ITC Meeting

4/13/07

Present: Jan Fox, Donna Spindel, Barbara Hicks, Layton Cottrill, Allen Taylor, Mike McCarthy, Carol Perry, David Johnson, Tom Hankins, Arnold Miller, Sarah Denman, Gary Anderson

Minutes Approved

Committee Updates:

Jan: Some of the major IT legislation that was passed this legislative session was vetoed by the Governor. One of those was the broadband issue and he cites that it would conflict with the agreements he currently has with CISCO including John Chambers himself and Verizon. Part of the problem was dealing with mapping and a series of other things. I don’t think it will impact our FCC grants.

Donna: Last summer we offered 115 online sections and at the end of the summer we had 2424 students. This summer we are offering 128 sections and we are still in the beginning of registration and have 2290 registered so far.

We contracted with Apple to make available iTunes University for campus. Tiffany Blair has been working on the technology side and I’ve been working with her to get to the course sites on iTunes University and it is fabulous. www.marshall.edu/itunesu

Allen: The state has a bid out for a 10 million dollar a year contract for a MPLS network to replace the ATM network. We have already supplanted that. The bid was delayed by about 30 days due to a bid protest by a vendor. The bids are now in; there are two vendors that have submitted bids, one is Verizon/MCI and the other is AT&T. We will be evaluating the bids this summer. It is expected that it will take at least 18 months for most state agencies to convert over.

There is a tremendous amount happening this coming year; Windows Vista; new versions of Outlook and Exchange; new versions of Office Suite in general; new versions of Resource 25; preparation and piloting for the new Vista 4; preparation for Banner 8 next fall; new version of Luminus 4. It is going to be delightful and exciting, but sometimes stressful year for the IT group. Metro Ethernet is already providing many benefits as we expand the campus.

Verizon donated a number of Windows CE based devices. They are really last generation products. They have wireless capabilities, they are Windows CE, they are not a full computer, but they have touch screens. Technically, they have a few problems. The systems group had to improve the audio. We have 432 of these devices. We are looking at campus tours from the new Welcome Center; there are several groups in the medical school that are interested in using them for clinical practice and so is Nursing. We are also looking for any other applications you may have. They are probably limited to one or two years of use, but they could jump start some pilot programs. If we can get the wireless working properly, we may possibly be able to use these devices for electronic signage on rooms.

Mike: We have the new building opening up and we are in the process of deploying the IP phones. We are making preparations for the deployment of our electronic health record.

I haven’t heard much on e-prescriptioning.

David: Blackboard has put our pilot environment up for the summer. There are some technical issues with getting to Version 4. We will have the environment for a summer pilot to test on the hosted environment.

7 more TECI rooms are up and running. In SH 621 we left the old projector in there because there was a bit of problem with color matching with the DELL projector and there are a lot of ART History classes taught in that room so color was an issue. We will be doing training with the various departments who will be using the rooms. The technicians supporting it are much happier with the DELL system than they were with the former systems.

We interviewed two candidates for the TECI support position both are excellent candidates.

Several of the departments want to outfit rooms and want to put in departmental funds for the initial investment from their e-course dollars. When the departments use their dollars to put these rooms in, it frees up our money to provide maintenance in the future.

Amount of money available from e-course is 1/6 what it would take to fully equip and maintain the TECI designated rooms.

Dennis: I am concerned about whether the new software versions will require updates to hardware. Per Jan: one of the concerns the deans have is that monies did not come forth from central dollars for our normal replacement cycle. This is a concern, and it has changed some of the figures on support. We have pushed back a date of support on Windows XP due to that. It all depends on support and dollars. The new Vista platform takes some additional memory. We will be reviewing the new support rate schedule today. Per Allen: we are at about 5.2 years on our replacement cycle on average. We think we should be at 4 years on all desk tops. There are only 29% of machines on campus can’t support Windows Vista. By the end of next fiscal year, assuming we are replacing on a 25-30% schedule a year, we should be fine. Per Sarah: but, that’s an assumption that didn’t happen this year. We have no assurances for next year. Another concern is that some students may be using older machines at home, and if they prepare a presentation at home they may not be able to run it on campus machines.

Allen: We are about 20% behind in purchases this year. As an observation, the number of units on campus has grown in the last three years by almost 20%. It appears as though one or two colleges have accounted for most of that growth. David, out of the ecourse budget is picking up the client workstation software fee so that expense has gone to David. We think the reason for that growth principally, about 70-80%, is keeping old units longer in the academic labs.

Jan: I concur with Dennis’ concerns of whether we can keep up with changing applications and hardware requirements.

Arnold: Just a reminder that there will be a significant Banner upgrade over Memorial Day weekend. The new version will appear over that weekend. It is still in pre-prod if anyone wants to look at it. The interface to Vista has not changed.

At a recent meeting of computer center directors, we met the new SunGard reps. I would like to have them here for an engagement. It would be a good opportunity to get the executive Banner group together. I want to make sure we are taking advantage of all our resources.

May 31, SunGard is coming to do a half day overview of the entire product. They will be demonstrating their new enrollment management product. It is an impressive product, usability up and interface has changed, covers everything from recruitment to admittance. I really want everyone to see it. The next stage includes all analytics we get as a part of other products.

