MINUTES OF THE WEEKLY ABC CONFERENCE CALL

December 17, 2001

Attendees

Jim Grahn USPS John Kelley - USPS

Jean Parris USPS
John South USPS
Joe Hurley USPS
Bill Green - USPS
Cathy Ruth - USPS
Doug Watson - USPS
Linda Threatt - USPS
Bill Knecht - JMCS
Anna Karneh JMCS

The ABC project plan was reviewed to get an updated status of the tasks. Jean questioned the status of the
Waiver for Section 508 Compliance task. Jim Grahn will submit the request for the waiver, on the basis
that Business Objects and Metify are COTS products and the cost of modifying them to be Section 508
compliant would be cost prohibitive.

The requirement for having Logon IDs for Business Objects was discussed. Jean asked if Postal security
requirements make it necessary to have a Logon ID. Jim said one is required because the ABC data is
classified as sensitive. But the full security is required only when the Business Objects reports are in
production. During development, we can establish a universal Logon ID that everyone can use to view the
reports. When the reports go into production, users will be required to submit 1357s to obtain their own
unique Logon IDs.

Based on the projections for rolling out TACS, all ABC sites should be up by June 14. Presently, 200
Finance Numbers are loaded into ABC.

Next, the project plan for the ABC reports, created by John South, was reviewed. The schedule for
producing the reports has been substantially revised. The first 5 reports are still due on December 28, but
the next 5 reports are now due on February 15 and the third 5 reports have been moved into Phase 2. The
reason for stretching out the schedule is that the ABC team felt that they needed more time to incorporate
feedback into the first reports before proceeding with the next reports.

Bill Knecht pointed out that Phase 1 is funded for two full time people through January 31, so extending
the delivery dates beyond that point could result in a cost overrun. Joe Hurley said that it wouldnt if the
level of effort did not change. Bill said that the original budget was prepared based on the assumption that
acceptance testing involved only one round of user review and feedback, performed very quickly. The
new schedule goes beyond that, so the level of effort involved might increase.
The ABC team is going to meet on December 18 to decide what the next 5 reports will be. Then Bill
Green and John Kelley will begin preparing specifications for those reports in the same format as the ones
they prepared for reports 1-5.

Jim Grahn is going to submit a contract modification to Peter Tuttle this week. First, he is going to get the
SOW from Peter Tuttle. Then he will give the SOW to Jean and ask the ABC team to change the wording
to be consistent with the new ABC reporting project plan. Then Jim will submit the new SOW to Peter
Tuttle. Jim will copy JMCS on all correspondence.

Linda Threatt reviewed a list of issues that came out of the report formatting meeting held on December
13. One issue involved the display of Finance Numbers should the 6 digit number (currently in use at
Postal) or 10 digit number (intended for future use) be displayed in the reports? The team decided to
display only the 6 digit number in an nn-nnnn format, but to reserve space on the reports for displaying all
10 digits in an nn-nnnn-nnnn format.

Another issue is the ability to load data from Business Objects reports into Excel. That is a requirement.
Currently it appears that canned reports cannot be downloaded into Excel because they are PDF reports.
JMCS will research a method for downloading reports into Excel. Formatting does not have to be
downloaded, only the data.

The final issue discussed was whether or not users will have to have any Business Objects software
loaded on their desktop. Bill Knecht said that he did not think it was necessary, but he would confirm with
Anna Karneh.