Transition Plan

SDWIS Prime

AbstractThis document describes the plan for transitioning the [drinking water primacy name] from

their legacy systems and business processes to SDWIS Prime.

[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

Revision HistoryVersion Date Description of Change Author

Use the Revision History table to show how the transition plan has changed over time.

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Template Instructions

The SDWIS Prime Transition Plan document is a tool to assist your drinking water primacy agency in developing a plan for migrating from SDWIS State (or some other legacy system) to SDWIS Prime. There is a separate collection of transition materials for the Compliance Monitoring Data Portal (CMDP) located in the CMDP Help Center at: https://cmdp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/207227028-Getting-Started-with-CMDP.

Items in normal text under each section are suggested items to include in the transition plan that the primacy agency transition team should modify as needed to fit the circumstances.

Items shown in italic text is informational and should be removed before finalizing the transition plan (such as these template instructions).

Replace [items shown between brackets] with the indicated values.

This plan template is geared for transitioning from SDWIS State to SDWIS Prime.

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Table of ContentsOverview.....................................................................................................................................................5

Scope of Transition......................................................................................................................................5

Documentation........................................................................................................................................5

Relationships to Other Applications and Systems.......................................................................................6

Transition Strategy......................................................................................................................................6

Contractor Assistance..............................................................................................................................7

Transition Team Information & Management Controls...............................................................................7

Transition Schedule, Tasks and Activities....................................................................................................8

Operations and Support Requirements.......................................................................................................9

Operations Support.................................................................................................................................9

User Support............................................................................................................................................9

Other Resources Supporting SDWIS Prime..............................................................................................9

System Service Level Agreement (SLA)....................................................................................................9

Acceptance Criteria...................................................................................................................................10

Reporting Procedures................................................................................................................................10

Risks and Opportunities.............................................................................................................................10

Constraints................................................................................................................................................11

Transition Impacts.....................................................................................................................................11

Internal Impacts.....................................................................................................................................11

External Impacts....................................................................................................................................12

Plan Approval............................................................................................................................................13

Appendix A - Work Breakdown Structure..................................................................................................14

Appendix B – SDWIS Prime Technical Description.....................................................................................22

Primacy Agency Installed Components..................................................................................................22

SDWIS Prime EPA Hosted Components.................................................................................................24

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Transition Plan SDWIS Prime[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

OverviewThe purpose of transition planning is to layout the tasks and activities to efficiently move the drinking water primacy agency from their legacy SDWIS State (or other compliance system) to SDWIS Prime. Transition planning also includes organizational change management activities to help ensure that SDWIS Prime users and stakeholders are prepared for the move and have the information and skills needed to effectively use the new system.

The transition plan includes a scope section with background information about the transition project and its relationship to other systems. Identified within the scope section is the transition team’s organization and responsibilities.

The transition plan should include deployment schedules, resource estimates, identification of special resources and staffing. The transition plan should also define management controls and reporting procedures, as well as the risks and contingencies. Special attention must be given to minimizing operational risks.

If your primacy agency is also transitioning to the Compliance Monitoring Data Portal (CMDP), be sure to include a reference to its transition plan. Because CMDP focuses on external stakeholders (laboratories and water systems), the communications requirements are different than transitioning to SDWIS Prime.

Scope of TransitionThe scope statement should describe the responsibilities of the SDWIS Prime transition team, to include:

Data Cleansing – Detecting and correcting (or removing) corrupt and/or inaccurate records. This assists with both the CMDP and Prime transitions. However, to reduce complexity, the SDWIS Prime team at EPA recommends handling CMDP transition as a separate effort from SDWIS Prime transition.

Migrating data from SDWIS State (or other legacy compliance system) to SDWIS Prime, Determining and setting SDWIS Prime system configuration, and Setting up and initiating stakeholder & end user education/communication.

DocumentationThe primacy agency will describe the location of their specific documentation pertinent to this effort. Include hyperlinks to documentation available from the web.

CMDP documentation is available on the CMDP Help Center knowledgebase at: https://cmdp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

SDWIS Prime documentation is available on the SDWIS Prime Help Center knowledgebase at: https://sdwis-prime.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

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Relationships to Other Applications and SystemsComplete the table below to describe systems exchanging data, and the nature of those data exchanges, with your primacy agency’s instance of SDWIS State (or other system). These systems are also referred to as “interfacing applications” in much of the SDWIS Prime documentation.

