This is an appropriate and exciting time to have Keith with us. First, the Governor has just launched a new initiative entitled "Minnesota's Drive to Excellence." This plan recognizes the critical importance of information technology to the State's operational and economic well-being. And I look forward to Keith describing the Drive to Excellence initiative and its relevance to his work.
And secondly, later this week, Keith celebrates his one-year anniversary as the State's CIO. And no doubt, as Minnesota's first appointed CIO, it has been an exciting year. Keith, thank you very much for being here with us.
Keith Payden: You're welcome. It's a pleasure being with you.
Susan Benton: Tell us, how has it been to be the State's first CIO, and how do you see your role as CIO?
Keith Payden: Well, it certainly has been an exciting first year, at times somewhat disorienting, but certainly full of excitement and opportunity, particularly as we have built towards the Drive to Excellence, as you've referenced. I think one starts to feel at the particular time that you're starting to hit a stride, and personally, I think that's probably happening, with a lot of help from a lot of great colleagues here at the State that have I think welcomed me and helped me learn some of the new ropes, as it were, in this environment.
Susan Benton: Keith, could you describe please what the current challenges are that the State faces in its ability to deliver high-quality services, and how do you think technology can be best used to address these challenges?
Keith Payden: Sure. I think that the statement is certainly not unlike the other states, as well as other public entities, as well as the private sector, in that we are being forced to deliver more service with fewer resources. And that drumbeat continues to go on as we go forward in this next budget cycle. So having faced that, I think that we are struggling a bit but trying to understand how we might accomplish those kinds of challenges and address them over time. As I said, we're not unlike a number of other entities that have gone before us, and we're trying to benefit from some of that experience. And that's what the Drive to Excellence is really all about. It is to try to understand how to really improve quality, improve the generation of innovative service delivery while reducing costs in the process. And we think that we can do that. We think we must. Certainly, that's the nature of the challenges in front of us.
And I think that probably leads me into the some of the prepared thoughts I've had, which is really about the Drive to Excellence, and where we've come in the last year or so, and where we're going, going forward, which is really about addressing those challenges. As you referenced, the Drive to Excellence has been recently publicly announced in terms of our direction and Governor support, and it's a very exciting time and I will say challenging time, to be in this environment, trying to determine a future direction for the State with respect to information technology and some of its other operations.
The Drive to Excellence is really a journey. We outlined last March in a published document some of the things that we wanted to accomplish and some of the issues that we had in front of us. One of them was to expand technology alignment. The second was to improve electronic business development. And, finally, to delve into the area of business reinvention.
As way of background with respect to where the State of Minnesota is. - the State has a deep and rich tradition of innovation. We have a number of activities that have occurred within the agency system, a lot of technological innovation within those agency systems, as well as operations. But I think it's fair to say that most of the innovations have occurred from an agency-centric mentality. And we have come to a point in time where we know we need to try to understand where cross-agency initiatives and leverage might occur, and that's really what the Drive to Excellence is all about - it is leveraging the good works in the past and challenging the way we go forward with respect to the current agency, what I'll characterize and have characterized as an agency-centric perspective.
One of the issues that often gets left out and is a part of our focus are the smaller agencies. And we just recently met with our Small Agency Forum, which we tried to help them understand the relevance of this Drive to Excellence effort to their initiatives, and tried to portray for them what we think is a tremendous opportunity for leverage as we go forward and define some new initiatives that serve the small agencies as well as the larger agencies.
We really see our vision as trying to develop a more balanced framework across the agencies for the management of technology, as well as discovering opportunities operationally. We have stolen a framework that is currently being used, I believe, in the State of Texas called the Foundation for Change. And the framework is a fairly simple one. I've also seen this framework used in some presentations for the current California initiative. But really our vision for the future is a more balanced framework than what is the current agency-centric framework. And if you can visualize the framework itself graphically, which I unfortunately can't share with you on the conference call, it is really a triangle. And it is divided into three horizontal sections as it were, and the triangle top is the agency functions. And first and foremost, our effort is meant to ensure that mission critical issues across the agencies are respected and the constituencies that they serve are respected in defining the change going forward. The middle layer is characterized as the area of opportunity for us. It is shared functions, and I'll describe a little bit about how we're going to discover those in a few minutes. And the bottom layer of this balanced framework really is what we've characterized as utility functions, that is base infrastructure that can and should support both the shared functions as well as the agency mission critical functions. So our mission, as it were, through the process that I'll describe a bit more, is to develop our view of what that balanced framework looks like. And of course, the contrast between that view and where we are will define a "roadmap," as we call it, for the future. And that really in a nutshell describes what the Drive to Excellence is really all about.
