Commuter rail operating agreement

8. 
   IT SUPPORT AND MAINTENANCE SERVICES
   
   1. 
      General.
      

2. 
   Operator Service Center.
   
   1. 
      The Operator shall provide, operate and maintain a service center approved by the MBTA (the “Operator Service Center”), fully staffed by qualified Operator personnel. The Operator shall use the Operator Service Center to receive and respond (i) to MBTA system users' questions, complaints, reports of problems and Issues, inquiries, requests for Error Corrections and Error-related calls and all other applicable service requests, and (ii) to complaints, reports of problems, and other service requests of customers of the MBTA, submitted to the Operator in accordance with Section 26 (Customer Complaints) of Schedule 3.16 (Information Technology Requirements). Such service requests and other communications, identified in either subsection (i) or subsection (ii) immediately above, are each referred to as an “Incident Communication”. For purposes of clarification, and not limitation, the term Incident Communication expressly includes Customer Incident Communications (as that term is defined in Section 8.26 (Customer Complaints) of this Schedule 3.16 (Information Technology Requirements). The Operator shall field, manage and respond to Incident Communications received through the Operator Service Center, or entered into the Issue Tracking Portal, in accordance with applicable Service Levels and other requirements set out in this Section 8 (IT Support and Maintenance Services) of this Schedule 3.16 (Information Technology Requirements).
      
   2. 
      The Operator shall maintain operational hours for the Operator Service Center equivalent to the required operation of the MBTA transit system, which is defined as between 06:30 to 20:00 hours, 7 days a week (the “Operator Service Center Hours”). The Operator Service Center Hours may only be modified by written agreement of the parties. The Operator shall be responsible for staffing the Operator Service Center sufficiently to meet the applicable Service Levels and other requirements set out in this Section 8 (IT Support and Maintenance Services) of this Schedule 3.16 (Information Technology Requirements). The Operator shall also provide after-hours support for emergency issues that arise outside of the Service Center Hours, with a response time of not less than one (1) hour for any after-hours support issue.
      
   3. 
      The Operator shall utilize the Issue Tracking Portal for all Incident Communications received through the Operator Service Center. The Issue Tracking Portal shall be configured to generate Tickets automatically upon call and e-mail receipt and it is the Operator's responsibility to Acknowledge the Incident Communication received and address the underlying issue. For purposes of this Agreement, the term "Acknowledge" means assigning a severity level and initial issue description to the Ticket via the Issue Tracking Portal.
      
   4. 
      In the event of a failure of the Issue Tracking Portal or an event that renders the Issue Tracking Portal inaccessible, the Operator shall undertake operational procedures necessary to continue to operate and shall manually record, create and update Tickets until the Issue Tracking Portal has been restored.
      
   5. 
      The Operator shall implement a call recording system to record all phone calls to and from the Operator Service Center (the “Call Recording System”). The Call Recording System shall be configured to (i) time stamp recorded calls, and (ii) maintain copies of recorded calls preserved from deletion. The MBTA shall be entitled to access, listen and review all calls at any time via their own dedicated logins to the Call Recording System. The recordings shall be linked to the related Ticket and, where possible, be maintained per retention requirements set out in Section 3.5.1.5 (Ticket Retention) of this Schedule 3.16 (Information Technology Requirements). Notwithstanding anything to the contrary, the Operator shall comply with all applicable laws relating to the Call Recording System.
      
   6. 
      The Operator shall provide and maintain an interactive voice response system (the “IVR System”) for use with the Operator Service Center, and such IVR System shall direct callers to the appropriate service area of the Operator Service Center.
      
   7. 
      In addition to the other requirements set out in this Section 8.2 (Operator Service Center) of this Schedule 3.16 (Information Technology Requirements) and elsewhere in the Agreement, the Operator shall ensure that the Operator Service Center meets the requirements set out in Appendix 8 (Operator Service Center Requirements) to this Schedule 3.16 (Information Technology Requirements).
      