Enter the following information for each system listed in the table:

System Name Purpose Data In? (Y/N)

Data Out? (Y/N)

Name or acronym of interfacing system

Briefly describe the purpose of the data exchange between this system and your primacy agency’s instance of SDWIS State and the data exchanged.

Will data flow to this system from SDWIS Prime?

Will data from this system to SDWIS Prime?

The purpose of completing this section is to identify the systems that will exchange data with SDWIS State and that might also have to exchange data with SDWIS Prime. You should review the SDWIS Prime capabilities because there may be situations where the features included in SDWIS Prime could replace the interfacing system. When this situation occurs, your primacy agency may have an opportunity to decommission the interfacing application.

Transition StrategyIn this section, the primacy agency will describe the strategy to use to move to SDWIS Prime.

Transition strategies include:

Sequential/phased rollout, where your primacy agency first moves to CMDP and SDWIS Prime (or vice versa). When moving users to the system, the strategy is to divide the primacy agency or user population into logical, manageable segments and roll each system out on a schedule. This approach means that your primacy agency will run SDWIS State in parallel with SDWIS Prime, cutting over to SDWIS Prime and decommissioning SDWIS State after all users have moved to Prime.

Sequential/one-time rollout, where your primacy agency first moves to CMDP and then to SDWIS Prime (or vice versa) - and your primacy agency switches all its users over to SDWIS Prime at the same time.

Parallel, where your primacy agency moves to SDWIS Prime and CMDP at the same time.

Note that while SDWIS Prime and CMDP share the same data services, the transition strategies differ because of the stakeholders and end users. For CMDP, stakeholders and end users include the regulated

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Transition Plan SDWIS Prime[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

utilities and the laboratories providing sample results, who have different training needs than your primacy agency users.

For each strategy type above, compare the risks, constraints and opportunities of each.

Risk – an event that, if it occurs, could negatively affect the transition effort and throw your schedule off or add cost

Opportunity – an event or situation that positively affects the effort by reducing time and saving cost.

Constraint – a limitation or boundary placed on the effort. For example, the requirement that the transition to SDWIS Prime be completed in three months is a constraint.

Use the table below to compare the different transition strategies as they apply to your primacy agency.

Strategy Risks OpportunitiesSequential / phasedSequential / one-timeParallel

Contractor AssistanceReview your available in-house capabilities and evaluate if contractor support is needed for transition activities. Consider using the EPA’s Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) if your primacy agency does not have access to contractor support. Factor in 6-8 months to prepare the necessary documentation for receiving support under the EPA’s BPA. Contact the EPA SDWIS Prime transition manager for further information.

The structure of the transition team, which should include contractor resources, is described using the table shown in the next section.

Transition Team Information & Management ControlsIdentify who is ultimately responsible at the primacy agency for the transition effort. Describe their authority to ensure each task identified in the transition plan is successfully completed (on time, within budget with acceptable quality).

At a minimum, the primacy agency transition team should include:

Transition sponsor providing management/executive oversight of the effort Transition manager, who is the main contact between the primacy agency and USEPA Transition technical lead, such as a SDWIS State system administrator or other technologist

supporting the drinking water program Transition training lead to identify primacy agency specific training needs and for developing

training schedules

Other roles include:

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Exchange Network lead USEPA Regional liaison Specific roles identified by the primacy agency. For example, if your primacy agency delegates

the program to regions or counties, the transition team may include individuals from those jurisdictions as liaisons or coordinators.

List the names and contact information of the transition team by role in the table below.

Transition Role Role Description Name and Contact InformationTransition Sponsor Executive/manager overseeing the

transition effortTransition Manager Leads and responsible for planning,

executing and controlling the transition effort

Transition Technical Lead

Coordinates with primacy agency Information Technology organization

Provides technical support to the transition effort as needed

Transition Training Lead

Coordinates development of agency-specific training materials

Schedules training Evaluates training effectiveness and

provides feedback to EPA SDWIS Prime transition manager

Primacy Agency System Administrator

Manages primacy agency specific system configuration settings

Manages system functions controlled by the primacy agency.

Primacy Agency Security Administrator

Configures user security roles specific to the primacy agency’s needs.

