So some of what we have on our agenda this afternoon is to just understand a little bit more about the demographics of the workforce in both of the systems. And so we wanted to start first with our human resources at the state level and understand some of the demographics of our state workforce. And so I see you've prepared us a wonderful presentation. We'll let you go ahead and take it away and then hopefully there will be time for questions at the end. And I just want to throw in here that if anybody has questions beyond this with the on on the state workforce, the workforce report that this is just part of it, but the workforce report that's done every year is really thorough and gives everything like temporary employees and how many there are where they are limited service employees everything so it's a really good report that you're interested in the state workforce at all. All right. Well thank you senators way and represent. We're going to, first of all, I think we should do this we did with this with that for best. And we're going to introduce ourselves and why we're here who appointed us so that you'll know where where we're from. So, Cory do you want to start this. Sure. I was pointed by the man. The entire point by the Troopers Association. I know we don't want and I was worried about the ACS. I'm Kate, the point of five. John Gannon by the speaker of the house. Sarah from enhances a point by the speaker that you know right point by the committee on committees. I'm pointed by the SCM. answer Emirates kindergarten teacher pointed by Vermont. I'm Molly and the teacher. Thank you. Okay, now take it away. I'm the commissioner of human resources for the state of Vermont and with me today is Harold Schwartz who's our director of operations and Doug pine who's the deputy director of operations and and the committee asked us to come in and talk about some specific demographics of the workforce. So as a senator white pointed out one of her favorite reports of which Doug pine is actually the guru of that report. And I think it gets to hear your praise in person is our workforce report we publish that every January. So, there's a lot of information the web addresses right here and if you're online, you should be able to click through through the presentation. But lots of statistics on there, some of the slides we have updated with fiscal year 21 data and some are fiscal year 20 data. So the ones we could we tried to update. So the first two pages that have executive branch at a glance for fiscal year 2020 on here. We're not going to go into these in detail here because I have a lot of slides that kind of elaborate on those but what I just want to say at first is this is the executive branch at a glance. We don't have the judiciary or the legislative branch so the folks that participate in the retirement system there are judiciary as well as legislative branch folks that participate in the retirement system this report, and these debt statistics don't really count them. If you're adding those together it's about 10,000 employees so I'm sure the treasure will have information on the number of participating retirement system of those. So fiscal year 2020 so this is data that's good up until June of 2020. We have another fiscal year in the meantime but our report for next year isn't generally submitted until January. I'm going to go through some of these numbers here just the number of employees I have a full slide on that so I'm actually going to skip talking about that, but this also talks about full time. Most of our employees are full time and you can see that related to their, the average age of employees. I'm going to break the report out a lot by the generation we call that and I'll go over that in another slide, average years of service as well, and the length of service we have slides on as well, as well as the percentage representative that you can see in the classified in the state service as made up of classified and exempt employees only typically only mostly only classified sort of employees are eligible to be members of state unions and so overall about 85% represented by union in the executive branch, but it's a 92% classified versus 42.2% exempt and I can go over for other people in a bargain unit so there's a small number of exempt employees in the bargaining unit. That's about the position that's about recruitment so we'll talk about that a little bit. We do have a slide on numbers there but we did in fiscal year 2020. We hired 938 employees. Most of those are classified employees 880 classified employees with 58 exempt employees. That 938 were how many do you know how many were replacing other employees or how many were actually new positions for fiscal year 22 I could pretty confidently say it's, it's less than a wash we actually decreased positions I think in fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2020 so might have been a new position doing something different but it would have replaced somebody doing something else. And then we have the average age of hires there and we go down around by demographics. One of the things we were asked to talk some more specifically about the number of people with how many years of service and related to retirement employees was open positions, hard to fill positions so we will go through that. Also the amount of overtime which is there's some numbers on the next page we didn't go into detail until overtime as well that you can find that on the workforce report Tables 53, 54A and 54B give overtime by department over a series of years so if there are folks that are interested in that that's available in the workforce report as well. On the next page this is just basically the first at a glance page on the workforce report we do talk we'll be talking about turnover, retirement eligibility, overall compensation and then we don't get at these slides we don't get to into equal opportunity employment or, or demographics, whether male or female but that's on the workforce or to have a section on that. So, table two is on I don't know if your report is numbered but it's page five. So this is the size of our workforce and kind of tells the growth of the workforce over time you can tell the blue part on the bottom the majority of our workforce is classified with the numbers of exams at the top so this year between 2020 and 2021 we actually we were pretty level between 2019 and 2020 just up by 17 people. We had about 20 and classified down three exempt, but then if you move into fiscal year 21 we did go down from 8,317 to 8,012 employees. We had a hiring freeze for the part of the pandemic you remember during the pandemic we were very concerned about the economy and our revenues for the state so we wanted to make sure that we didn't we had enough resources to pay employees and so we were very very careful about about hiring. In fiscal year 21, but we definitely expect that number of employees to bounce back and likely increase in fiscal year 22 as you know the legislature is authorized a bunch of new positions in state government with that are going to be used in line with the American AR, AR, AR, ARPA funds so we've got, we're anticipating a lot of new hires and to increase the number of employees in the coming year. Yeah. Did I just ask that decrease in 21. Are you going through attrition or holding positions open? Yeah, holding positions open we had, we did not have any layoffs as a result or as a result of the pandemic. You know, just, we may have had a layoff related to no work in that area but but not, we did not do any furloughs or any layoffs as a result of the economic situation related to the pandemic and state. So I have table seven, which is a little easier to read, and that does break down the percentage of employees by classified and exempt. We also have a distribution on there, the average age of a state employee is 45.3 years old. We go into the generational things but which that's those are not generational, those are 10 year ages but then we also talk about generation and different generations and whether aging out of workforce a little bit later. Can you tell me, maybe you're going to do this later but I am always confused about who is generation X, who's a millennial, who's a generation Z. Yes, we do have that for you. I never. Let's flip over. It's table, table 16B. So on page eight, if you're if you numbered your pages but on the table there it does talk about how it just kind of shows the changing demographics. So the baby boom generation is the blue circles on that graph, and it shows that's the generation that's born between 1964 and 1946. So that's age 57 to 75. So you can see the, as that age group retires, begins to retire and move out of the workforce you see those numbers decreasing over time, where you see the millennials really increasing as well as the generation X, which is. I'm, I'm on that generation X which is 1965 right when I was like, I missed the baby boom by the year. So, 65 to 65 to 80. So that's the biggest makeup of our workforce right now. I see there it is. And when you combine both both generation X and millennials that's the majority of our workforce that's about 72% of our workforce. And I think we can probably just, if I'm not sure if I need to even go through any of those other slides anymore, I'll just stay on the slides. Oh, no, let's go back. One slide to seven. You'll see length of which I think is important for this group is the length of service based on age distribution. So, the biggest distribution of employees is actually less than five years as a chunk. And then it's divided up into 10 year chunks along that so also 34% have worked here between five and 15 years, you've got 15 to 2534% and then. No, that's 18% and then 25 to 35 years. That's 78 7.8% of our employees and then over 35 years is 2.1%. So that I think is a is it was kind of a sport porn statistics for this group to be talking about when you're thinking about pension changes, just the kind of the age, the length of service for state government definitely impacts where they are on the pension scale and actually what what pension plan they're in the annual based salary distribution also is there most employees, maybe between 55 and 65,000 dollars per year. That's 25% of employees and you can see the numbers surrounding that are make up more and then kind of tapering graph but Yeah, go ahead. It's going to say on the length of service. 