The second product they will deliver during summer/fall is the student retention piece. They are still in the process of collecting information and getting people to contribute to the product. We can still get in on the pilot. Sarah suggests that the actual users be included.

Jan: We will have another engagement with Warren Arbogast the third week in May. He is looking at what we are doing in IT. If you would like your area involved, let us know.

David: Monica called a meeting of the copyright committee. She put forward the copyright policy for review. The committee discussed reviewing the policy to make sure that where we talk about copyright, we are consistent. So far, we are missing the procedural piece and then look at statements and make changes.

Jan: We are also meeting with communications on digital asset management to make sure all photos are digitized and cataloged and also cataloging of video. The product has digital rights management built in.

Incident Response Plan FINAL

Arnold: We will begin assembling the response team, as set out on the flow chart, in next few weeks.

There could potentially be a definitions page added once we determine anything that could be unclear.

The only change from the last meeting is that I made the wording of this document match the flow of the chart. I will add the Community College to the executive committee. The term “President” would relate to both presidents.

RATE SCHEDULE

Arnold: There have been no changes in the rates for Libraries and Distributed Ed. The schedule we are talking about today is for Computing Services. All changes are marked in Red. We are upping the amount of space that people have for their Exchange Account from 100 to 400 mg per user. The retention policy is still pending.

We upped the amount for personal web pages from 100 to 200M per person. If faculty or staff member needs more space, we have not been charging for upping the individual’s space. If it gets out of hand, we will have to charge it back.

Surplus computer processing has been changed to property transfer to allow for the transfer of property from one department to another. The charge is for labor incurred in cleaning and wiping the computer

Color printing has been reduced.

We no longer offer off-campus internet dial up service. We will continue to support those still on the service until it goes away, but we will not add any new people.

The charge for investigation, testimony, etc. is $45.00 per person hour as agreed upon during RIAA process. There will be a reconnection fee of $50.00 for a first offense and $100 for a second offense. Additional time will be charged at $45.00 per hour if required. Whether we apply the fee or not will be up to the recommendation of particular area. (AA, SA, etc)

Data back up service: (tape back up for servers on campus that are not managed by us) we can assist them in doing that for a fee.

Rental space for putting equipment in the machine room: The rate is roughly the same as IS&C charges other state agencies.

We have added estimates for new Office and Vista products. There will be a faculty/staff option to buy it for the work at home version. Microsoft has not set the rate yet and we will add that in as soon as we know what the charge will be.

Voted and approved

Supported Products Annual Review

Arnold: We are continuing on with what we have done to project when we would expect to withdrawal support for products. Microsoft Windows XP, will move into transitional support as of July 1. We will still support it, but after 2008 it will be legacy support; we will answer questions, but we will not keep technicians up to date on the product. These dates are debatable at this point, but flexible and we are willing to work with everyone. We have scheduled withdrawal as of 2009. It could pose a security problem to keep it on support longer. We expect to fully support Vista as of this July to the entire campus where it can be used. Vista will roll-out to the labs in the Fall. 70% of computers on campus are able to run Vista. Office 2007 will roll out into the labs.

It is important that we document what we are supporting. No vote necessary.

Copyright infringement

Jan: This has been a traumatic issue since February. I was floored when I read that students had been served subpoenas. The RIAA still doesn’t know who the students are but we will be served with subpoenas soon. The case was filed on Wednesday in Circuit Court. When we get the subpoena, we will be ordered to supply names and records.

We met to try to understand procedures to have process to handle this.

Arnold: changes are documented.

Jan: Definitions page for all policies should be established for all policies to be referenced in all policies. The email address of abuse@marshall.edu is an actual RFC standard and cannot be changed.

Arnold: Once we make an identification of the type of abuse, we forward it on to the proper area for faculty/staff/student units. The unit will send us a directive on what we need to do as far as shutting off various accesses. We can shut off internet access, but maintain internal network access. We will remove someone from the intranet if we determine they are sharing stuff on the intranet. Eventually groups like the RIAA are going to get to this gray area where I can see them giving a finder’s fee to students on campus to rat out other students who were just sharing music within the residence halls.

We have not addressed Sarah’s concern about how sensitive this needs to be kept. We are currently running this through the Help Desk to consolidate requests and then the complaint comes back to help desk for conclusion. This is a sensitive issue from the beginning. Discussion may be in order for alternate way to handle. The help desk is the first point of contact for someone to call if they have been shut off, if the help desk does not have a name, they will spend hours looking for the problem. If there is no objection of the help Desk knowing of an alleged infraction, they can have some information to close matter. We can hide who can have access to the file after the matter is closed. We can keep the results secret by making them available only to Chuck. If it needs to be kept secret from the beginning, we will have to come up with another procedure.

Jan: We need to recognize CTC and Med School faculty will be routed to appropriate Academic Affairs (president of CTC and Dean of SOM) those areas will have to give us something for their requested procedure. We will take an electronic vote on this one.

Do we need to meet in May or the summer months? Do not need to meet unless something comes up. We will come up with a fall schedule.

Adjourned