We are fortunate, to have a number of states that have preceded us. So we have been busy looking at what happened in other states and what their initiatives are and what they were successful at and what they were less than successful at. And we are very fortunate to be able to leverage off of the experiences of some of those before us, and we're taking advantage of that as we've looked at other lessons learned. We have an instinct, as it were, for what kinds of benefits we could accomplish, just by looking at those other efforts, both I'll say in the public and the private sector. But there are really four or five major areas that we think we're going to discover some level of opportunity within our environment. We believe that we'll probably find opportunities in the reengineering area, elimination of bottlenecks and redundancies. We think there's probably opportunities in the strategic sourcing area, through development of more uniform standards. We think that automation, while we have a great deal of automation, as I've suggested in our agencies, that looking at automation across the agency system might expose some opportunities for us. Functional consolidation might be an opportunity for us, the idea of shared service centers or centers of expertise to achieve economies of scale and others. So we're aware of the kinds of benefits that others have achieved ahead of us, and some of the difficulties that they've had and some of the challenges that they've had in doing that, and trying to leverage off of that experience.
When looking at these other states, we came to a couple of conclusions about why they were successful and, in some cases, why states and other entities were less than successful. One conclusion that we came to was that while there was a lot of "technological consolidation" going on, that it wasn't always married to business functional analysis. And we decided from the very beginning that for us to be successful at the scale that we hoped for, that we had to do both. We had to look at what we've characterized as a business functional assessment, in combination with a technological assessment and inventory across our environment. And we had to manage both of those assessments in concert with one another. We think it is the key to the successful approaches in other places and will be key to our success.
And finally, while I've referred to assessments, we have also seen where the success of other efforts was really based on facts, based on performing an assessment, and developing an in-depth understanding of where you are and what the issues really are, in collaboration with the broader community. And our process is structured in a way to ensure that we do the best job we possibly can of inclusion, as well as knowing the facts before we determine the direction.
I guess a third observation we made is that we thought that a large part of success of others was based upon having a clear third-party view of the environment. And to that end, we decided to go to the outside for help. And through a fairly rigorous RFP process, we solicited help for both the business functional analysis, as well as the technology analysis and inventory, and wound up through a process of selection - from which we learned a great deal - we choose Deloitte as a partner in this effort. And so with that as sort of a background, we started to develop a plan of action with Deloitte that really spans our activities over the next four months.
I'll just spend a couple of minutes describing that and then open it up for questions for those that are on this call. But in effect, the plan that we developed really had a couple of really strong principles behind it, that is, to ensure we had an unwavering focus on constituent value, that this wasn't just about finding cost savings and finding synergies. It was also about developing and understanding of how we could improve the quality of service and the innovation across the agencies in doing that. The second principle is that while there had been a number of studies in the State of Minnesota that have gone before this, and I'm sure other states have experienced those kinds of studies also, which really ended in no action at all, or marginal action and marginal benefits. We decided early on that our approach had to result in hard dollars-and-cents business cases, so that was a principle that we focused on.
And second and finally, we needed to focus on really fundamentals and on the alignment issues and on innovation. So we developed a very, very aggressive plan, for the next four months, and we're about two weeks into that plan. And that plan really divides itself into three basic phases. One is doing a baseline inventory of both the technological assets and operations within the state, and secondly, to do a functional analysis of what is going on where within the state agency business processes. And we're doing both and using surveys and other mechanisms and constructs that Deloitte has brought to us to help us develop a more functional view, a "picture," as it were, both within the agencies, as well as across the agencies, from a number of different perspectives.
So what we're doing over the next four months is, as I said, divided up into three phases. One is developing that baseline assessment, getting the facts, getting the data, followed by a phase in which we will start to develop and see opportunities and develop strong business cases based upon those opportunities. And finally, the last phase is, through a selection process and an alignment process, develop a plan of action which we've chosen to call the "Transformation Roadmap" on our Drive to Excellence that will give us a real roadmap, a plan of action of going forward. I think it's important, and we've made this point over and over again, that we are going forward, that this is a first step, that this transformation roadmap is a first step on what we think is bound to be a journey as we go forward.