25% is indicative of the fact that the greatest amount of turnover, the highest percent of the term happens at the first five years. So we have a lot of people with five or fewer years of experience and if we keep them more than five years generally I'm wondering, do you have the bank of service connected with age as well do you have that broken down separately somewhere I just curious to know what the ages on some of these people here, less than five years or just to kind of get a sense of the workforce of a lot of people entering second careers some in the in the last slide we go into that a little bit. Is that something we could give you information for another time. You don't have that fit. So for the length of service connected to their age. So, you know, some people who are 30 maybe are in that five to 15 years of service already at that point however there might be a lot of people that are less than five years at age 30 or just kind of progression. I know you had it broken down by about 10 year chunks before I love it if it could even be less than 10 year chunks. I mean if you have 26.6% of people age distribution between 45 and 54 but the majority of those 26% are at 53 to it just gives a wide gap and just curious to see what it would also look like a smaller age. We'll see what we can do. I did want to just. Oh, sorry. Yeah, the length of service distribution. Understanding this is a snapshot in time. I'm trying to think about how it connects to the drivers on the on the on the pension side. Is the distribution typical, or was it reflect changing in purpose? Less than five system of the highest. Thank you very much. We'll try that on the last. One thing I did want to just let people know who aren't familiar with the terms classified and exempt employees. Exempt employees are primarily attorneys that work for the state and then appointed officials those are the most common type of exempt employees. But most, most employees career employees would be considered in the classified service except for except for attorneys and.  There's a table in the big book that talks about which types of positions would be considered exempt from the classified service and, and classified services just a different construct and they have in the private sector but essentially those employees have a property interest in their job so it's it's, it's, it's more job protection that you might have in a private sector. Simplified. Um, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So the generational shift slide that we already kind of reviewed. That was our slide eight and then moving on to slide nine which is our total compensation for classified executive branch employees. We talk about the total compensation when we talk about kind of the value that employees receive for working for the state of Vermont and also kind of when we're talking about the cost of an employee. So total pay is a part of it. So this average employee total compensation for the average pay for executive branch employee may make $67,000 a year but their total compensation was about $102,000 a year close to $103,000 a year. The health insurance is a big part of that $102,000 is 13% of that average $14,000 worth of health insurance policy the retirement system value for the employee is about 14% of that $102,000 FICA and then the other things dental workers comp life insurance kind of a tiny little part of that. So I'll show them the slide to determine does this represent the normal cost or is it include the amortization. That is the percentage of the total comp package that the employee is seeing the value on contour of time and so it's not, it's not the 21.4%. Which I know you know about. Yeah. And then on the next page. If you so the percentage of 67 to 102 with the kind of same percentage hold for other, other positions I mean it's, you add approximately the same percentage to the to get the total compensation package. Somebody with a lower salary will have a higher percentage of health insurance in the total comp because you get the same health insurance plan value no matter if you make $150,000 a year or if you make, you know $40,000 a year again the same value of health insurance the retirement will change because that's a percentage based on a percentage of your salary, but the health insurance benefit is going to get become a bigger percentage as your salary lowers the rest of them won't shift around very much. The prior question. The 14,000 change for retirement. 21.4% that's the state retirement contribution in that way 20. 20.4% that but that's, that's as a percentage of the pay, not as a percentage of the total costs and take 40,000 by the 67,000, and that's different. Okay. And the next page on their page and just puts the numbers out there for you on a different table and gives it in a bigger picture so it's talking about the total cost of payroll for state government the total pay the total comp and benefits for fiscal year 2020 so that's a, you know, $781 million when you're talking about compensation for state employees in that, in that timeframe for classified employees right. Where's that total comp. Yes, that's classified. Most of the workforce report which is is looks at data on a classified workforce. It's a larger percentage of workforce and it's a good, it's a good approximation. So some of the government employees that do participate in the defined benefits pension plan. They have a choice of some also participate in the defined contribution plan instead. And actually the next slide kind of talks about this this is the requirement retirement contribution allocation as a percentage of pay. So this is what Eric was asking about. The share in fiscal year 21 was 21.4% of pay, and then do mostly demographic changes that percentage to continue to meet our obligations for the paying down the liability of our retirement plan moved up this year it's going to be 25.5%. That's a big increase over the past year. And you can see also the employee share for the defined benefits contribution is 6.65% of their salary and that will continue to be for fiscal year 20, and also, oh, there's no typo Mike. Thank you. That's a fiscal year 22 also moving over there so it's all typo there. Right now, I think you probably know this already but the other, the other cost for retirement we call the OPEB which is primarily the employee, the retiree health insurance, which we pay for now on a pay go basis so that number in is in that 25.5% is part of that state share that we're paying is to pay for the health care for people who have already retired. If we were going to start paying down that liability and just do a very simple amortization schedule for our OPEB liability is, it would be moving another 9% on top of that payroll to pay that down. I'll give you a magnitude of that. Also on this graph it's just showing you that that the percentage of payroll costs allocated to retirement has been increasing over time and it took a past couple years.  Also here I just wanted to talk about the other two retirement options we have we have the defined compensation plan which is an option that exempt employees can choose. So the state share for that is 11% there's no liability there because the state pays into it and then once they pay that it goes into a fund that's pretty much managed by the employee and the employee share for that is 2.85%. And all employees have the opportunity to participate in the deferred compensation plan which they can save up to a lot of money there. And they can choose before tax or after tax. So that's another good way for to save for retirement there's no state match to that, but it's still a good savings tool. Did you say that some workers have the option to be in the defined benefit program that can choose to be in the defined benefit first being in the contribution plan. I'm exempt employees have an opportunity when they're hired to choose which plan they want to go into. So I'm an exempt employee I was appointed in 2017 I had the opportunity to change to choose if I want to go with the defined benefit plan and plan or the fine contribution. Based on my age. I have retirement savings from previous employment is a point of position so I serve at the pleasure of the governor. There's a lot of transfers into your terms. I felt for me the best plan to go would be the, the defined compensation plan rather than a defined benefit plan. Once you make a decision, is there the opportunity to change or is it. It's a one time, you get to choose. Yes, one time. Right. No. So if I had a different job if I. If I took one of their jobs in a competitive process, of course, I would have that choice again. I could choose to go into the defined benefit plan. I just have one more follow-up. Sure. When employees are presented with this choice, what type of resources are there for them to access so they may be aware of these choices? Choosing retirement plans in general is really scary for most people, so I'm just curious about the education that's provided to workers. Yeah, it's a smaller percentage of a workforce, and as I said, those employees that make that choice are either about 42% of those are attorneys, and a lot of them are appointed officials. We do have an exempt employee handbook, and of course the retirement office is always available to talk, and they have retirement counselors, and we also have our partner potential that also can talk to employees about what to choose. There's a certain amount of time it takes that you have to make that decision. Okay. So what is that? Can you? Right. And that's actually, that's one, you know, that's actually what I do. I max it out. We have that on all the visa data. And all the visas reported talks about the number of people that are enrolled in that plan. I just don't have it at the top of my head. Thank you. It's always good to have the treasure in the room. I just had a good question that I missed as you were talking about, you were talking about at the top left of that page, the 25.5%. And then you said, if you included the OPEB, was that often inspired? So the way, yes. So the way, I think this may be the same for the, I don't know how it works for the teacher system, but for the state employee system, there's no, we're paying for all of the retiring benefits out of the current costs of the government. So this, the OPEB portion in there, there's, you know, that is the amount we're collecting. So we're paying for all of that. So we're paying for all of that. We're paying for all of that. As a percentage of payroll, part of that goes basically directly to the treasurer's office and they use that to pay for the retiree healthcare. Which goes back to HR. We're taking extra 9%. Right. We'd have to have another 9% of payroll to start paying that down. And we've been, you know, that's one of the things that. That. That's the way we're paying for all of the. The benefits contracts, the four bucks of liability and, and that's one of those. That would, that. If we were to fund it the same way. We are funding the ADAC. We would, that's what we would have. That's, that was how we would do it. That's not the way. We necessarily would do it as a state. That's. What percentage of example, if you were to fund it? You know, Okay. What percentage of example employees take part in the deferred compensation plan versus the defined plan. Compensation plan I mean it's a, I mean they have two options as I understand that they can do the defined benefit where they can do the defined compensation plan I was just interesting what percentage choose to find compensation versus defined benefit. Okay, I was just using the terms. DC versus DB. That's the percentage I'm interested. Okay, so and it would only be a percentage of the 642. Right. Yeah. Yeah, no I understand that just, just intrigued. But there are, there are some classified employees in that plan, correct if they've been in, if they started an exempt service, they could potentially remain in the defined contribution plan. They'd have a balance, right. And