Assigns Primacy Agency SDWIS Prime users to security roles

Other role defined by primacy agencyOther role defined by primacy agency

Transition Schedule, Tasks and ActivitiesDevelop a detailed transition schedule that fits with the selected transition strategy. The schedule should include:

BPA preparation activities, if using the EPA’s BPA type contract for technical assistance with transition

Interfacing application setup

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User training Data conversion Retirement of the existing system

If you are using contractor support, you may have the contractor participating in creating and refining the schedule. Use the example Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in the Appendix A - Work Breakdown Structure section as a starting point.

Operations and Support RequirementsOperations SupportAs SDWIS Prime is a centralized system, EPA contractors will provide operation support for the system. However, the primacy agency is responsible for providing operational support for interfacing applications and their data flows for exchanging data with SDWIS Prime. In the table below, for each interfacing application, list its data flows (if more than one identified in the Relationships to Other Applications and Systems section above) and the party/parties responsible for operating each one.

Interfacing Application Data Flow Responsible PartiesName of the interfacing application identified above

List each data flow if more than one

Name, organization, phone number, email address of responsible parties

User SupportUser support include:

Providing help desk support to assist users having issues using SDWIS Prime Delivering training to end users in system operation

Larger primacy agencies have the available staff they may want to provide Tier 1 Support for SDWIS Prime and have EPA provide Tier 2 using the BPA contract vehicle. Smaller primacy agencies may outsource all user support to the EPA through this means.

Describe in this section of the plan the user support process, which provides user support (primacy agency or EPA contractor) and how the user support process will be implemented.

Describe any addition operations and support requirements for your drinking water primacy agency.

Other Resources Supporting SDWIS PrimeIdentify any consumables (e.g., technology, supplies and materials) required to support SDWIS Prime. For example, your primacy agency may decide to repurpose its legacy SDWIS State database as the SDWIS Prime local data mart.

System Service Level Agreement (SLA)SDWIS Prime is a centralized system operated by the EPA and its hosting provider. The SLA for SDWIS Prime operations is between EPA and its hosting provider. The primacy agency may define other SLAs for operations and user support, such as operating a data exchange from an interfacing application,

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responding to tier 1 user issues and such as SLAs or memoranda of understanding (MOU) between the drinking water program and other state agencies. Reference these MOUs and SLAs in this section of the Transition Plan.

Acceptance CriteriaDescribe the evaluation factors that your primacy agency will use to determine that the primacy agency has successfully transition to SDWIS Prime. Example criteria are:

The system addresses all data quality issues All data are successfully loaded All users have received access to the system All users have received training in using the system Tier 1 and Tier 2 user support are up and running All data flows between SDWIS Prime and interfacing applications are successfully exchanging

dataDefine any additional acceptance criteria in this section of the plan. Consider arranging the acceptance criteria into a separate document with a sign-off block for the transition manager and transition sponsor. If you are using a contractor, consider using the acceptance criteria for evaluating if the contractor has met conditions for completing work.

Reporting ProceduresDescribe any additional reporting procedures in this section of the plan. For example, the transition team may have periodic status reporting requirements to primacy agency management and other stakeholders. Describe those requirements in this section.

Risks and OpportunitiesThe Transition Strategy section laid out the risks and opportunities of the various strategies for deploying SDWIS Prime to the primacy agency. In this section, document the risks and opportunities of the effort, or project, for executing this transition plan. Following good risk management processes, identify an individual (the risk owner in the table below) on the team responsible for monitoring each risk/opportunity. Provide a short description of the response should the risk or happen.

You may want to record this information in a separate risk register and reference the location of that register in this section.

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Transition Plan SDWIS Prime[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

Risk/Opportunity Probability of Occurrence

Impact Response Plan Risk Owner

Brief description of the risk/ opportunity

What is the chance of this happening? Use Low, Medium, High or other scale consistent with your organization’s approach to project risk management.

What is the effect on the transition effort if the risk/ opportunity happens? Impacts include personnel, financial, schedule, technical, other

What is the plan for dealing with this risk/ opportunity if it should occur?

Name and contact information of team member responsible for monitoring this risk/opportunity

Recommendation: The transition manager should keep this risk register updated for the duration of the transition effort. It’s also recommended that the transition manager track risks that have occurred in an issues log. (an issue is a risk that has happened.)