3. 
   Confirmation; Tracking.
   

4. 
   Problem Inquiries; Responses.
   

5. 
   MBTA Assistance; MBTA Efforts.
   

6. 
   Error Corrections.
   

7. 
   Assigning Priority.
   

8. 
   Analysis; Reporting.
   

9. 
   Acknowledgment and Resolution Times.
   

10. 
    Closure of Issues.
    

11. 
    Root Cause Analysis.
    
    1. 
       In the event of a service disruption, critical failure, physical injury, security breach, Severity 1 incident, Severity 2 incident or otherwise at the direction of the MBTA (each, an “Urgent Event”), the Operator shall perform a root cause analysis (each, a “Root Cause Analysis”) and mitigation plan effort, as provided below (each, a “Mitigation Plan”). The Operator shall immediately notify the MBTA of the occurrence of an Urgent Event via personal calls and e-mail to designated MBTA contacts, and the Operator shall create a Ticket through the Issue Tracking Portal. The Root Cause Analysis and Mitigation Plan shall contain, at a minimum, the following information: (i) the event being analyzed; (ii) the reason for the analysis; (iii) the scope of the event and its impact; (iv) the damage and operations impact analysis; (v) method of exploitation or cause of the event; (vi) the impact on future operations and schedules; (vii) analysis of fundamental causes of the failure(s) that resulted in the event; (viii) a mitigation strategy to prevent the issue from reoccurring, including immediate actions and stop gap measures; and (ix) a permanent solution and remediation plan to address the fundamental and root cause of the issue, which shall be provided to the MBTA for approval within one (1) day of completion of the Root Cause Analysis.
       
    2. 
       The Operator shall initiate the Root Cause Analysis and Mitigation Plan immediately upon the occurrence of an Urgent Event and the Root Cause Analysis and Mitigation Plan shall be a priority for the Operator. The Operator shall brief the MBTA within twelve (12) hours if the Urgent Event is a Severity 1 or 2 incident, and the MBTA shall dictate the subsequent resolution schedule. The Operator shall identify and implement preliminary actions and stopgap measures within three (3) days of the event. Permanent remediation measures identified in the Mitigation Plan shall be submitted to the MBTA no later than seventy-two (72) hours after completion of the Root Cause Analysis, and commenced by the Operator upon approval from the MBTA.
       
12. 
    Updates.
    

13. 
    Updates; Costs.
    

14. 
    Support for Prior Versions.
    

15. 
    No Sunsets.
    

16. 
    Revised Operator Documentation.
    

17. 
    Integration.
    

18. 
    Regulatory Changes.
    

19. 
    Migration of Commuter Rail Data Center.
    

20. 
    Lifecycle Management.
    

21. 
    Inventory; Operator-Conducted IT Audits.
    

22. 
    Protection of Personal Information.
    

23. 
    Emergency Access Provisions.
    

24. 
    Maintenance of MBTA Internal IT Environment; Operator Access.
    

25. 
    Quality Assurance.
    
    1. 
       Quality Assurance Procedures.
       

2. 
   Operator QA Responsibilities; QA Documentation.
   

3. 
   Qualifications.
   

4. 
   Quality Assurance Requirements.
   

The Operator shall be obligated to perform all internal QA procedures related to the Commuter Rail IT Environment and provide good and sufficient Documentation setting out the process and results of such quality assurance procedures to the MBTA. Such internal procedures shall include, but not be limited to, independent peer review by subject matter experts of the Project and impacted portions of the Commuter Rail IT Environment. For the avoidance of doubt, any QA procedures conducted in connection with a Project that identify a revision to an existing Service Level Agreement shall be identified and notice shall be provided to the IT Change Control Board in accordance with Section 12 (Change Control and Configuration Management) of this Schedule 3.16 (Information Technology Requirements).

5. 
   Quality Control Program
   

1. 
   A description of the Operator quality control system, which shall cover: (i) all services; (ii) specify work to be inspected on either a scheduled or unscheduled basis; (iii) frequency; and (iv) describe how inspections are to be conducted;
   
2. 
   The name(s) and qualifications of individual(s) responsible for performing quality control inspections and the extent of their authority;
   
3. 
   A description of the methods used to record the quality control inspection and corrective actions taken;
   
4. 
   A description of the methods used for identifying and preventing defects in the quality of service performed; and
   
5. 
   The approach for filling vacancies in a timely manner, providing qualified personnel and maintaining an ongoing training program to ensure that Operator employees acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for new or emerging technology, managing changes in workload requirements and providing timely and accurate invoices.
   

6. 
   MBTA Review of Operator Quality Assurance Obligations.
   

26. 
    Customer Complaints.
    

1. 
   The MBTA Service Center will receive Customer Incident Communications through its customer service center. The MBTA will enter such Customer Incident Communications in the Issue Tracker Portal and, upon issuance of the associated ticket, the Operator shall be responsible for responding to and resolving the Customer Incident Communication in accordance with applicable Service Levels.
   
2. 
   Customers shall be able to enter Customer Incident Communications on an MBTA website page (or pages) linked to the Customer Complaint Website specified in Section 27 (Customer Complaint Website). The Operator shall be responsible for creating and maintaining such link, and all requite interfaces to the MBTA Internal IT Environment for such purposes. Upon receipt of the Customer Incident Communication via the Customer Complaint Website, the Customer Incident Communication shall be entered into the Issue Tracking Portal in the manner set out in Section 27 (Customer Complaint Website). Upon receipt of the Customer Incident Communication via the Customer Complaint Website, the Operator shall be responsible for responding to and resolving the Customer Incident Communication in accordance with applicable Service Levels.
   