they wouldn't have to be put into defined benefit. It's still increased but they could, if they went back and became a classified employee, they could still, they'd still keep their DC plan, right. No, if they're an exempt employee and they just chose the DC plan but then became a classified employee that only would be able to participate in the DB that still have a balance in the DC. It seems to remain in the DC, or that's right. None. DC balance. Okay, along with their years of service. So, because you're only the employee share in the defined contribution is only 2.85% that's all the employees are paying, where if they were participating in the defined benefits plan the whole time, they'd be paying 6.65%. That's the amount of the salary. Can you make the assumption that the people who are on the defined contribution plan because they started as exempt employees are probably at a higher pay scale than the average salary. Probably, if you look at the salary for exempt employees versus the salaries of classified employees the exempt salary average salary is higher so probably but we don't, I don't have the number. The next slide is moving toward recruitment and retention of employees. We talk about the state of Vermont value proposition. And these are just some of the things that employees get in return for what they bring to the organization. So, when they work for a state of Vermont, oftentimes we are a stable employer so we. So that might appeal to somebody who is looking for stable employment. And actually I'm going to turn. So the value proposition. This isn't the concept that we use a lot of capital acquisition work in terms and marketers also use value propositions and so it's how you define given what we're going to give to someone. A workforce. And so this is, this is an official this is just a constant. So, the stable employment is, is a big drop for us. As I said, we're not going to go out of business, we're not going to be modeled by cooperation. And so people value that kind of stability of our organization are attracted to. So that's something that we can use in terms of our outreach to find new employees. And this is a huge part. So people are mission driven, who want to be public employees serving the launchers are attracted to our. We use that extensively. See any of the stuff that we do we talk about making a difference and work that matters, and things like that. And there's a significant number of people who drawn to that. So, we generally are at. We do have system salary progression so there's steps in our plan, but highly competitive pay is not strong part of our proposition. We're not going to get big bonuses that we need to receive sales expectations. We're not part of the opportunity, something, again, part of being a large organization, we have the opportunity to training development, people can move battery in the organization. And there are people that started from the fairly lower level positions and become commissioners. So you can definitely build a career with us by moving around. And taking advantage of the training element. That's a very strong. The feather on chapters are benefits that are the strongest things that we have. So we have fabulous medical benefits plan. We have high deductible local pay plan covers all sorts of things and market right now generally which are fine. I deductible plan. You know, HSA was great because I'm making great investment options but we can't do that but it's attracted to a lot of people who are benefits so our recruit really plug the benefits and sometimes those benefits will upset the page. So we actually have calculated our website where you can plug in the numbers of what your page going to be and how much the state is contributing to your benefit plan. Often the numbers level out a little bit and so you might take a little bit of a cut, but you're going to get much better benefit plan for the camera. So that is one of the things that's just really stands out for us. And of course in retirement, every organization is going to have this value proposition. It is an important part of our overall value proposition, but it's far more complicated because a DB is attractive to present people who really like stable employer plan on spending a career with us. But you find that you don't know how much you're going to put in, you know how much you're going to have to work. So people who like that stability are really attracted to the fund. We don't have other demographics. It varies by occupational group. So some occupation very it's a much stronger part of the value proposition. So troopers for instance, that's a really big part. Generally correct law enforcement officers will be transferred to another department. And so part of that work is, you know, also work with the purpose of streaming work for law enforcement. So part of the thing that mandatory retirement, five and a pension. And so it's very important that application. There are other organizations who maybe aren't as focused on that.  There are also generational differences. So we know, for instance, the Millennials, take care of us. Gen Z tend to travel. The statistics are moving around for three or five years, changing jobs may hold six or seven different jobs in their career. So to them, they may not be quite as attractive as something that might have more credibility. So, in terms of recruitment, whatever happens in terms of change. We'll change our value proposition. And what we're trying to market to potential. One of the things that occurred and it's a very interesting lens look through this whole space is value proposition. And I think it's very different for improvement. These are new people looking at this is this proposition. For current employees, they already have something in their mind about what that proposition was when they came. And I think that's what conceptually you've heard a lot of people say, well, that's not a sign on public testimony. But what behind that is in their minds is value proposition. They understood to be a stable employer and understood that they weren't going to be, they weren't going to get rich here. They had great benefits and they had to be stood. That's the business that's creates cognitive dissonance and that they're like confused about why can that change, but a new employee is going to look at this and evaluate. Does it work for me. And so, so there's a difference between whether it's going to affect our ability to prove versus our ability to retain current business. I have a question and maybe I'll get to this later. But yeah, I know in education nationally we're facing a crisis on a teacher shortage and getting teachers to stay, you know, more than 50% are right around 50% leave profession in the first five years of teaching. And in Vermont is catching up to us that the teacher shortage, and it's going to be a really serious problem. I'm wondering for the state of Vermont hiring. I have you seen, you know, the number of applications for positions coming in what is that been looking like over the past couple of years. Fantastic. Before we jump to the next slide. I don't know if this is in the workforce report but do we have a sense of how employees connect with this diet proposition. And this makes a lot of sense to me but I just I just wonder how different groups of employees gravitate towards different parts and I just don't know. I didn't see when you were talking about it as it relates to troopers however I didn't see Mike shaking. We were asked about our positions. I've been doing this for 30 plus years. We have right at the beginning of this week we have 674 jobs. That's more than I've ever seen before. 255 are posted. The rest of that number are in the selection process. And statewide our biggest rate is 12%. And that's extremely, usually we are around 7%. So we're, we have a lot of data. And seeing the tens competition and fewer little things down here but the average number of qualified applicants per reposition for job only has dropped 25% in the last year and FY20 was a difficult year and now we're seeing fewer and fewer qualified applicants. And it's not just us, it's how we talk to colleagues in the private sector, it's all over the place, it's all over the country. People are having a hard time. They have jobs, drive down the street and every other business have to help once. Everybody's looking for talent. And so the number of requisitions that have five fewer qualified applicants, it's done 42%. We're approaching a third of our job. And that 674 number is large because often they don't find anybody after it closes and they have to repost at the real. So it's building up. Gradually, you know, hiring, but it's, it's really, really difficult. I guess if you have information on the number of people that are flying, what state they're flying from, where are they living in these Vermont residents or these state residents. I don't have specific person. Yeah, it's hard to to mine our database because it doesn't necessarily mean that's where we are. I'm looking at your sampling of hard to fill jobs and I'm saying what's left. I almost said everything. But you did ask for some of the same thing, but anything in it is very, very hard to find right now, especially things like security cybersecurity. And we'll get the turnover a little bit here, but our entry level of emergency. Turn over on the entry level. Last year, pretty hard to run. I think true verse. Very difficult nurses. Food service workers that are institutional settings mental health specialists. The art counselors that are required to do that. And services workers from social workers. correctional officers. Without the same crisis staff. They just instituted a $1,000 sign on us for me, a bunch of different classes and great concern. We are working as hard as we can ramp up to have enough people. That's the difference between the $1,000 sign. There's a different study. Because they can't find. They can go to McDonald's and buy five bucks more. Okay, I just have a quick question. You're the department of human resources. So how do you go about developing the other divisions and stuff when they're trying to ramp up interest and maintain and also attract people to the jobs. Do you have, do you encourage those different HR departments to have programs and different outreach. Is that part of your. Our division. Recruitment for all centralized recruiting for all departments. So that's like troopers have kind of their own unit that does recruiting, but all other jobs go through us. So we've worked directly with the hiring manager to. Develop a strategy. They're getting a process to say, you know, where, where do you think we can find people that we develop a social media strategy. Other types of outreach that we do using their own networks and specialty sites. So if it's finance. And so we, we customize a strategic kind of outreach for each job. We work closely with the parents to like. Yes. Turnover. We got turnover. I think, I think somewhat the turnover charts table 34 or the next ones are turnover separations and historical look of employee turnover and retirement eligibility. I think we can go through those, maybe relatively, maybe not, but if you look at table 