ARCHIVED - Telecom Commission Letter Addressed to Stephen Schmidt (TELUS Communications Company)

Ottawa, 16 January 2015

Our reference: 8665-C12-201403907

BY EMAIL

Mr. Stephen Schmidt
regulatory.affairs@TELUS.com

RE: Clarification of response provided by TELUS Communications Company

Dear Mr. Schmidt:

In a letter dated 19 September 2014, Commission staff requested that TELUS Communications Company (TELUS) conduct a one-time typing test of all of its relay operators. In a reply dated 17 October 2014, TELUS proposed to test a representative random sample. In a letter dated 31 October 2014, Commission staff agreed that it would be reasonable to test a statistically significant sample^{Footnote 1} of the operators, indicating that:

The scores of these tests may be averaged over all of TELUS’ relay operators for (a) English and (b) French operators. The results of this one-time test is to indicate both (i) average speed (words per minute), as well as (ii) average accuracy (percentage). If an operator is bilingual and processes calls in both English and French, the operator should be tested in both official languages.

On 1 December 2014, TELUS submitted its responses. Commission staff has reviewed TELUS’ response and requires the following additional information by 2 February 2015:

With respect to your 1 December 2014 response to question 1:

Details regarding the typing tests, which should include, amongst others:

• Duration of the tests;
• Detailed description of how the test was administered (for example was the test dictated to the operators, or was a written text provided for operators to copy? Were operators allowed to read the text prior to the test?)
• Number of attempts each operator was permitted;
• Copy of the texts used for the tests.

Request #1: Please provide, for our files, further clarification for the following
sub-questions:

b.  Detailed description of how the test was administered.

• Specifically, provide the detailed methodology used to score the test, including a detailed definition of each performance measure (i.e. typing speed, errors, adjusted speed and accuracy) including all formulas used to derive the results.
• Copy of the texts used for the tests.
• Please provide a copy of the actual text that TELUS relay operators had to type.

With respect to your 1 December 2014 response to question 3:   

Should TELUS choose to average the results obtained in the samples, the following information should be provided for each test:

• Mode;
• Median; and
• Standard deviation, if possible.

Request #2: TELUS has filed the individual test results of its operators in confidence with the Commission. Please provide the average typing speed, average number of errors, average adjusted speed and average accuracy rate for the public file. In addition, please provide the responses to (a), (b) and (c) for the public file.

With respect to confidentiality:

In its 1 December 2014 covering letter, TELUS submitted that it is filing the results of the typing test in confidence with the Commission pursuant to section 39 of the Telecommunications Act and Rule 32 of the CRTC Rules of Practice and Procedure. TELUS indicated that the information designated as confidential provided in its response relates to the individual result of each TELUS’ relay agent that participated to the one time typing tests.

Request #3: Commission staff may publish the aggregated results of TELUS’ one-time typing test. A minimum of five results will be aggregated in order to ensure the confidentiality of individual test results. TELUS is to indicate any concerns or objections it may have with this level of aggregation, providing full justification, in its 2 February 2015 response.

Should you have any questions regarding this letter, please contact Kay Saicheua at 819-934-1358 or by email at kay.saicheua@crtc.gc.ca.

Sincerely,

Nanao Kachi
Director, Social and Consumer Policy

c.c.:  kay.saicheua@crtc.gc.ca
marie-claire.bouthillier@crtc.gc.ca

Date modified:

2015-01-16