS. Overall we are broadly satisfied with the contract arrangements we
have in place with CGI for protecting data.
The report also made some suggestions for potential code changes in order to require
retailers to sign up to contracts to protect data on behalf of wholesalers that are providing it.
23 June 2016: Update call 34
Questions on notice
No questions were held on notice.
Questions
Phillip Dixon (Thames Water) asked for clarification whether the targeted review was due to begin
on 4th or 8th July. Helen to confirm.
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