In closing, just a couple of comments about how we're organizing ourselves, which may be of interest. We thought and believed very early on that this type of program needed to both be bottoms-up as well as top-down, that unless we had a vision coming from the top, being the Governor's office, we wouldn't stand a chance to effect the planning and the kind of change that we probably think should occur in our environment. So we're very fortunate to get that kind of support, and we're very fortunate to have pulled together a steering group, project steering committee made almost exclusively of commissioners of the agencies who have been with us through the selection process and who now are steering us. We have a very active project management office comprised of a combination of state employees and Deloitte staff, and we've also developed a team structure which is enabling us to cluster agencies and go out and use a great number of agency resources to help us understand their perspective and to get the data from them to effect a change.
So that's what the Drive to Excellence is all about. We're about two weeks into the first phase. As you might imagine, it's been a very busy time. It's been something we've worked long and hard for over the last year to formulate and position, and we're very excited as we go forward. I'd be more than happy now to answer any questions about our effort that anybody might have.
Susan Benton: Keith, while we're waiting for some questions to queue , I know that you've got a Digital Government Summit that is scheduled for mid-October, October 18, and that's going to be hosted by you in conjunction with Government Technology Executive Events. Who do you hope will attend the summit, and what do you hope will be accomplished through the meetings?
Keith Payden: Good question. Well, we're looking forward to the Summit. It's sort of interesting how the Summit has taken place. We were approached back in May about the idea of a summit and had a lot of discussions as to what, if we were where we thought we would be or hoped to be at this time of the year, what we would like the summit to be. And we very early on wanted it to be something more than a technological symposium. We wanted it to be a place in which the business leaders, and I'll categorize "business leaders" being the agency management, as well as the legislature, as well as other constituencies who viewed themselves as driving the policies and driving the practice that the government - a place where they could come together with technology leaders and understand how those two issues could be married in the most progressive environments. We are well on our way in the Drive to Excellence, and we view this to be an excellent spot to both brief people on where we are in the Drive to Excellence at that point in time, as well as to bring in some real thought leaders about these kinds of transformation efforts, and really centered around business and technology alignment, as opposed to technology itself. And I believe we have an excellent agenda and are very excited about the prospect of doing just that.
Ron Fresquez: Good morning, Keith. Ron Fresquez from the Open Source Technology Alliance here in Minneapolis. I've got a two-part question. First, open source software is playing a larger role in government due to cost savings, access to the code, and other inherent benefits of open source. My first question is what is the State's position on open source in government? And the other part to my question is the Government Open Code Collaborative, which is an initiative that is headed up by Peter Quinn, the CIO of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Chairman of GOCC, his comment, he says, "In thinking about open source development, we would develop something, give it to somebody else, and they would enhance it and we'd all benefit from the enhancement," he said. "Because when you think about states, cities and towns, we all essentially do the same thing. We collect taxes. We pay child support. We pay welfare. We house prisoners, and we register cars." Did you take a look at the GOCC initiative? Thank you.
Keith Payden: Well, in fact, it's interesting, your question. I was unable unfortunately to attend NASCIO because of the demands of the kick-off process here. But I have read, just recently tapped into some of the discussion that occurred at NASCIO about that subject. I will tell you, we don't really have a position, a formal position on open source in the State, but I would share your perspective that if there's an environment that's ripe for sharing, and particularly given the non-competitive nature of the public sector, it would be our environment. However, I will say that addressing a specific issue like open source out of the context of what I think is a needed enterprise direction, a needed rationalization of the enterprise architecture as a whole, would be nibbling at the edges of the issue. So our hope, my hope is to be in the position in six, seven, eight months time, after we start to think about some of the recommendations coming from the Drive to Excellence, to look at open source issues in a coherent and coordinated way, because I think there might be opportunities there, but we need to do first things first.
Bob Mavovich: Bob Macovich, Scan Optics. Obviously you're in the early stages of defining the opportunities in all the areas you mentioned, and we do appreciate you letting us in on that information. Where do you see vendors at this point in time as far as participating with you? And I guess that's the same question as why did you bring it to the table to us at this point in your process?