3. 
   The Operator receives Customer Incident Communications directly from Customers through any channel not otherwise described above. The Operator shall enter such Customer Incident Communications into the Issue Tracker Portal and, upon issuance of the associated ticket, the Operator shall be responsible for responding to and resolving the Customer Incident Communication in accordance with applicable Service Levels.
   
1. 
   Customer Complaint Website.
   

28. 
    Maintenance Contracts.
    

9. 
   IT TRAINING SERVICES.
   
   1. 
      Overview of IT Training Services.
      

2. 
   Training of the MBTA by the Operator.
   

3. 
   Operator Use of Training Provided by the MBTA.
   

4. 
   Relevant Baseline Software; Operator Training Obligations.
   

10. 
    INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.
    

11. 
    IT SECURITY.
    

12. 
    SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS AND SERVICE CREDITS.
    

13. 
    MBTA MONITORING AND OVERSIGHT OF THE COMMUTER RAIL IT ENVIRONMENT.
    
    1. 
       Commuter Rail IT Environment Information Gathering and Assessment Methodology.
       

2. 
   Commuter Rail IT Environment Monitoring Oversight.
   

1. 
   Establishing secure channels between the Network Operations Center (the “NOC”) and the MBTA, within in-scope environment elements only, to deliver managed infrastructure services using managed, end-to-end, IP Security (IPSec) encrypted VPNs or hardware-based stateful inspection firewalls.
   
2. 
   Maintaining contractual responsibilities for Operator-managed network capabilities.
   
3. 
   Maintaining network failover capabilities in the event of loss of connectivity.
   
4. 
   Providing bandwidth sufficient to perform the environment management services at agreed upon Service Levels.
   
5. 
   Providing event-management and continuous monitoring of all components within the Commuter Rail IT Environment based on predefined parameters and thresholds and feeding of events into fault management tools.
   
6. 
   Monitoring systems across all components of the Commuter Rail IT Environment including identifying unauthorized to the network and reporting outages via the management tool set.
   
7. 
   Providing event-correlation for fault managed devices and mapping of the relationship for multiple identified events.
   
8. 
   Providing engineering support at agreed levels for addressing, mediating and managing critical hardware and software issues.
   
9. 
   Maintaining and providing network documentation for the Commuter Rail IT Environment and participating with the MBTA in maintaining overall network documentation.
   
10. 
    Maintaining and supporting network components within the Commuter Rail IT Environment including: (i) supporting network and server software required and provided protocols and security techniques as well as standard data access and transport techniques; (ii) providing hardware maintenance for environment servers, remote routers, operating system, database, middleware and application software products and ancillary components as required operating the systems; (iii) tracking, managing, communicating and supporting resolution of network exceptions; and (iv) evaluating and testing, in advance, network, hardware and interface equipment including the configuration and installation of equipment that will be attached to, and will communicate over, the MBTA network.
    
11. 
    Upon the MBTA review and approval, supporting the provision of connectivity to the Commuter Rail Services and third party agency facilities and systems or other external networks.
    
12. 
    Developing acceptance procedures for installation and changes to the network, and for verifying restoration of availability following problems with network circuits or equipment, all in compliance with ITIL, other applicable standards and best industry practices.
    
13. 
    In consultation with the MBTA, and as set forth in applicable SOWs, developing and providing reports on the status of the Commuter Rail IT Environment and related networks.
    
1. 
   MBTA ACCESS TO COMMUTER RAIL IT ENVIRONMENT.
   

The MBTA shall have the access rights and abilities to log into any non-excluded system any time it desires outside of a scheduled and approved downtime. The MBTA shall be entitled to utilize this access for any reason including, but not limited to, performing audits and inspections of the systems. The MBTA will not manage, trouble shoot, or operate the systems in any way. To ensure that all parties are only performing their functions, the systems shall enable logging of user access and actions. The logs shall not be modified or changed in any way once the system creates them. The Operator shall come to an agreement with the MBTA during the IPRs to develop a log purge policy for these access logs.

15. 
    AUDITS OF IT DATA AND RECORDS BY THE MBTA.
    

1. 
   Inventory and Audit of Commuter Rail IT Environment by the MBTA.
   

16. 
    IT TRANSITION SUPPORT.
    
    1. 
       General.
       

2. 
   IT Close-of-Contract Transition Services Process.
   

3. 
   Full Cooperation and Information.
   

4. 
   No Interruption or Adverse Impact.
   

5. 
   Third Party Authorizations.
   

6. 
   Transfer of Subcontracts, Leases, Licenses and Agreements.
   

7. 
   Delivery of Documentation.
   

8. 
   Preparation for IT Close-of-Contract Transition Services; Complete Documentation.
   

9. 
   Facilitating Work with the MBTA and MBTA Vendors.
   

10. 
    All Necessary Cooperation and Actions.