ITB Meeting Minutes November 3, 1999

Guest: Meta Clow

Absent: Mark Aldenderfer, Jennifer Gebelein, John Wiemann, Michael Young, Jules Zimmer

Bob Sugar opened the meeting by introducing Meta Clow, who is coordinating the campus's response to the Draft UC Electronic Communications Policy due in mid-November. He asked Glenn to brief the board on ITPG comments and concerns before opening the floor for discussion. Glenn reported the following items.

• Section II.D.2.f: First, Communications Services noted that requiring a student to acknowledge that he or she has received, read and understood a 47-page document when signing up for a telephone at move-in is not realistic.
• Next, the group agreed that developing criteria to distinguish official from unofficial web pages would be difficult. Further, monitoring and enforcing such posting would be problematic in our decentralized environment. Segregating web pages and services onto separate servers would require an unrealistic and expensive unbundling of services.
• Section III.F.2.c: The requirement of disclaimers on personal pages is also problematic. It is not clear when a faculty member's web page is official and when it is personal. Faculty members are not likely to welcome the requirement of disclaimers on their web pages. Where one would post such a disclaimer to meet the criterion of "prominent website" is also not clear.
• Section III.D.5: The "Endorsements" section raised further questions along the same lines. Would a disclaimer such as "Pointers on these pages do not represent endorsement by The Regents of the UC" be required on a web page that points to a publishing house selling a faculty member's textbook?
• Copyright issues are another area of general concern. If someone alleges copyright infringement, can a website be blocked without due process? As noted above, the draft guidelines regarding the Digital Millennium Copyright act suggest that review should occur after the blockage. Concern was expressed that we do not have a good process for blocking self-administered host websites.
• How a university official would respond to allegations that a student's web page contains links to an inappropriate site or a faculty member's page contains links to his or her for-profit enterprise was also an issue. In general, the policy raises several issues that might make the formulations of implementation guidelines difficult.

Discussion centered on the feasibility of the university's policing websites, how to enforce infringements, and the need to clarify a due process mechanism. Peter was concerned about the negative tone – guilty until proven innocent. He also questioned why there is a rush to develop policy for web documents when there is no such policy to control non-electronic documents. Alan agreed, and expressed reservations about the ambiguity of the web policy language that he felt could lead to intrusion. He also said that accounts for grad students on leave should not be terminated, and that this should be part of the policy on user affiliation to campus and when user affiliation should be terminated. Bob Sugar expressed concern about establishing rules that cannot be enforced and that this may be worse than having no policy at all.

David Mayo said from an audit perspective, if you have made rules you can be held to them. Perhaps an approach would be to have anyone requesting an account sign an acknowledgement that they have received and read the policy. This will release the site manager from liability for anything the account user puts on the website.

Glenn added: you have rules, if you break the rules your privileges will be removed. Alan expressed concern that this is a 47-page document which far exceeds standard software licensing policy, and that the ambiguity in the document makes him question whether it is sufficient to use for guidelines or policy. Meta said the policy is supposed to be read by everyone. The guidelines are to show how to implement the policy, so the document is both guidelines and policy. Alan again expressed his concern about this large document containing policy that is hard to comprehend, that will have direct impact on him as a faculty member, and is about a technology that is quickly evolving.

Bob Sugar asked Meta if she had the feedback she needed. Meta reviewed the issues:

• You want less constraints on web pages.
• One request would be to have electronic mail guidelines. Would a document like that be sufficient to cover electronic communications?
• If someone commits a crime, the process is through the chain of VC on down.

Glenn noted problems are different for the web, which you can see, versus email, which you can't. Alan added that regarding possible copyright infringements, the policy document says to shut down first, then investigate. What are our options? Then, regarding official documents for UCSB: how well does this map to communications? Can there be a provision for official communications? If a 47-page document is needed to describe that, than maybe it isn't possible.

Meta said the campus might want to step back and look at how to determine guidelines for this. For example, policy on letterhead covers how to use it. Alan said "any document on the web is property of the university" is a scary clause. Due process: how is it enforced? Meta said the individual is responsible for what he or she can and cannot use. If an administrator discovers improper use through maintenance procedures – for example, if someone is being harassed – then they can report it. Alan asked what happens if the Chancellor is notified of illegal use. Meta indicated if it is a student, the VC of Student Affairs is notified. A decision of whether to shut down the page immediately is made. Then the violation is processed per the campus regulations for student conduct. Alan observed that it was a top-down rather than administrator-up process.

Peter said that, ideally, Federal/State officials can enforce external laws and the university doesn't have to do it. So, having users sign that the university is not responsible for what they do mitigates UC liability. Isn't this what ISPs do? David Mayo agreed. Elise added that the university has additional policy about harassment. Peter questioned why, then, should the university make any laws? Alan thought the document should articulate what the university will do to protect us if something comes up. To what degree will the university go to bat for those gray areas where research is involved?

Bob Sugar suggested that the board members send additional comments to him and he would distribute them on the ITB email list. Alan, who also serves on the Academic Senate Computing, Information Technology & Telecommunications Policy Committee, said the Senate committee was also preparing a response, and asked if the campus was sending one single response. Meta asked for a copy of Senate response if they are sending it directly to UCOP to be sure to cover everything in the guidelines. Meta requested the ITB responses by November 15.