34. This is typical for our workforce report and you just notice that overall turnover for fiscal year 21. Additional information that's not in our workforce report, but in 2020 turnover was down and this is. I think that people were valuing stability during the pandemic. And then as we were coming out of it, that's when we start to see turnover, and much of that is related to retirement. But during the, you know, in the heat of the crisis, I think people were, you know, even if they were eligible to retire, they're kind of, they were staying. And then, and then they said, well, you know, maybe it's time for me to maybe it's time for me to go and I think there was certainly some people so concerned about pensions being changed and that maybe help inform some of their decision but we it was a high retirement year fiscal year 21 was a higher retirement year low falling a low year on 2020 similar to fiscal year 2019 was one of the highest years we had had. It's going to show on another page but absent a retirement incentive incentive so they are pretty high retirement years those two years. So please just talk about people who leave the workforce and the reason they're leaving. So, whether it's voluntary termination or involuntary termination or retirement. So all those graphs are kind of broken out by this way and then we talk about the number of employees on table 35 and the percentage. And then the historical turnover going back to 1998 on table 31. Yep, they these all have were updated with 21 numbers. When you're looking at the overall turnover with people leaving for retirement and voluntary termination certain exit interview process where people talk about the reasons why they're leaving the workforce or is there any sort of survey data you have where people are are marking why they're leaving the workforce and if so, do you have that over the past few years and are there changes in people's answers. We don't have a common place to store exit energy data. So the departments, many departments do collect that information and use that as part of ways to maybe improve their working conditions there. And I know corrections has been doing taking their exit interview is very seriously and the commissioner, resolve the exit interviews to see just to see how they're doing and why people are leaving. It's important. It's a good tool that you can use to see why I think a lot of, we think we know a lot of the reasons why people leave certain jobs depending on what it is if it's a pay or if it's a, if it's a morale problem. It's, we don't really that surprised I don't think an exit interviews. People say, Hey, I got a new job and I'm getting paid more or they usually tell you why they're leaving anyway. And one thing that is really good to do is, if you're really trying to do employer attention to stay interviews and talk to those employees before they're leaving, have conversations with them about their careers and their career paths and what's you know what do you think you envision you're working here in five years. Why and why not, you know, and try to get them to think about what it would take for them to say and what career path they want to follow so it's, it's a very it's a more individualized approach, but it that can really help towards employer attention. Is that happening. Not nearly as much as we would like it to. And then we've got just protected retirement eligibility by fiscal year. So, clearly, as you move forward in time, more and more employees, if they stay in the state government would be eligible to retire, and that's kind of what that's showing. And we show the numbers there too. And that's really good for workforce planning if you know if you estimate from your department like a certain percentage of those eligible to retire will eligible will be eligible will retire, then you, you know you can work on succession planning and what your recruitment might needs might be going forward. I asked a question about single 31 talking a little bit in our task force about what happens in districts offer retirement incentives or buyouts or whatever you want to call them from district to district and how that affects the pension system. It looks like also the state has provided a couple of times for that to happen to and I wonder what those incentives were and why were they offered and how was that determined. Harold Harold Harold or Michael maybe could talk about those. Before my time history. Michael can have a different fact that $15,000 set it was offered and get that two different years. The reason for that was to keep the level of work force over and that would seem to only work if you don't allow people with those positions or positions immediately at least. Michael made the ball part of it. I'm not really follow studies. Although we didn't, we didn't keep the positions open. Most of them. That right. Right. Yeah. It was less than a watch. Yeah. Yeah. And the graph that we have, it was like on page five that talks about from 20 2011 to 2020. You can see, you know, in between 2015 to 2016. The number of employees went down a little bit, but then when you look at the next year bounce right back up. So it didn't have, it didn't have that impact if that's, if that was a goal to reduce total payroll costs which I expect it was because you know, we had a revenue. And then when I saw this, I was like, wait, the state did it to themselves. The answers. Yeah. Yes. So to follow up on table 31 that and that thread and probably question really from Michael but I'm thinking about what information the task force needs and was there an analysis done at the time of those as to how would in fact affect the retirement system. I'm wondering if that data is available. Thank you. The money for the incentive though come from the retirement system that came from general fund but question. So, would that be paid out as increasing total salary or would that be separate. So, if they were, you know, had worked part of the year and it's already made $70,000 and that took the restart retirement incentives with that and then boosted their salary. Correct. I just particularly remember that. That's so much. All the different. I think we just have one more slide where Harold crunch some numbers. Talking about. Okay. This is our last line. Well, what I wanted to do was a big down will go down a little bit into the demographic data that we have to try to map some of that to whatever we know about retirement on the HR side. I think I'm going to talk about from now on, in this meeting, the actuaries can and should do the do the work. So, I'm just an ambulance. So I took a look at the biggest potential retirees which is. There's two components to it and I'll get to that in a minute, but I split it by things that one might be interested to look at when you retire. My calculations were eligible to retire. This is data as of the end of that point, who are eligible to retire because of their combination of their age and their service years. Okay. And that was there were 318 of them. The average age was 65 average length of service for 19 years and we're having salaries around $72,000. Then there's a group who have 30 years of service. Essentially, they maxed out their, their 50% benefit. There were 429 of those folks and I'll talk about that in a little bit where I have a suggestion. I'm going to talk about the pension system money, money and employees. Hope the Harold Woodward. Those folks are average ages 60, and that's important when we talk about an open impact later on. They're pretty lengthy like service and average salary, average base salary is $80,000. Then there are some employees who could retire within five years so the top two lines, those people could retire right then. The additional people who could have retired in five years or another 671. Their age is lower than the others. There are services about 22 years and you can see their base salary is around $75,000. And then I took a look at those not eligible to retire within five years, and that's a large group that's over 1500. And their average age is 47 and their average service is 17 years. The additional retired within five years and not eligible to retire within five years are critical groups. So it's important to take a look at that. And then there's the group F asterisk. And I don't know if you can discuss that that's that's that folks who have started after July 2008. So you get a total of around 7600 average age around 4546 like the service 11 and the salaries in the $63,000 range. So if you just looked at that bottom line, you wouldn't have all the detail that's above so I wanted to give you that detail I think that might be usable. Do we get this problem. Do you have this available for all the groups. I don't have it available for the or what you have it for the actual work. Well, these, that's the only groups left with a one person. Yes, could you get that far. Only at the average. Let's go back to a suggestion based on the second line down and I don't have a handout for so I'll have to go down and try to be pretty careful about that with the second group down the eligible max benefit 30 years of service. You go back to the presentation we gave you, it shows that of the eligible folks who could retire only 20 to 25%. What I did is I took a look at those people that they retired during the year of that point. So I took a look at them specifically said, what if they didn't retire. Okay, so it's been retired. By the way, their average final compensation was around 5000. I mean their average pay at the end was 85,000 their average final compensation is always a little bit lower average over the last three years is around 82,000. If they did not retire. The state, the retirement system would have continued to get the 21.4%. They would have continued to get 6.65%, which is around $6,000 under running. They would have avoided paying out the pension, which at max is 41,000, and they wouldn't have to pay the health insurance, which would be about 12,000. We add those up to get about $77,000. If the retirement system gained by not having those people retired. So what's the incentive to play to not retire. If you have the employee not pay that 6.65%. That's about $6,000. We're not going to get that full amount, but that tax would still be considered money for them to not retire. The net to the net to the retirement system would be around $71,000. If you just took a quarter of that number, the number is about 226 people. It's about 112 people. If you took a quarter of that number, so don't even assume all of them have to. It took a quarter of them. I would say the retirement system about $2 million. Now, I'm not an actuary so there's a caveat. One of the benefits to the system is by doing this you're not increasing their average final compensation. You're just allowing the person to not have to pay into the system.   