Keith Payden: Well, I'm not sure I consciously brought it to the table for that reason. I think this was a good time to start to share our direction. But I think that my personal experience in the private sector, and I think it applies to the progressive examples in the public sector that I see, is that the only way that we're going to be ultimately successful going forward in this environment is through stronger vendor partnerships, and leverage off of those partnerships. And I believe that very strongly. And I think that my characterization of partnerships is something a great deal more than what I think I currently see in some facets of the way we deal with vendors. So as we have planned now going forward, hope to start to reach out to the vendor community, to help them understand where we're going, and to ask for their help in a number of ways, but basically asking their help in spending the time and understanding our direction and understanding how they can better partner with us to effect the changes that I think are coming down the road. So I'm a very strong proponent of vendor partnerships and relationships with vendors going forward. And I believe that can be accomplished at higher levels, I'll say even in the public sector, because I've seen it happen to some great examples in other states.
Bruce Cosby: Good morning, Keith, Bruce Cosby with Sprint. Can this initiative be seen as a move to possibly consolidate IT into a central decision-making process or even a central agency such as Intertech, and will agency compliance be optional?
Keith Payden: Well, as you might imagine, that's not the first time that subject has come up. We are being very, very careful not to characterize this as a centralization project, or characterize our goal as being centralization, because we're not sure what organizational form - form follows function, I think, and we're trying to let the function drive us as we go forward with respect to a determination of what it looks like. Now having said that, it would be disingenuous not to say that obviously we need to have much tighter coordination. We need to have much tighter - we need to embody I think the concept of shared services more robustly than we have. And there are themes of consolidation that may run through some of that, and I think that that's important. Is compliance going to be mandatory? I would hope that the benefits and the understanding of the benefits of our approach and the fact that it will be balanced, I assure you, will drive everyone to that collaboration and cooperation. But we're doing this with the intent of effecting change. And I'm not a big fan of mandatory, that kind of expression, but we certainly will be looking for increased compliance to whatever directions that we go forward on.
Gary Angotti: Good afternoon. It's Gary Angotti from Computer Horizons. Keith, in the last year, have you put together a strategic technology plan that outlines the initiatives and the projects and, if so, is that something you can share with everybody?
Keith Payden: Well, we are in fact in the midst of doing that. I'm going to assume that you might be familiar with the State of Minnesota and the Office of Technology in particular, whose statutory responsibility is to do a lot of what you just described. I think for one reason or the other, we find ourselves in a position of having to do a better job of that, having to do a better job of being more comprehensive in our understanding, and do a better job of managing and coordinating and making decisions from an enterprise perspective. And that is what is a large part of this inventory assessment, as well as integration with our current budget cycle, is to become more I'll say aggressive and progressive on that issue. So what you will see at the end of this is a coordinated plan that is rationalized across various initiatives. Does that make sense?
Gary Angotti: Yes, it does. From a distribution perspective, is that something that could be shared down the road at some point? And if so, when?
Keith Payden: Well, I think as we get into the later stages of what we're doing and developing the roadmap, as it were, our work will obviously be shareable from a public point of view, but also we will be using it as a management tool with all the constituencies, both those in the agencies as well as the legislature and our vendor partners going forward. But absolutely, it'll be a document and a process that we will depend on highly.
Question: We are from Ambient Consulting. We have a two-part question. The first part is other than cost savings, which can be excused by discontinued activities as opposed to kind of adding additional services at lower rates, how will you measure success of your transformation projects, as well as what's the biggest thing that keeps you up at night in terms of the risks related to this overall project?
Keith Payden: Well, I think the measures of success are not going to be strictly cost. I think it has to be quality of service in a number of different ways. Establishment of metrics in that regard will be an important aspect. Certainly concepts of outside in, easier access to government services, and being able to measure the quality in those kinds of ways are first and foremost on our minds. I think others will come to mind as we go forward, but our focus isn't strictly on cost savings. It is on the other qualitative aspects of service delivery. And now I have to apologize, I forgot the second part of your question.
Question: We were just curious as to what keeps you up at night in terms of your biggest concern about the success of this project?