ConstraintsThe Transition Strategy section also alluded to constraints placed on the transition effort. As described above, a constraint is a limitation or restriction placed on the transition effort. Constraints will affect the transition schedule and cost, so they should be documented and considered when planning the transition.

Constraint Description SourceBriefly describe the constraint. For example, “the transition must be complete in three months”

Identify the source of the constraint – name, for example or rule/law. The reason for identifying the source is that it may be possible to negotiate modification to the constraint.

Transition ImpactsThis section describes how SDWIS Prime is expected to affect the primacy agency’s infrastructure, support staff and user community. Impacts are divided into those affecting the primacy agency staff (Internal) and those affecting external stakeholders (regulated entities and the public and other state agencies). These impacts may cause constraints on the transition effort (see the Constraints section above).

Internal ImpactsAddress technological, cultural and organizational impacts of SDWIS Prime.

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External ImpactsDescribe the impacts of SDWIS Prime on the primacy agency’s external stakeholders. These impacts may help drive your communications strategy.

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Transition Plan SDWIS Prime[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

Plan ApprovalInclude signature blocks for the primacy agency’s Transition Sponsor and Transition Manager and have these individuals sign this plan. Consider having the EPA SDWIS Prime transition manager sign as well.

Transition Sponsor Approval

Signature Date

Transition Manager Approval

Signature Date

EPA Transition Manager Signature Date

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Transition Plan SDWIS Prime[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

Appendix A - Work Breakdown StructureThis section of the transition plan template includes an example work breakdown structure (or “WBS”) the primacy agency can use to for transition planning. While the WBS is extensive, primacy agencies may modify the WBS to reflect their situation. Consider this WBS as a starting point for developing a project plan for transitioning the primacy agency to SDWIS Prime. This section can be removed from the transition plan document as it is presented in italic font.

WBS ID Title Description1 IT/IM1 Lifecycle Requirements1.1 Determine Agency IT/IM

RequirementsMeet with representatives of your primacy agency’s Information Technology (IT) support function and determine what the requirements are for moving from the legacy SDWIS State system to SDWIS Prime. Often, the IT support function will assign a liaison or coordinator to work with you to ensure that the SDWIS Prime transition effort addresses IT lifecycle requirements. There may be tasks and certain deliverables required by the IT/IM process that you must factor into your schedule and transition plan. Tailor this WBS to include those tasks. Consider requesting assistance from the IT support function or using contractor support for completing tasks (such as preparing certain documents) where your organization does not have the expertise. The appendices include a description of SDWIS Prime and diagrams for sharing with the IT support staff to help them understand the SDWIS Prime architecture.

2 Transition Planning2.1 Determine End State Decide if your primacy agency will:

Transition to SDWIS Prime Transition to SDWIS Prime and CMDP separately or as part of a combined effort

To reduce complexity, the SDWIS team at EPA recommends managing SDWIS Prime and CMDP transition as separate and distinct projects. In situations where the only user of CMDP is your state public health lab, you may want to consider the CMDP transition as a task under the SDWIS Prime transition effort.

1 Information Technology/Information Management

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Transition Plan SDWIS Prime[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

WBS ID Title Description2.2 Identify and Analyze Constraints Determine if there are any constraints on the project. Some examples include:

Agency IT/IM lifecycle requirements Cost constraints (available funding and when funding is available) Schedule constraints

2.3 Identify and Analyze Risks and Opportunities

Use the risk register above to identify and analyze risks and benefits to the transition effort and describe mitigation plans.

2.4 Determine Rollout Strategy Decide how your transition team will roll SDWIS Prime out to your users. Here are several factors that come into play when determining a rollout strategy”

How is your drinking water program organized? o Are there separate agencies for community and transient water

systems or is there a single primacy agency responsible for both types?o Is your drinking water program highly centralized or is it decentralized

and delegated to regions/counties/districts within your state? Can you identify users having a greater need for SDWIS Prime than other users?

For example, there may individuals that are part of or supporting your primacy agency that are not users of the current system, but should have access to SDWIS Prime. It’s possible that these users could be part of a subsequent “wave” of users adopting the system.

This is not an all-inclusive list of questions and this WBS will be updated with lessons learned from other transition efforts. The rollout strategy selected will be a major driver to scheduling the transition effort.