So the health insurance amount that is avoided by retirement is this pretty sizable amount. And it also would allow the system to allow the person to get one year closer to Medicare, Medicare costs. The health insurance is maybe third, if not less than the act. This data is based on the 21.4% that was in effect in FY 20. Now you know it's 25.5% in FY 22. So the savings, if you applied that would be more like 75% 2.1 or something like that. Not all employees would take the full maximum 50%. The survivorship has been discussed in this committee but they can take less if they want to save their spouse to continue their benefit after they die. So this is definitely an actual thing. My guess is it may all sort of come out and wash the same amount of money. I don't know. Keeping these employees will admittedly continue cost of state fair amount of money on the employer side. That's a suggestion for a small. But yeah, not only would you say that it's in the Senate for the employee to stay longer and with aging demographics and the changing demographics so the baby goers are aging out of workforce and there's not the younger people coming in to fill that workforce. It helps the state couldn't potentially help the state with with just our work. So it's just it's it's one idea of there's, you know, many, many scenarios that could have a week just this is something that we just think it would be worth the committee, looking at those types of things as well and some information on that just to help to help with some of the decision making plan going forward. I just want to thank you for that because when we have the presentation last time. I was thinking thinking a lot about how can we get people in Senate to stay and it could work in the teacher system to I think I really appreciate your. Yeah, I think I could save money on the old website pension side and the employee gets an acronym. Many people retire and then go and get another job, but if you love your job that you have now.  It's worth exploring. Thank you. Thank you as we go forward we may end up having more questions. Oh, of course, report because it is pretty illuminating. Thank you. Oh, okay. Okay, so we're going to jump to some demographics on the teachers side. Is that you. I didn't recognize you. Didn't recognize you so I thought maybe. Okay. So, while, while we're switching chairs here. We'll just acknowledge that our way of collecting demographic information on the teacher workforce is, is slightly different because the teacher workforce is made up of dozens hundreds of different employers, as opposed to the state workforce where we have one HR department so. We can just hand them. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's jump. I believe you're Mark, hey, I am Mark H. Yes. Okay, great. And I am the director of benefit programs. I've been in that position for a little over 20 years. And I'm a former school teacher and interests of full disclosure and member of the remarks that teaches retirement system. I think that before you start that, because you weren't here when we introduced yourself and I think it would be helpful if you knew, because we are all appointed by different entities. Thank you. It might be helpful for you to know where we're coming from. That would be helpful. If you want it. Good to see you as well. And John rights for not any. Yes, yes. Jeanette White appointed by the committee committees. Sarah Cleveland hands us appointed by the speaker. John again, appointed by the speaker. BSE and try your troops association. Thank you. I should also add to my introduction that I am here today strictly in my capacity is the trust administrator a trust administrator the Vermont Education Health Initiative, the high, which provides health benefits to school districts, and to visitors. When I'm in this building presenting about the high matters I'm accompanied by my colleague, Bobby Joe sauce but as you will see in the introductory statement in the document that is in front of you she is taking in much deserved vacation this week and so I am running solo. And I also want to say that the numbers that I'm going to review with you today are exclusively from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont. I had initially attempted to fuse numbers between visitors and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, and discovered that the difference between them were quite negligible, and it required a lot more narrative to explain the differences then you probably have time to hear about, and that I could probably make clear for you so there is a line here however that says certain figures were provided by visitors when I made the decision on the numbers I neglected to delete that sentence. I will do so after this hearing and send you a clean copy and a correct copy of this document. So, I was asked to provide very nice prep conversation with representative Copeland hands this aggregate data on the number of school employees and dependents in the active workforce who are enrolled in the high benefit plans and the number of employees and their dependents enrolled in the high health benefit plans through vistas. Those who are not yet Medicare eligible and those who are enrolled in Medicare, and you will see at the bottom of this page two tables that lay out those numbers for each of those populations respectively. So, in respect to the active enrollees and their dependence we have in total as of July one 33,393 school employees and their dependence in active V high benefit plans and you can see here the breakout between employees subscribers and dependence in the V high benefit plans. So when we talk about when we talk about subscribers and dependence together we refer to them usually as covered lives. So there are 33,393 covered lives through the active workforce that get their health insurance through their school district and thus through behind. There are 14 people for whom Medicare is primary, even though they are active employees. And that's unusual because if you have employer sponsored coverage, and you are Medicare eligible but just a working. If you enroll in Medicare it's usually supplemental, the employer coverage is primary. In this case, it's primary for the small number of people, because some of them have disabilities, or they have end stage renal disease, which qualifies them for primary care coverage, even though they are continuing to work. And then there are some corporate implications here as well that allows Medicare to be primary. If we turn to the visitors population, looking at in retiree enrollee and dependence, you will see at present Medicare enrollees 7,622 that is subscribers and dependence combined. Medicare doesn't offer two person plans, the way active workforces are entitled to them or have access to them. So if you're the spouse of a Medicare retiree investors, you have a single Medicare plan if you will, your spouse, the retiree has a single Medicare plan. 7,622 enrollees independent Medicare eligible for the non Medicare significantly smaller number, just under 1100 for a total of 8,720. I want to speak to the volatility if I can of the numbers in the active workforce, volatility is probably not the right word here. What I want to say is, on the month to month basis these numbers can vary pretty dramatically they can rise or fall upwards to 300 in the space of a month. So for example, in July one of 2020. There were 35,000 active enrollees active school employees in behind. At the end of open enrollment in December of 2020. Approximately 33,300 people. So these numbers can really vary for the reasons you would expect people are born people died they get married they adopt children. Their children go on or off the health insurance plans people are hired, people's employment terminates for various reasons. So there's a lot of flux or can be. And this is a consequence of speaking with representative Copeland hands this I went back and I looked at the average number of members in the active workforce over a four year period 2017 to 2020. And what I found is that the average was within a span of 34,300 and 34,600. So when you look at the numbers on average over the course of the year at least for those last four years we haven't seen a lot of change, but on a month to month basis that is not unusual. So why don't I pause there for a moment and see if you want to talk about these numbers or have any questions about. I'm sorry, Andrew, the 13,960 is that including ESP service that just go on professional contracts. That's every school employee teacher that's a good question teacher support professional administrator in any capacity unionized and non unionized. They're less than 65 and I get out of school from that. Well if you have any other questions about the numbers. You can. Yeah, please. And we talked about the active workforce. Yes. Yes. Correct. It's every school employee regardless of job classification who meets the eligibility threshold for coverage. The elected bargaining agreement or their local individual contract, or the terms of statewide bargaining. That is correct. In fact, with a clue large. Okay, again please feel free to come back to these numbers at any point. And if there's additional numbers you need from behind, or from behind vistas. Michael and I've worked together a lot of years and I worked with his exceptional retirement specialists. Those numbers are needed, and you need to get more granular with the police let us know we'll be happy to watch. So on the flip side of this front page. It's really helpful for you to have a sense of the health insurance plans that enrollees investors can choose both prior to Medicare eligibility and once they are enrolled in Medicare. So for those approximately 1100 individuals and visitors who are not yet enrolled in Medicare are eligible for Medicare. There are three primary plans that are available to them. Here the Vermont Health Partnership, the $300 comprehensive plan in the j y. Now these plans were available to most school employees in virtually all school districts, prior to January one of 2018. When the high transition to four new plans high deductible health plans predominantly, at which point, these plans were no longer available to school districts. But they remained options for the Vermont State Teachers retirement system for the non Medicare population. The Vermont Health Partnership VHP is a managed care product was by far the most popular plan for active school employees before it was no longer available at the end of 2017. The 300 comprehensive plan has exactly the same benefits and networks by networks I mean the doctors you can see the hospitals you can get care at etc. Same pharmacy networks and benefits. It's identical in networks, and it is identical in benefits to the j y plan. The two plans are identical. No difference between them except how cost sharing instruction so that $300 in the title references that $300 deductible upfront first dollar that the employee or patient is responsible for, for all medical services except preventive services that come at no cost under federal regulations or law. There's an additional $300 of co insurance annually, in addition to that deductible for single tier coverage. So what that means is in a calendar year for this particular plan worst case financial scenario. The enrollee has an out of pocket liability maximum of $600. That is just for medical care. This plan also has a three tier pharmacy program $5 co pay for generics $25 for preferred medications $45 for brand name medications, and that is true for the j y plan as well. So, if I have a single tier coverage. I'm looking as I said a $600 maximum out of pocket liability in the calendar year. If I have two person coverage or family coverage. I'm looking at a $1200 maximum out of pocket liability under the $300 comprehensive in the Vermont health partnership. All of the services I think actually all of them come with some kind of co pay. I think it's $15 for primary care $25 for specialty $15 for telemedicine $50 for an ambulance service $25 I believe for maternity visits, etc. And it has the same pharmacy benefit as the 300 com $5 for generic $25 for preferred $45 for brand name medications. And it operates within a slightly tighter medical network but not significantly so in the 300 comp from on help partnership requires you to designate a primary care physician. Those plans were introduced I believe in the mid to late 1990s.  