Keith Payden: Well, a lot of things - (laughing) - to be honest with you, but I guess I worry a lot about this being just another study. I see so much opportunity, and I personally am energized by the prospect of making a difference in the quality of how we do work and the quality of a lot of everyday folks in this environment. What keeps me up at night is worrying about this being just another project that doesn't get any traction and doesn't result in anything real. The other stuff, the day-to-day change management issues and communication issues and all the things that happen in a tough complex project like this, they certainly do make you roll over in your sleep, but those are mechanical things. I think that the things that really do keep me up at night is really wanting desperately to fulfill the ambition of this project and worrying about doing the right things to do that.
Question: Hi, Keith, I've got two questions for you. As a part of the conference call that you put together for today, what do you see as far as the vendor partners are concerned as you move down this roadmap? And then, secondly, are there any current initiatives that are going on that you feel are at risk right now based on this process that you're going through?
Keith Payden: Oh, okay. Well, on the first question, we are in the process of developing some specific dates I believe for vendor interchanges, in which you will have the opportunity to have a more direct dialogue with us about where we are and where we're going, and we would intend to keep that. That's something that's going to happen I think short-term, I think in October, but I don't think that date's been released. And certainly we're then committed to that process going forward. We'll probably also have a more structured in-depth dialogue with some of the larger major vendors with respect to what their current relationship is in the state.
With regard to projects at risk, I don't have a perspective on that, to be quite honest with you. We're gathering a lot of projects and understanding of those projects, and I would prefer to think about how we are going to take the energy of good projects which are well thought out and dovetail that energy into a more enterprised focus and a more enterprised leverage, as it were, rather than think about projects at risk, to be honest with you.
Question: Hi, Keith, real quick question, wanted to quote some information from a couple of studies, this year's Pew e-government study found that 77 percent of adult users in the U.S. took advantage of government websites or used email to contact officials. And a Brown University Taubman Center for Public Policy Study on e-government showed that everybody is crawling at their own pace and the key word is "crawling." And the primary reasons given are, one, agency turf; the next generation of digital challenges are far more complex, and weak privacy policies that reflect a conflict of interest. And they go on to say that governments want to say that they are protecting privacy, but they are making money selling data, and it's a lucrative market, and they want to preserve marketing prerogatives. Are you aware of these challenges, and have you factored in these challenges in the plan to overcome them? Thank you.
Keith Payden: Well, yes, I guess that is a pretty deep question and a good one, by the way, but a deep one. I'm certainly aware of all of the challenges with regard to electronic government services and how it's dependent upon stronger cross-agency collaboration and also trying to be and aware of the data privacy issues. But I think we are trying to be very, very respectful to those issues, but develop a greater in-depth understanding of what's real and what's not with respect to those kinds of issues. I really can't say very much more about that, but they are on our plate. They are things that we are thinking about actively and are certainly things that we are going to grapple with as we go forward. I don't think they're necessarily obstacles to what we need to accomplish. I may be a bit Pollyanna-ish in that regard, but I really do believe that we can find a way.
Bryant Avey, InterNuntius Inc. Yes, hello, Keith. I have two quick questions. The first one is given the statistics of heavy government employee retirement, could you tell us a little bit about your plan, are you guys thinking of rehiring those types of positions as they go into retirement, or are you guys planning on relying more on vendors to fill those sorts of roles? And then the second question is can you share your perspective and level of commitment for utilizing small businesses for upcoming opportunities, in other words, how much of a chance will smaller vendors have in helping you make a difference and effecting your plans?
Keith Payden: Well, thank you first of all for the first question, because I was really remiss in my opening comments with respect to that dynamic, that demographic dynamic around retirement. The State of Minnesota, 47 percent of its workforce will be eligible for retirement within nine years. I think somewhere around 25 percent or so will be eligible within the next three to four years. That is a daunting number for any organization to face, and I think that our ambition is to try to understand how we can redeploy talent within the government sector, not have to replace each and every one of them. I think if you read our plan or our direction statement, develop a stronger partnership model, as it were, and position us to do that, and to ensure that the people that are in positions are doing mission critical work going forward. We simply have to have a systemic way to address this issue going forward, and that is a big part of our thought process, to be honest with you.
The second issue with respect to smaller vendors, I think that there's room for vendors of all sizes once a more coordinated and leveraged collaborative way of managing technology and vendor relationships is put in place. So I don't believe our direction is discriminatory in any way, and I know you're not suggesting this, but discriminatory in any way against smaller vendors. In fact, I think smaller vendors having a defined context in which to partner would be hopefully an improvement on.