2.5 Determine Resource Requirements Review the selected rollout strategy and the other items in the WBS. Determine if your organization has the available staff to complete the work. If not, consider using the EPA’s Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) to obtain contractor assistance. WBS item X lists the work of preparing a task order to obtain contractor support under the EPA’s BPA. Should you decide to use a different contract vehicle, replace WBS item X with the work needed to obtain support under that contact since the activities and deadlines may be different than using EPA’s BPA.

2.6 Establish Transition Team Recruit and select transition team members. The Transition Team Information & Management Controls section includes suggestions for team composition. You may need to “phase in” team members over time. For example, if using the EPA BPA, you may not know which contractor will provide support until after EPA awards the task.

3 Transition Activities

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Transition Plan SDWIS Prime[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

WBS ID Title Description3.1 Data Configuration and Conversion3.1.2 Analyze Data Differences Use the documentation provided in the SDWIS Prime Help Center (https://sdwis-

prime.zendesk.com), review and understand the differences between how SDWIS Prime and SDWIS State handles data. Pay attention to:

Primacy agency defined data fields and the measures, flow rates and indicators used in SDWIS State and if they should be carried over to SDWIS Prime as custom fields2

Primacy agency defined values used in SDWIS State dropdown lists 3.1.3 Develop Data Conversion Strategy This is particularly important if the primacy agency doesn’t use SDWIS State or when

it’s used as a “pass through” between some other compliance system and SDWIS Fed. The EPA SDWIS Prime Transition Manager will have a standard data conversion strategy document for primacy agencies using SDWIS State for their compliance system. “SDWIS free” states should consider using this strategy as a starting point for their data migrations to SDWIS Prime.

3.1.4 Clean Data Address data quality issues and eliminate as many as possible before attempting to convert data to SDWIS Prime. The Association for State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) web site (http://asdwa.org) has several SDWIS State data quality tools and queries that primacy agencies can download and use. The cleaner the data are, the easier the SDWIS Prime transition.

3.1.5 Configure Reference Data Review the SDWIS Prime configuration spreadsheet (available from the SDWIS Prime Help Center). The configuration spreadsheet references all the pick lists in SDWIS Prime and the preset values that come preconfigured with the system. In many situations, primacy agencies have set their own values in SDWIS State and these should translate to SDWIS Prime. After completing the configuration spreadsheet, coordinate with the EPA SDWIS Prime Transition Manager to have the primacy agency values loaded into SDWIS Prime. Note: This task must be completed before data loading can begin and must be coordinated with the SDWIS Prime Transition Manager.

2 In some situations, designed -in features of SDWIS Prime will replace primacy agency defined measures, flow rates and indicators.

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WBS ID Title Description3.1.6 Transfer Data to SDWIS Prime and

TestUsing the tools provided by EPA, extract data from the legacy SDWIS State (or other) system and load the data into SDWIS Prime. Coordinate with the EPA SDWIS Prime Transition Manager for loading and testing the data transfer.Note: This activity must be coordinated with the SDWIS Prime Transition Manager.

4.2 User Security Configuration4.2.1 Configure End User Roles SDWIS Prime comes with several predefined user roles. These roles specify the areas of

SDWIS Prime that a user assigned to the role can access and their level of access. For example, you can grant a user access to the inventory module of the system (what they can access), but prevent them from changing any inventory data (level of access – view only, in this case). The SDWIS Prime Help Center has several articles describing the security model used by SDWIS Prime and how user roles fit into this model. In some situations, the default user roles may be inadequate for the primacy agency. SDWIS Prime allows the primacy agency system administrator to create new user security roles tailored to the primacy agency’s needs.

4.2.2 Configure Regulating Agencies Regulating agencies are a special type of government agency type legal entity having a list of related users and water systems. Users that are not members of a regulating agency cannot access water systems assigned to the regulating agency. Examples of where regulating agencies might be of use include:

Situations where the drinking water program is delegated down to the counties within a state

Sharing data with other primacy agencies. For example, creating a regulating agency for a neighboring state and assigning users from that state to the regulating agency. Users from the other state could access information about water systems assigned to the regulating agency.