The j y plan has a much longer lineage goes back to I think the late 70s, early 80s. It was initially the j y a plan, and it became the j y b plan, and then it was the j y plan it changed a little bit with each evolutionary move. It to like the Vermont health partnership services require most services require a co payment a modest co payment of $15 or $20. There is a deductible I believe for medical durable equipment of approximately $100. I think there's a deductible and coinsurance to for private duty nursing, but for the medical services that most people need our regular basis it to is a co payment. It's essentially an old style indemnity plan. And as you can see, the number of covered lives in it is quite low it has been shrinking pretty dramatically over the last 10 years. And I think there's a couple reasons for this first is the premium is significantly higher than it is for the 300 comprehensive plan. But it does not offer additional benefits, nor expanded access to medical care. And over the course of the last 20 years, I have been working with the retirement specialists at vistas to sponsor and present retirement workshops on the benefit plans and pension services and pension plans of vistas. It's really stressed over those 20 years that people be as informed as they can be about why they're making the choices they do between health insurance plans. It's very common for folks to presume that a higher premium means more benefits or better benefits, or expand in networks and that is simply not the case here for a number of historical reasons we don't need to get into. And what we have seen over time is the benefit of that education, both through the workshops to the very fine work of the vistas retirement specialist, and also through V highs educational efforts independently. And I think folks have realized that you know what I can get really good care to the 300 comp or the VHP plans and pay significantly less. And thus we've seen a lot of migration at a one. Mark, process question. You mentioned that all, you know that active teachers to be in my health partnership now there's something else when a teacher retires today then choose one of these options. That is correct. So if I'm in the gold CDHP plan now offered by the high words, where most active employees independence are enrolled. When it comes time to retire and this is something we stress a lot at the retirement workshops. I will have to apply for or enroll in through the application process through vistas one of these three plans, if I'm not yet eligible for Medicare. So every active employee is going to be in a different health insurance plan once they transition to vistas assuming they elect health insurance to vistas and they're eligible for a premium subsidy. So they don't assume anything that they have Medicare, that means they purchased currently. Now they don't necessarily purchase the year that they plan or whatever. Those are the two that they have. So that is actually a very nice transition to the next part of this document. Thank you for that week. So, to the point that was just made, when I become eligible for Medicare when a retiree is eligible for Medicare and enrolls and they're going to stay in vistas for the health insurance. And most transition from a non Medicare status to a Medicare eligibility status with vistas, I need to be enrolled in part a need to be enrolled in part B and I need to show documentation of that to the retirement system. Without that documentation, I am not entitled to the premium subsidy as a retiree, the premium subsidy requires documentation that you have enrolled in part A and part B that is mandatory. Okay. The question about party, which is the pharmacy benefit a little more complicated because if you look at the first two plans for the Medicare enrollees and vistas. So both of those plans are 300 comp and the J. Y. They're the Medicare supplement version of the two plans I just spoke to. So now Medicare is primary. And the J wine to 300 comp transition to supplemental status and they, if you will wrap around Medicare provides supplemental services and benefits to Medicare. So the need for part A and part B, they have embedded our X coverage, the same R X formulary benefits and cost sharing arrangements in the non Medicare enrollee plans are also any supplemental plans again built right into the plans. So, if I as a retiree elect the 300 comprehensive plan as you can see the great majority do, then I don't need to shop for a Medicare D plan. So if, however, I choose the Vista 65 supplemental plan. This is a standard medic comp plan. It's been offered by vistas for many years. It's gone through some different name changes along the way. But this plan covers medically. Everything Medicare covers. So if you've ever seen the Medicare and you booklet. If you're eligible now your role in Medicare it comes in the mail you can download it. It's over 100 pages. And it's devoted primarily to all the medical benefits that Medicare provides that's the bulk of the narrative in the document. And every medical service that Medicare provides vistas 65 is supplemental to it does not however, provide R X coverage, not even an aspirin. So you're in the vistas 65 supplemental plan. You're going to have very comprehensive Medicare sanctioned care for all of your medical services Part A Part B Part As you probably know, we're talking about hospital services primarily in patient. And for Part B, generally we talk about physician services and and hospital outpatient services. So then you need to shop for Medicare Part B. And I recall when the Medicare Party program rolled out in around 2003 respectfully it was a mess. I was inundated with calls from members who were trying to figure it out for themselves or we're trying to figure it out for their parents, which meant I had to try to figure it out. And I have to confess, not very good at it. The system fortunately today is much easier to navigate and to understand and Medicare's got CMS has gotten a whole lot better at counseling and providing resources. And you can find the Medicare D plan for as low as $11 a month. I don't know what you get for $11 a month in pharmacy can't be all that much but these approximately 1300 people who are enrolled in this is 65. In my experience tend to be individuals who have very good health, and they have no or negligible. And so it is a very smart move on their part to enroll in this particularly for people who have single coverage only because the VISTAs subsidy premium subsidy for single coverage covers the entire cost of this premium. So for folks in the VISTAs 65 and single coverage, no deduction is coming from their pension for premium cost. They are on the hook themselves for whatever Medicare D costs that they purchase on their own. And I have to say that first workshop I ever did for VISTAs exams from V high but I was with a VISTAs crowd. And there was a 80 year old woman in the audience who had the forerunner of this plan. I said, ma'am you understand there's no Rx coverage with this plan she says young man I don't need drugs. And it is a lesson that has been driven home to me on any number of occasions in other workshops or in private meetings with members or retirees and so for these 1300 folks. This plan works just fine and remember to unlike the pension election for retiree. The health insurance election of the district retiree that first choice you make when you retire at either of these different divisions, whether you're non Medicare or Medicare, you're not locked in for life. You can move to a different health insurance plan over the course of your retired career retired career that's an unusual phrase retired life has provided you have been in the plan you elected for at least 12 months. So those 1260 people there may come a time when their Medicare D needs are much greater than when they initially enrolled in Medicare D. And when open enrollment comes around, they can choose to move from VISTA 65 to the 300 comp or the jy supplement, where the Rx benefit is embedded. And there's a copay structure that will probably be more affordable for them. Eric, I mean, Andrew, please. Yeah. So you can once you've elected one plan, you can change the plan that is right. Okay. And then another question not really related to that insurance is definitely not my specialty. It's helpful for me to always wrap my mind around. But I'm curious what would happen, you know, there's lots to talk about health care reform at a state level or national level. Senator Sanders is talking about decreasing Medicare age down to 60 or 50. What happens to school employee costs for health insurance, if that were to change or funding. Maybe, maybe you're not. No, that is a great question. I will confess I've not yet tried to cost that out and nor has V hi. I would see a national study published in health affairs that if I'm remembering correctly, projected that lowering eligibility to Medicare to age 60 I think it was would save the country nationally in the neighborhood of 300 billion dollars. So tell me on that I can go back and look if it's of interest to you, but there's no question that if people had access to Medicare sooner. Employers and employees would probably see a pretty significant reduction in costs, because so much of the cause would then be shifted to the federal tax base. Something we can take control of. Any more questions. Final comment if I may. I was I was going to bring you all a copy of the visitors benefit booklet. No life is complete without one. However, I discovered that I did not have enough copies in my office, which is a little embarrassing. The booklet is now actually being, you know, as annually re looked at again, if so I provided the link here to the booklet, if you'd like to sort of dive into the health plans, more detail and see how those cost sharing structures are arranged and the benefits, they're associated with, and I can also provide you with a benefit booklet link if you'd like to the active plans as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. What is your pleasure here. You need to take a short break, or you want to just dive into the man. Mainlets committee discussion now about what we talked about earlier and about what other information we need responses to the treasures. I think we should take a 10 minute break, and then come back and, you know, the discussion points that we listed on the agenda were just sort of our best guess at what people might want to talk about or, or that we'd like to prompt people to think about but we can certainly just come back and should lock off some of that time to talk about the agenda for next meeting.