Question: Just a question about silo busting. You know, it seems like a lot of the bigger-end dollars in IT come from Federal programs that tend to be siloed. And the vision, which was really a great vision here, involves things like client identification, eligibility determination, you know, payments of things, and you could be describing anything from a school lunch program to unemployment insurance having those kind of common business functions. Do you see any issues as time goes on with having to do things to work interactively with the Feds to be able to fulfill some of those vision areas?
Keith Payden: I certainly do. I think there are opportunities to work as well as influence. And I think there's some great examples of - here's an area in which I think there's a bit of a vapor trail we can follow. There are a number of states that are further down the line in understanding the complexities of this environment in this regard and who are more than willing to share their lessons learned. In fact, I think the NASCIO organization as a whole is probably starting to think about and deal with these kinds of issues - if not, they should - and have an influence on that environment to allow us to do the right thing, yet serve sort of the needed complexities in regulations. So I see that as a challenge but not one that is going to prevent us from doing the things we need to do. I think there's a lot of folks to learn from going forward, and I'm not about willing to accept that we can't influence that.
Gil Roscoe: Hello, Mr. Payden. This is Gil Roscoe with Mid-America Business Systems. I have two questions actually. The first question is does your study take into consideration any of the solutions outside of the digital area? The Chief Information Officer, I'm sure you're aware of the fact that there are other types of solutions besides the digital part and maybe even how that might integrate with non-digital solutions. Is there anyone looking at that relationship at all, since a lot of what's already in place is probably non-digital? Second question is what is the best way for us to keep in touch with you? You mentioned there's some dates coming up for dialogue between vendors and your group coming in October. Who would be a contact, or what's the best way to keep in touch so we know about those dates? Thank you.
Keith Payden: Well, first of all, I don't think I can really address your first question, maybe because as a part, I don't understand it completely. But I assume you're talking about the things that aren't really about systems and about the other soft aspects of the way we do things. And certainly we need to be aware of those, but I don't really have an in-depth answer for you there. Maybe we should talk after this conference call to help me understand a bit better your question.
But the second part is there is a website that's been developed. It's www.excellence.state.mn.us, and we are committed to providing a lot of external communication on that website. It's a great source for progress updates and information, and we're committed to that. I think to that website, there is a place for you to ask questions, and we're committed to answering those as they come in. And we will have a structured outreach program which will I think be fairly widely publicized as we go.
Danny Kwong: Could you tell me the priority for the State in the areas of disaster recovery, business continuance, and e-commerce?
Keith Payden: The priority with respect to those three?
Danny Kwong: Yes, as compared to the other priorities in the state.
Keith Payden: I could give you a personal opinion, but I'm not going to, because I think part of the process that we have unfolding here is a process that will develop a rationale for prioritizing and a plan to deal with the items in a prioritized way. And I'm not sure I could answer that question with any foundation of fact. They're all important to us. How we deploy resources and how we manage resources against all the number one priorities is part of what we're trying to understand how to do. And I think it'll become clearer as we go forward.
Susan Benton: Keith, thank you. You've done a marvelous job of explaining the process that you've put in place to move the State forward. In regards to your four-month initiative that you're undertaking starting with the baseline inventory, would you expect any results of that to be done by the end of January and for the transformation roadmap to be available to the private sector?
Keith Payden: The answer to both is yes. I believe that our official date is somewhere around mid-January, and that will be available. We expect it to be a public document. We expect it in some form, the outcomes of our effort, to provide some guidance to the Governor with respect to his budget, the Governor's budget, though it's somewhat being done I'll say not loosely but it'll be just one of the many inputs to the Governor's office that will result in some I think budget impact. So yes, our intent is to make that document public.
Susan Benton: Great. Well, we'll look forward to seeing a copy of that when it's completed, and we wish you all good luck in the next four months as you undertake the multiple tasks of this process. It's an exciting time for you and for the state agencies as well. Thank you again for being with us.
Keith Payden: You're welcome. Thank you. It's my pleasure. It's fun to talk about something we're excited about.
Susan Benton: And I'd also like to thank all of the dial-in participants. Your questions were marvelous. The Center so enjoys hosting these teleconferences, and we look forward to you joining future calls. And if you have requests for future speakers and ideas for teleconference topics, please let us know. With that, I will thank everyone again, and say good afternoon.