Creating a regulating agency for the EPA Region to share data for federally regulated water systems.3

4.2.3 Configure Other System Settings There are several other configuration settings – many involving Business Rules Engine (BRE) settings – that require setting.4

3 In SDWIS Prime, EPA Regions will manage federal violations and enforcements by having direct access to the water system data. Creating a regulating agency for the EPA Region and then assigning water systems to the regulating agency accomplish this. Currently, federal enforcements and violations are managed in SDWIS Fed ODS/Web – which states cannot access.4 Most of these settings were under development as of the date of this template.

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WBS ID Title Description4.2.3.1 Research Configuration Settings There are several configuration settings that primacy agencies can set to “personalize”

SDWIS Prime. Examples include: Time period length for processing samples/sample results before the business

rules engine creates candidate monitoring/sampling schedules Replacing default violation IDs and descriptions with primacy agency IDs and

descriptions Adding state regulatory language associated with the federal CFR (used in the

violations module) Standard responses (which can apply to enforcement actions and corrective

action plans Custom fields

The primacy agency transition team researches the list of SDWIS Prime configuration settings and determines the most appropriate settings.

4.2.3.2 Apply Configuration Settings After deciding on the configuration settings, turn the configuration spreadsheet over to the EPA SDWIS Prime Transition Manager, who will work with the contractor to add the settings to the system.

2.3.3 Verify Configuration Settings Verify that the contractor correctly set the configuration.4.2.3 Provision Users SDWIS Prime uses EPA’s Central Data Exchange for provisioning and authenticating

users. However, the Primacy Agency System Administrator must assign roles and regulating agencies to reach user before they can access SDWIS Prime features and data.

5 User Training5.1 Review and Assess Available User

Training MaterialReview the available SDWIS Prime user training materials (found in the SDWIS Help Center) and determine if there are gaps. Your primacy agency may have specific training needs that are not met in the existing collection of training materials.

5.2 Write Training Development Plan If the review shows there are gaps, create a plan to produce the missing training materials.

5.3 Execute and Control Training Development

Following the Training Development plan, develop and test the training modules identified as a gap earlier.

5.4 Schedule and Train Users Following the rollout plan, schedule users for training. Ideally, users should receive training shortly before they start using the system.

6 Communications

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WBS ID Title Description6.1 Develop Communications Strategy Develop a strategy for how the transition team will communicate progress to the

stakeholders. Note that the communications strategy should include not only the end users of the system, but management and other individuals that are directly affected by the system.

6.2 Develop Communications Plan Memorialize the communications strategy in a communications plan.6.3 Execute Communications Plan Carryout the communications plan.7 Interfacing Applications Transition7.1 Develop Interfacing Applications

StrategyThe Relationships to Other Applications and Systems section lists other systems and applications (interfacing applications) exchanging data with the legacy SDWIS State (or other) compliance system. From this information, develop a strategy for minimizing the impact to interfacing applications from the transition to SDWIS Prime. Some areas the strategy may include:

Identifying the parties responsible for operating and maintaining the interfacing application.

Evaluating and prioritizing the criticality of each interfacing application. For example, an interfacing application supporting a critical business process would have a higher priority than one that doesn’t. This prioritization exercise could also show that all interfacing applications have equal priority. The goal is, if possible, to identify the most important interfacing applications and focus efforts on transitioning their data exchanges with SDWIS Prime first.

Determining which interfacing applications could be replaced by using inherent SDWIS Prime capabilities.

Reviewing how each interfacing application exchanges data with the legacy system – through ODBC, direct database connection or some other means

Reviewing the available data exchange mechanisms with SDWIS Prime and how they might apply for each interfacing application, such as using:

o The SDWIS Prime ReST APIo Virtual Exchange Services (VES)5

o Using the SDWIS local data mart (repurposed SDWIS State database) as an intermediary between the interfacing application and SDWIS Prime6

5 See: http://www.exchangenetwork.net/virtual-exchange-service/ 6 See the Primacy Agency Installed Components section in Appendix B – SDWIS Prime Technical Description.

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WBS ID Title Descriptiono Other solution

Identify an exchange mechanism for each interfacing application and, if possible, develop a rough estimate (cost and schedule) for implementing the exchange mechanism

7.2 Develop Interfacing Applications Plan From the information gained in developing the interfacing applications strategy, develop a plan that documents the strategy. The plan should include a schedule (based on the prioritization exercise) and cost estimates.