And um let me now give just a high level overview of interfaces for VR, which will be the main subject for the final lectures. Interfaces for virtual reality. So, I would like to give some high level categories. Um there is a nice book called 3D User Interfaces by Bowman et al um which you might find interesting reading. So, I just want to give some general categories and and we will talk about these in more detail next time. So, locomotion very important in virtual reality, which is moving moving oneself from place to place. And we have talked about the issues here of this vestibular mismatch with vision. So, you would like to move around you would like to move in a much larger world in virtual reality, then you are moving in the physical space right. Because if you have to match them perfectly one to one, then you need an enormous physical space to to to hold and preserve entirely for your virtual reality experience, which is not feasible in many cases most cases. Um also in locomotion is it are you walking in virtual reality? Are you riding a cycle in virtual reality? Um are you riding in a vehicle flying in a in an aircraft or spacecraft? So, there could be vehicles involved in some way or you could be perceiving that you are locomoting using your own natural walking, even though you are not actually walking in the physical world. So, these are possibilities for locomotion. Another general category is manipulation. So, this would correspond to all kinds of things you are reaching into the world um touching, feeling, grabbing maybe grabbing an object, perhaps carrying an object, discarding or dropping an object right. So, all of this interaction with objects in the world, I will put objects here. So, what happens? How do we select objects in the world right? And um what kind of feedback do we need if we want to be able to grab them and manipulate them in some way that is comfortable? I I would be willing to bet that depth perception becomes important right. How far away is that object that I want to grab? So, these are interesting kinds of questions. Um another category is a system control. So, just standard how should menus look? Um how to select in menus? Do we want some kind of windows? In other words, what is the replacement for the desktop right? We have a desktop with windows and icons and we we do our work. Um our smartphones have some sort of version of that with a touch screen. Again we have icons and we open them up and we do various things. Um so, what should the system control look like exactly? How do we interact and just do our work in a virtual reality environment? It took us a long time to get to the type of desktop environments that we have now or or smartphone type environments that we have now. What should that look like for virtual reality? Remains to be seen um even just text editing right. So, how should the text appear? Um readability, comfort, speed things like that. So, if I have um you know fonts all these kind of things. How do I interact with the system um in some comfortable way? For uh social interaction interfaces. So, social interfaces. So, chatting, texting, interacting with people. Um we end up with some difficult um let me put face to face.  So, so so if I want to transport you both to a virtual world I can give you some cartoon character faces let's say. But um what happens to your facial expressions? Well we could try to track them that ends up being expensive. What if there's inaccuracies on that? We could put eye trackers inside and try to track how your eyes are looking. Is that good? Does it work? Does it work well? Or is it kind of creepy and uncanny right? So, so how how how does it look? Um so these are difficult issues in making some kind of social interface. How real does it need to be? What aspects do I need to capture from a human to communicate their emotional state in some reasonable way for social interaction right? So, that maybe a week later when you're done using the interface did you really feel like you were with that person face to face? Or did it feel like some kind of strange cartoon like interface that wasn't quite right? I mean how does it feel? Um well it's not a perfect categorization. So, I just put others down here. Um what else would you like to do? Like for example, um what should the interface look like for a programming environment right? So, I want to have an integrated development environment. I want to write code while sitting in VR. Would that be better than doing it on a screen? I bet it would be one day that could be really amazing, but how should it look? How should it be? I don't know right? Um what if I want to make a tool for a next generation of cinematographers? Cinematography right or CAD design right or CAD computer aided design right? So, just different kinds of applications what should these interfaces look like right? If I want to be able to um edit panoramic movies in some kind of new generation of cinematography what should the tools look like for that? What should the interface be like? If I want to build stuff design things right? Most of um engineering has gone for a very long time dealing with um design from two dimensional drawings right? You start off by drafting on with pencil and paper and then we make three dimensional models, but we're still doing all of that while looking at it on a 2D screen. So, what if you feel immersed in the design in the object that you're making? How should that tool be made? Um you know how should we how should we interact and make that happen right? Do you want to be reaching your arms out and grabbing things and spinning them around? Your arms will get tired after a couple of minutes I would bet. I bet it's cool first a little bit and then after that I bet you don't want to sit there all day designing objects reaching your arms out in space. So, so what are the issues in there? So, a lot of different possibilities um and of course for entertainment there are all kinds of interfaces we might imagine right? What if I want to do street fighting right? And that's that's my application. So, what should the interface be like for that right? So, I maybe want to capture full body motion you may want some force feedback, but maybe not too much otherwise you'll get injured and you might not like that and it depends on what level of realism you like. Um and one general principle here, but before we before we finish for today one interesting thing to think about is that if we're constructing some alternate reality, then I should be able to take any interface that exists in the real world and make a simulated version of it in virtual reality right? So, for example, um maybe I have a candy machine that's some kind of interface I put money in it and candy comes out of it. So, I guess I should be able to make that interface in virtual reality right? I have um an interface for opening doors it's called a doorknob I grab onto a doorknob and maybe I turn it and I open the door right? So, that's an interface. So, I should be able to make simulated versions of interfaces that we have in the physical world in virtual reality and many times that'll be very natural and that might be the thing you want to do because you're trying to maintain the illusion that you're in some new world that's very similar to the physical world has some differences, but you're trying to maintain that illusion and so the interface that's natural for the real world may become natural in this alternate world that you're generating. In some cases maybe it just becomes too physically tiring to simulate that interface all the time and make it in a perfect one to correspond and so there may be no reason to do that you may come up with something much simpler. So, these are the kinds of things to think about and we'll get more into that in the next lecture. Any questions?


I would like to also welcome everyone. We will have an amazing panel where we will talk about starting acts in the OpenRAN context. We have a few great speakers with us. Andy Duncan, OpenRAN, RF and Digital Platform Development Manager at Podophone. Muhammad Gil, who is Vice President, Industry Solutions at Wind River. And John McCready, who is Director of Product Management, RAN, and Private Mobility Solutions at Dell Technologies. So before we jump in and ask some questions to our great panel, let me just tell you a few words about starting acts. It is a fully integrated open source cloud platform that is fine tuned for edge and IoT use cases. The platform creates a fusion between open stack and Kubernetes and many other open source components. And with that, it creates a platform that is capable of running a virtualized, containerized and bare metal workloads and treating them all as first class citizens. The community, as you would kind of assume because of the edge focus, has a high focus and emphasis on security and aspects around zero touch deployment, management and operation. And one of the flagship features of the platform is called the Distributed Cloud Architecture, which provides you with the possibility of a centralized management within the platform when it comes to the central sites and the edge sites. However, it also provides the possibility on the edge sites to run them in an autonomous way, which becomes really important and handy in case connection loss happens between the central side and the edge. And well, let's face it, sometimes it happens, but then the system resynchronizes and the workloads should not really feel any impact because of that connection loss. And when it comes to edge computing, I just talked about connectivity, which is crucial. Without connectivity, we don't really have a true end-to-end edge architecture. And to be able to provide that connectivity, the telecommunication industry has to be the pioneer in the edge computing space, which is what they are doing as we speak. And therefore, it's not really a surprise that StarlingX as an edge platform is really popular in the telecom industry. And as an example to that, we have Vodafone with us today. So I'm really excited to start with Andy and ask a few questions because Vodafone is a leader in OpenRAN. They are having their rollout in the UK currently, which happens to be the first commercial OpenRAN rollout in Europe, which is really, really exciting. And they are using StarlingX as part of their infrastructure. So Andy, I'm turning to you. What are your goals for OpenRAN in the future and what do you expect? How it will affect your business? So we've been working on the OpenRAN platforms now for an excessive five years. It's been a remarkable journey, which I'm glad to say a wide portion of the industry is following us on as well. And it's really looking at how we move from where we are today to drive a more open ecosystem in the provision of the RAN networks to drive more competition within the marketplace, introduce new vendors to that, to support us in our