Bob Sugar moved on to the next topic: the Alexandria Digital Library presentation by Terry Smith on 10/22/99, which ended with a request that the ITB support the ADL's request that two engineers be given permanent staff positions. The argument was that research dollars are temporary and to keep good people in this competitive market is difficult. Terry had discussed this with the EVC and she asked for the board's advice. Terry thinks he is building on the campus infrastructure. He wants the people to work for him, and then become part of the permanent staff. Matching funds are not unusual, but this request is unusual.

John Vasi said that from the Library's perspective, that first part of the ADL to roll this out as an operational piece of digital libraries for this campus is a decision that has to be made. Bob Sugar asked what the deadline for this decision was. John said his understanding was the project had four years. Bob expressed concern about the need to give permanent status to the two ADL staff. Whether this will actually become an operational facility is an outcome of this research. He didn't think it appropriate to have them be part of the OIT infrastructure staff. We have Campus Service Providers and they have permanent staff. Will the ADL be a Campus Service Provider? John said that if ADL became operational, it would become part of the Library. He added that the EVC referred it to this group. Bob asked if they would become part of the Library staff. John said it depended on resources. The ADL is also part of Computer Science. Elise asked if it was an organizational problem or a funding problem, and that organizationally there was a better place than the OIT for the two engineers. John said he didn't think the OIT was the place for them.

Bob said given the ADL has a four-year life, he didn't feel the engineers should be permanent. David said there are plenty of career staff on soft money. Bob asked what happens when the end date comes. David said it depends on how you define career. 19900 state money is a different issue than career or casual. Bob said they want the positions converted to state money. Where will these people go when the project ends? ADEPT will become operational and these people will become permanent. If they become part of Engineering, fine. However, is it appropriate for us to make that recommendation given our knowledge?

Joan suggested that the Alexandria Project be considered along with the Context document discussion. David said the board would have a better idea at the end of the four-year project as to whether this will be part of the infrastructure. Bob agreed, but said Terry's concern was about retention. It was suggested that making them permanent didn't assure that they wouldn't leave later. Bob asked for a vote. Steve suggested not to make an official recommendation now but to wait until the project end was nearing. Bob summarized that the board should recommend that while the ADL project is outstanding, it is premature to make a decision regarding permanent FTE for the two engineers. The decision should be deferred until the time of the ADL Project's third-year annual report. Vasi reiterated that Terry didn't intend to include it on the OIT balance sheet. He was looking for commitment from the campus for the engineers' salary. Bob said the ITB would advise the EVC accordingly.

Bob moved on to the third item, ITPG funding issues, which represents a huge effort by the planning group. He asked Elise to review these issues, which can be found in the context documents on the ITPG website. Elise said the ITPG wanted to give an overall picture of all major unfunded infrastructure areas, from top-level services down through departmental items. She explained that there is a one-page document that summarizes each area and a spreadsheet with itemized details. Elise went over the calculations and assumptions upon which the calculations were based. She said, for example, software costs assumed a three-year replacement cycle, hardware costs assumed a five-year replacement cycle, and wiring costs assumed a 10-year replacement cycle. Mid-level salaries were used for salary calculations. OIT funding estimates were deferred until the final structure was developed. For Security, no one was assigned, so the ITPG made its best effort to estimate the cost. Software licenses and computer-based training were "pass-the-hat" funded items. Then there are systems that have been homegrown but are on the brink of becoming campus-wide services. The goal was to give the big picture – an order of magnitude of cost – so that the ITB can take these into consideration when looking at other proposals.

Peter asked if the list was prioritized. Elise said no. What ITPG was doing with this document was, first, helping to allocate the funds to networking items from the $250K CalREN and augmentation funds available this year. Then, for the unfunded items, the objective was to help the ITPG rank them before we present them to the ITB.

Alan reiterated that when other items come to the ITB, this would help put them in context. This is the primary value. Peter added that he though it would be helpful to Computer Science too. Bob said it is extremely important because it gives a starting point. It shows we have a lot of other unfunded needs. Other universities are looking at different models for how to deal with these issues. We have to come to terms with them. Alan and Todd went to a conference were these issues were discussed, and they can present what they learned to us at a later date.

Alan asked if the ITPG could give the ITB their top five priority items. Elise said making CalREN more accessible, wiring is a big item. Joan said the ITPG had a champion for each item. There is a template for each submittal so each can be compared and evaluated fairly, objectively. Elise said a lot of the items are for equipment. Equipment is fine, but we need staff to run it. We spent a lot of time discussing security. This was an important item, but there is no funding. John added we aren't even getting the best value of the equipment we have because of staffing strategies. Bob said some items don't fit under network augmentation funds. The security person doesn't seem to fit under those funds. On the other hand he thought there should be a security person and he or she should be on the OIT staff. Can we rearrange this with existing funding? The university has different ways of funding IT. The ITPG can prioritize the augmentation money but they should bring their recommendations to the ITB. The information Elise has presented to us is essential for ordering priorities. Weíll have to take this document back to our offices and go over it. Alan added that he felt wiring was a key piece impacting the ability to run new technology, particularly in critical areas.

Bob said by the next meeting, the ITPG would have the proposals and could report about recommendations and priorities for the ITB to consider. He suggested the items be put on the web as they will be the topic of discussion for several meetings. The meeting was adjourned at 4:45PM.