7.3 Execute Interfacing Applications Plan Follow the plan and transition the interfacing applications to SDWIS Prime.8 EPA Blanket Purchase Agreement This portion of the WBS describes the work involved for obtaining contractor support

using the EPA’s Blanket Purchase Agreement. You may modify this portion of the WBS if you are using a different contract vehicle

8.1 Contact the EPA Contracting Officer Representative (COR)

Contact Trang Le at le.trang@epa.gov and let her know of your intention to use the BPA.

8.2 Prepare Performance Work Statement (PWS)

Using the template provided, prepare the PWS (also known as the Statement of Work, or SOW). Describe the work, deliverables and schedule that the contractor will undertake, as identified earlier through the resources analysis.

8.3 Develop Independent Government Cost Estimate (IGCE)

Develop a cost estimate based on the PWS. The EPA COR can assist with this.

8.4 Evaluate BPA Contractor Responses The EPA COR will package the PWS and the IGCE and send it to the EPA Contracting Officer (CO), who will ask the BPA contractors to prepare proposals. After receiving the proposals from the CO, the EPA COR and primacy agency personnel will review and evaluate the proposals, identifying a winning proposal based on the evaluation factors (the EPA COR and CO will provide guidance to the primacy agency for evaluating and scoring proposals). As part of the evaluation process, the COR and primacy agency representative will prepare a recommendation for award.

8.5 Award Task The EPA CO will award the task.8.6 Monitor Contractor Effort The EPA COR and primacy agency representative will monitor the contractor effort and

apply corrective actions as needed.9 Project Management

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WBS ID Title Description9.1 Prepare and Develop Status Report Determine what kind of information to include on a status report to keep management

and stakeholder appraised of project status. Also determine how often to report status (e.g., weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) Reporting intervals may vary depending upon the stakeholders receiving the information. Also, the IT/IM lifecycle requirements may prescribe reporting requirements.

9.2 Manage Risk Periodically review the risk register (created in the Risks and Opportunities section above) and update as necessary. Include the status of the top risks in the status report described in WBS item 9.1 above.

9.3 Manage Issues Similar to risks, maintain an issue register and report on their status as well.9.4 Conduct Transition Reviews This may be a requirement under the primacy agency IT/IM lifecycle process or a

requirement added by the project sponsor and management. A project review is an in-depth look at the state of transition. They go farther than status reports and may have formal deliverables under the IT/IM lifecycle process that transcend the drinking water program.

9.5 Conduct Transition Retrospective A retrospective is a review of the transition effort to identify things that went well and things that could have gone better. This is not to prepare the primacy agency for transitioning to the system coming after SDWIS Prime (which, hopefully, won’t happen for a long time), but to identify ways to make the organization more efficient for similar future efforts. It also gives an opportunity for the transition team members to celebrate the end of transition and the hand off to the primacy agency’s operations and maintenance team.

9.6 Closeout Like any project (and the transition effort is a project), the project team should make sure that any files and records created by the transition effort are handled correctly. The primacy agency may have records management procedures for handling these files and the IT/IM lifecycle process may have other requirements that the transition team must complete before formally ending transition to SDWIS Prime.

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Appendix B – SDWIS Prime Technical DescriptionThis appendix includes a technical description of SDWIS Prime that the primacy agency IT function can use to help determine the IT/IM lifecycle requirements for adopting and transitioning to SDWIS Prime. As described earlier, these lifecycle requirements must be considered and factored into the SDWIS Prime transition plan. As these requirements vary between states, it’s difficult to include them in this transition plan template.

Unless required, delete this appendix from the transition plan. For convenience, the remainder of the appendix uses clear font in case the information here is required in transition plan.

SDWIS Prime is a cloud-hosted software as a service (SaaS) offering from USEPA. SDWIS Prime capabilities are delivered through the user’s JavaScript enabled web browser.7 SDWIS Prime is offered as-is to the primacy agencies. The operations and maintenance cost for SDWIS Prime components installed in the primacy agency's hosting site is the responsibility of the primacy agency and not EPA.

EPA:

Provides training materials Conducts web-accessible national training sessions Offers training to primacy agency trainers (train the trainer) sessions End user support in the form of the SDWIS Prime Help Center, a web-accessible resource where

users can submit help desk tickets and access community forums for exchanging ideas for system usage and enhancements.