objectives of bringing the very best services to our customers. And as we move into 5G and the deployment expands across our markets, and we see our customers are having much more specific requirements in terms of the services and applications that they wanted to see running. So the flexibility of open source solutions, the community that we see developing those solutions and really helping us to drive innovation, which is critical to meet the demands of our customers, are all very much in line with our core objectives for OpenRAN. So in summary, it's about broadening the ecosystem. It's about accelerating research and development and then really using the community to drive innovation, to deliver the services to our customers. So the synergies there are really strong and we do see now increased support from many vendors and many of the industry open source communities to really focus on OpenRAN and deliver the type of products that we need. That sounds amazing. And kind of looking a bit into how the community and the platform like StartingX can help you. I would like to just go and take a closer look at the technology side a little bit. So what are some of the biggest technical challenges that you have faced when it comes to OpenRAN and how does StartingX help you to overcome them? So it's, you know, we're coming from a very, very high baseline. You know, the proprietary platforms that we deliver today to our customers, you know, are clearly world-class platforms delivering services at a very high standard. So, you know, we have to work across this new ecosystem, working with vendors really to bring the OpenRAN platform up to that level and, you know, back to the points earlier really, it's about that flexibility. It's about the desire to have that broader vendor community delivering and contributing to the overall solution. And the key things that we're seeing today really is about driving scalability. You know, of the 20 plus networks that we run globally today, it's probably fair to say that no two networks is ever the same. You know, many of those networks have evolved over the last 20 years. They have various legacy transmission implementations, the infrastructure is often distributed. And that's one of the critical things for us. We need a platform that fundamentally follows a standard blueprints so that we can replicate that effectively across many markets. But we want one that is both scalable and flexible. And that's where, you know, it's helped us make the decisions to support our initial market deployments. The UK is a very good example of where that's happening now as we speak. You know, as we were saying about the customers really, it's about now needing to be agile and efficient to meet the demands of our customers delivering those new services. And ensuring that the platform that we deploy today can expand and evolve as our network requirements will do as we move from 5G technology which we're only just starting to roll out today and then into the future 6G and beyond that. So we want a platform that is open, efficient, scalable and agile. And at the moment we think that we're seeing all of these attributes in this sort of open source community and enabling to meet the requirements that we have, which in itself probably leads us on to one of the bigger challenges is that we're used to taking solutions and products from single vendors in the past. And what we're having to do now is generally we're taking best in class solutions but we have to integrate those back into one common and single platform. Technically the components are all working really very well but as you bring different vendors together matching our target blueprints for the first markets and as we say the UK being one of those we're having to spend time now really working on the interoperability, the integration of the subcomponents and ensuring that the platform that we deliver at the end of the day is one that meets and hopefully exceeds our customer's expectations. So it's about getting it right at the moment and just ensuring that it does exactly that. Amazing, thank you for these great insights. And I would like to just kind of follow up on that and turn over to Muhammad and kind of take the vendor perspective a little bit as well. So Muhammad, what are the benefits that you are seeing that then deliver customers are getting from StartingX? Thank you. So been in the operator shoes for a long time. I'll speak about a key benefits that an operator as ESP can get out of StartingX. The first one is the simple design and architecture. Wind River has been developing real-time operating systems and Linux operating systems for decades. So we bring that deep expertise into the picture and with that knowledge when we contributed to the development of StartingX we ensured the design is simple. It is edge ready. It takes care of a variety of use cases, needing low latency, high scalability and throughput. That's one big benefit, simple architecture. And it is built in collaboration with leading chipset hardware and software partners from the ground up. Second thing we knew cost optimization is top of the mind of the operators. Our studio product, which is again, built off of StartingX project is very low in footprint. For example, for Intel, Iceland processor out of 32 cores, we only take two cores, leaving other 30 to run BDU or other workloads. So very low footprint. Secondly, out of the same software, we support both Kubernetes containers. And we also support the open source stuff as well, the VMs. So the operator doesn't have to use separate hardware for VMs and containers. It's being run off of the same platform. It is running in Verizon's network, hitting five nines reliability. It's commercial grid product. Another big one is these are large scale networks, hundreds and thousands of nodes. So our platform offers that scalability and ease of deployment. We have zero touch provisioning and automation capability to orchestrate the workload across hundreds of applications, thousands of nodes across nationwide. Another big one is ease of operation. Once the network is up and running, how easy it is to run it. So we have single pane of glass operations. We have built in analytics that uses machine learning to proactively identify and fix issues. And the architecture being simple, it really leverages itself to easily identify and fix issues. So we offer a lot of great capabilities and strengths that are near and dear to the operators across the globe. When it comes to operators, before we move forward, I wanted to also just quickly ask you to maybe tell a bit about the user community around Starling X, who's involved and what use cases they are using Starling X for. Great question. So we're blessed with a really diverse community for Starling X. From open source perspective, we have partners like Kubernetes, Dockers, OpenStack, and then from hardware perspective, we're working very closely with Intel, Dell and Fujitsu. Then we have a variety of VRAM, OpenRAM software providers, solution providers, in case of Vodafone and Verizon, we're working with Samsung, we're working with Mavinia, Kasa, Airspan. Others, the list goes on and on. So it's a very diverse and vibrant community contributing both from the radio side of the house, the software and then our orchestration, the whole line yards. And I would also like to mention another big one, we have been working very closely with Dell. We have a program there. We pre-certified the hardware with Dell. We did that for the previous hardware. Now we're working that program for XR11 as well. Amazing, thank you. And with the interest of time, on that note, I would like to turn over to John and just ask you to please tell us a few words about how Dell is involved in OpenRAM, what Dell is doing there. Sure, thank you. Dell's been involved in digital transformation, cloudification, et cetera, in the enterprise for years. And now we see the telco network really as the next frontier. And it has been great progress in the packet core and the voice core and now RAN is obviously a great opportunity for the industry to get a lot more efficient and leverage all this great technology we've been talking about already. So as Mohamed mentioned, we've developed a number of hardware platforms that are specific to the requirements of, not just to telco generically, but to the telco network and the RAN specifically. And we have a really active pipeline of products that are gonna come to continue to move that forward. And I think Andy highlighted the fact there's no two telco networks the same. And so we have to have a lot of flexibility and a lot of diversity in the portfolio and able to be able to serve everybody that is there. The other part that's really important is we intend to apply OpenRAM principles to some offers in the private mobility side as well, which is a great new opportunity for carriers to be able to use the 5G technology as part of the business infrastructure, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics. All these industries are seeing great opportunities to leverage 5G. And that's a place where Dell can really add value. That sounds great. And I think it also kind of points back to collaboration as it came up a couple of times during our panel today. So on that note, I just also wanted to ask you how you see that what kind of partnerships are you building and what is your view about these partnerships when it comes to OpenRAM? Well, I think it's critical because the key point of OpenRAM is open. And so, you know, Dell's working with partners at all layers of the stack, whether it's the RAN application itself, you know, the CU and DU software, whether that's for carriers or for enterprise opportunities. Of course, we're working closely with the large carriers themselves. We're really proud to be part of Vodafone's initial selection for their OpenRAM opportunity in partnership with people like WinRiver. And we announced, you know, we're developing a lab infrastructure, which we've branded as OTEL for OpenTelecom Laboratory. And in there, you know, we're bringing a lot of the players in the industry. Many have been mentioned, you know, people like Mabineer, et cetera. And really at all layers of the stack, you know, whether it's the operating system, VMs, Kubernetes, whether it's the application, whether it's automation, which is a huge part of making OpenRAM successful, being able to drive an automation solution so that carriers are able to run what effectively becomes a bit more of a complex network. So, you know, we're gonna need all the innovation of all the players in the industry to really make this successful and Del's happy to be acting in the middle of that. Thank you so much. And with that, we unfortunately have to conclude our panel. This is all the time that we have for today. Thank you, Andy, Mohammed, and John for this amazing discussion and great insights into how the telecom industry and OpenRAM is evolving. We heard five, nine, six G, and it's all about collaboration and community to make all these happen and deliver on these requirements. So this is my call to action for you who's watching this panel to come and get involved and get in touch with the community.