INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE MEETING
October 4, 2002
9:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
Attendance: Jan Fox, Don Combs, Donna Spindel, David Johnson, Frances Hensley, Sarah Denman, Karen McComas Tom Hankins, Arnold Miller, Michael Castellani, Tom Hankins
Review of Minutes: Approved as amended.
COMMITTEE UPDATES:
Jan Fox: A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education posted 10 Ways Colleges Can Cut IT Costs. Those 10 areas: 1) Create Limits Or Rules For Student Printouts – Marshall has done that for five years; 2) Cap The Bandwidth Available In Dormitories – that has been going on for a couple of years. That happed when we started getting charged back for internet usage from WVNET. We pay $130,000 a year for the charge; 3) End Free Dial-Up Modem Service – We have never provided free modem service; 4) Stop Investing In Phone Systems Students Don’t Use – The phone system has taken a big hit. This committee, last year or year before last, approved the whole recovery plan for Telecom, setting out that the telephone system pays for itself. We are not looking big investments in huge telephone upgrades. We are looking at new models of telephones and we have been doing voice over IT; 5) Work with Other Colleges to Sign Joint Licenses for Software – We are working with WVU and the Chancellor with this Vista Grant. Vista is next release of WebCT that is the enterprise where you can have multiple institutions going into collaborations for a core content piece. The reality is, that’s where it’s going to go; the issue is how do we pay for it? The cost issue is personnel, software and hardware. It has to be dealt with through the Chancellor; 6) Use Students to Handle Help-Desk Questions at Night – That’s been a given; 7) Remember That the Dot-Com Boom in IT Salaries is Over –We never saw it in the first place; 8) Join Purchasing Pools for Hardware and Other IT Expenses – We have done this, however, our issue in the State makes it difficult. We are trying to work with Micta, they are a telecom consortium for SREB states. They could drive the purchasing costs down considerable lower than the state purchasing contracts. One of the components of the Midco contract would be equipment used for the WebCT that would drive the costs down; 9) Use Life Cycle Planning to Centralize Desktop Purchases – We are doing this on public labs on a 4 year plan. The machines are recycled down through the university. This has kept our costs down considerably; and 10) Use a Preferred Provider for Technology Purchases - This type of thing has caused issues in the past. We recommended Dell this year to staff and students and this really drove the price down. So you can see we have done all of these things over a period of time.
As an update to another big issue: In the beginning of September, the Governor has requested that an external agency come in and review all major state agencies’ security computing issues. They didn’t do each university, they did do WVNET. We are trying to get that report back, but we have not seen it yet. From the vast majority of state agencies, there were huge security issues on all major machines, some including 26 pages of violations. We have taken security as a huge issue and this committee will be reviewing our responses to the State Security Policy over the next few months.
Don Combs: Updated statement on Logan facility. This will be a fine facility and will be mutually beneficial to both MU and Southern.
David Johnson: We have over 750 WebCt classes running right now. We have had some random connection problems to Logan and Williamson and we are trying to track the problem now. Everything on our network is stable and working well.
Jan Fox: “Marshall University Unified Digital Campus.” is listed nationally as the state of West Virginia's Best Practice in the NASCIO category of Enterprise Information Architecture. This category focuses on projects that promote/implement an enterprise architecture framework that enables integration, inter-operability and sharing of information with other entities. This effort will help improve efficiency and deliver exceptional services to citizens, business and other governmental entities. NASCIO represents state chief information officers and information resource executives and managers from the 50 states, six U. S. territories, and the District of Columbia. NASCIO honors innovative state IT programs for its Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Information Technology awards program. Congratulations to Terry Tomblin-Byrd, Gary Weis, Matt Christian and Brad Morgan, as well as all other IT staff who have contributed to this project.
We had several people at EDUCAUSE this week presenting on WebCT. They are doing a web cast of their presentation and 95,000 invitations were sent out. I don’t know the date of the web cast right now.
Marshall had 11 presentations at WVNet this year from faculty and technical staff. I was really impressed with all of our presentations.
Don Combs: Regarding the Mid Ohio Valley Center at Pt. Pleasant and Gilbert center, all computers and library resource centers were updated this year, thanks to Arnold’s grant.
AGENDA ITEMS:
TELECONFERENCEING STANDARDS:
David Johnson: This was handed out at the last meeting for review. This is just a recommendation that we specify a standard for video conferencing codec for the campus. The reason being, we have both Polycoms and Tanbergs. Tanbergs are extremely hard to maintain and we use remote maintenance to maintain these devices. We have two types of classrooms on this campus: 1) core classrooms are supported by us and 2) classrooms that are purchased and maintained by certain departments such as Nursing (PH 401 and 427) and the College of Education (235). When those rooms were purchased they were purchased with Tanburg Codecs and we aren’t able to support them at the level we do others. If there is a problem with one of those rooms, it affects remote sites. If we had Polycom Codecs we could remotely trouble shoot any problems. The recommendation that we have is that we have an established standard, as posted with ITS, for the type of Codec for any department that is part of the university who owns and maintains a video classroom. Also, through ITVS, we are setting out what is a standard next generation classroom. We are putting this plan together now. The development of the Biotech center and Morrow first floor will have a large impact on this plan. Jan suggests that any policy have a description/definition as a part of the policy. Final vote next meeting.
POLICY 13 UPDATE:
Donna Spindel: The changes we have made on this document are the changes that were recommended by this committee at the last meeting and via e-mail since the last meeting. No other changes have been made.
The next step is to send this draft to the Dean’s with Faculty, then to the Faculty Senate and Graduate Council. We have not heard from Layton on this draft yet. Karen McComas takes issue with the requirement of using WebCT for creating Tcourses. Discussion is held regarding the Policy 13 requirement of using WebCT for online courses. South Charleston has requested review of the issue of overload/in-load teaching. The area of payment for overload needs to be explored further.
Arnold Miller:
TELECOMMUNICATION AND NETWORK SERVICES AUTHORIZATION POLICY
(First reading)
This policy attempts to codify all of the various memos, letters, assumptions, etc. over time about the Telecommunication Policy.
The policy addresses general telecommunications service/network services unit, headed up by Mike Adkins that is responsible for over site of all of the phone systems and all of the data systems, and any components included therein. The policy clearly states that we are the service provider to be used on campus. Public phone services and specialized services are also discussed. The cell phone policy is not included in this draft, but will be included in the next draft. This Policy will be discussed at the November meeting.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COST RECOVERY POLICY
To be discussed at the next meeting.
Adjourned.