Primacy Agency Installed ComponentsPrimacy agencies have, over the years, developed a number of systems that interact with the legacy SDWIS Prime system. Many of these “interfacing applications” support business processes outside the scope of SDWIS State, such as:

Engineering plan reviews Scheduling and recording sanitary surveys Permitting and fee collection Water system operator certification Third-party business intelligence tools that rely on data stored in SDWIS State to produce

various reports and other analytical products

This is not a complete list and the list varies from one primacy agency to the next.

EPA is aware that many primacy agencies use Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) to connect interfacing applications to the SDWIS State database.8 Because ODBC is insecure when used across the World Wide Web and as SDWIS Prime does not support a virtual private network (VPN), ODBC is prohibited. Primacy agencies can address the ODBC prohibition several ways:

7 SDWIS Prime works correctly with Firefox and Chrome for Windows 7 and 10 and MacOS El Capitan as of the date of this template. There are display issues when using Internet Explorer 11, MS Edge, and Safari. 8 There may be other methods not discussed here.

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Transition Plan SDWIS Prime[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

1. Modify interfacing applications to use the SDWIS Prime ReST API. This option will probably take the most time, as it would involve modifying the interfacing application to replace ODBC with ReST API calls.

2. Develop a custom ODBC driver that works with the SDWIS Prime ReST API. Primacy agency users would install the custom ODBC driver onto their workstations. While it may take less effort to build the ODBC driver, there is some effort involved in keeping the driver up to date with changes to the SDWIS Prime ReST API and making sure that users have the latest driver installed onto their workstations.

3. For primacy agencies currently using SDWIS State, repurpose the SDWIS State database to act as a proxy for the primacy agency’s data stored in SDWIS Prime. On a periodic basis, a process would synchronize the repurposed database with SDWIS Prime. Interfacing applications would continue as-is, accessing replicated data from the repurposed database rather than directly from the SDWIS Prime database. While this is probably the most expedient option, it does require that the primacy agency continue supporting the replicated database (requiring an Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server license).

There may be other options not described here. In any case, the primacy agency would bear development and Operations and maintenance (O&M) cost for any of the options. Development cost could be covered using an Exchange Network (EN) grant. Any component developed under an EN grant would be shared with other drinking water primacy agencies. The SDWIS Prime team will make shareable components available to primacy agencies through the SDWIS Prime Help Center.

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Transition Plan SDWIS Prime[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

SDWIS Prime EPA Hosted ComponentsThis section discusses the SDWIS Prime components hosted at EPA. Please note that this is a high-level description of the SDWIS Prime architecture, shown in Figure 1 below. More detail is found in the EPA Help Center.

FIGURE 1 - EPA HOSTED SDWIS PRIME COMPONENTS

EPA Cloud

All SDWIS Prime components accessible to the primacy agencies are housed in the EPA Cloud environment. Primacy agency users will access SDWIS Prime through their browser using the primacy agency’s standard web browser. There are two instances of SDWIS Prime available:

SDWIS Prime test SDWIS Prime production

Both instances of SDWIS Prime (production and test) have identical structure. The main difference is that the Extract-Transform-Load connection between the SDWIS Prime production database and the SDWIS Fed Data Warehouse (both located in the SDWIS Fed Zone inaccessible to the primacy agencies) does not exist in SDWIS Prime test.

User End Points

There are three user endpoints in SDWIS Prime production and test, consisting of:

ReST API end points for CMDP and SDWIS Prime. The main purpose of the CMDP ReST API is for laboratories to submit samples job to CMDP. As CMDP and SDWIS Prime share the same database, primacy agencies can use the SDWIS Prime ReST API for all other data exchange purposes.

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Transition Plan SDWIS Prime[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

SDWIS Prime – this represents the SDWIS Prime user experience. All SDWIS Prime features are accessed through this module.

o User provisioning and authentication is through the Central Data Exchange (CDX Production) for SDWIS Prime production and CDX Test for SDWIS Prime test

CMDP – this represents the Compliance Monitoring Data Portal (CMDP) user experience. All CMDP features are accessed through this module. User provisioning to CMDP is provided through Shared CROMERR Services (SCS). Chances are that most CMDP users will represent water systems and laboratories with a few users being representatives of the primacy agency. Note that primacy agency users will require four sets of credentials: SDWIS Prime production and test and CMDP production and test.

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Transition Plan SDWIS Prime[Drinking Water Primacy Agency Name]

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