In Attendance: Bill Ashby, Steve Butner, Peter Cappello, Dorothy Chun, Glenn Davis, Jeff Dozier, Jennifer Gebelein, JoAnn Kuchera-Morin (for Everett Zimmerman), Bob Kuntz, Alan Liu, France Cordova, Elise Meyer, Joan Murdoch, Sarah Pritchard, David Sheldon, Bob Sugar, Matt Tirrell, Ron Tobin, John Wiemann, Michael Young
Absent: Mark Aldenderfer, Jules Zimmer
Bob Sugar opened the meeting by welcoming Matt Terrill, Dean, College of Engineering and Steve Butner, professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering as new members of the ITB. He recapped the history of why the ITB was formed and its relationship to the ITPG, and summarized the progress that has taken place during nine months of discussion regarding IT issues and IT organization on campus. Consensus had been reached to recommend the formation of an IT Office in the July 12th ITB meeting. Bob opened the floor to continue discussion on the role of the ITO and whether the areas of responsibility listed below were the right set.
- Coordinate campus-wide service providers
- Oversee operation of the campus network infrastructure
- Develop plans to maintain and upgrade IT infrastructure
- Advise senior officers on IT issues
Steve: Is this higher than Administration? Does it include all things on campus?
Bob: Yes.
Steve: Does this person have overall responsibility?
Bob: Our campus has a distributed system but some planning and operational functions would be in this office and report to the EVC.
John: So, in discussing these responsibilities, look at it from a bottom up approach. If I have a problem, how does this office help me? Considering the common problems we have, how will the office solve it?
Bob: It depends on the problem. If you have a problem opening the email I sent you, you wouldn't come to this office, but if you're planning research that will require more bandwidth than we currently have, then you would bring this sort of problem to this office.
Jeff: I find that when I hire someone, the quality I bring to the interview is whether or not I can do that job myself, i.e., I understand the requirements. The Bren School computing infrastructure doesn't work as well as we would like it to. Is it under-capitalized, or is it bad decisions the people who work for me are making and I don't know how to manage these sort of problems?
Can this office assess whether I am under-capitalized? Can they tell me whether this person is up to snuff? Can this office help me overcome the inefficiencies?
Bob: This office will have to have an extremely strong technical staff. These people could give you good advice. The technical staff on campus is overworked and they have tremendous responsibilities. The staff will have to be enlarged. To give them the role of overlooking your staff is not practical.
Sarah: Looking at it from the flip side: I want to deliver a service to the campus and I have to talk to everyone to see that we can do this. I would see an office like this as valuable to help us solve the problem – is it bandwidth or a router someplace? It's hard to know who to go to now. It would be nice to have this office help us.
Bob: If Jeff wants to consult senior technical staff, this office could recommend someone to consult with.
Alan: The mission statement should be strong consultation. Listen to what faculty and students need. Provide insight into what technical innovations are on the horizon that will impact the decisions on how to integrate IT into their teaching. It's more a proactive model where consultants go out to faculty and graduate students to inform them of the possibilities.
Ron: There could be collaboration then.
Jennifer: It would be nice to have consultants who could help them know the kind of resources are needed when you are putting together a proposal.
Jeff: Answering that question would require disciplinary knowledge the central office would not have.
Bob: I am trying to make a division between what is campus-wide and what is local to a college. It would be more useful to be able to direct people where to go in this distributed environment.
Sarah: This office would be able to detect where there is a gap by the questions that come up. I like the idea of this board being a higher level of consultation. This organization could have its feelers internally and externally.
Bob: Yes, the ITB, the ITPG and the OIT are all necessary. The ITB should continue, but we can't run the infrastructure.
Dorothy: People are perceiving this office as a one-stop help desk.
Bob: If you have a computer that is compromised, the campus network programmer would help with this because it impacts the entire campus. But there is nothing campus-wide except for the individual service providers.
Ron: Responsibilities – how can the office be responsive if we don't have the results of the survey? Have we put the cart before the horse?
Dorothy: We know campus-wide problems do exist – wiring, CalRen2, etc.
Ron: But we are going to talk about the extent of what we will provide.
Bob: The survey will provide what needs to be done. But then we need to decide who will be responsible for what. I think we can start that discussion now.
Peter: There is one set of items identified as campus issues. There is another set of problems everyone has. We can compose a group of experts to deal with common problems. Then there is a certain set of problems we don't include.
Dorothy: Will the OIT have control of funds that people come to the OIT to get?
Jeff: This organization could make a viability check.
Bob: Yes, the EVC could ask the OIT if these proposals make sense. It is an advisory role. This office needs a budget and a staff to accomplish its mission, but it would be disruptive to the campus to take the IT budget.
Michael: Are we looking for specificity to describe responsibility when we are really looking for leadership? It is hard to put specificity on this.
Bob: Yes, but I do perceive some specificity aspects in the leadership role.
Dorothy: I was speaking to a colleague at Davis and what they thought of John Bruno coming. They were looking forward to it because they thought academic instructional computing would get the attention it needed. From this I see we must consult broadly with all areas so no one area gets more or less than fair resources.
Bob: There is a clear role and constituency in instructional computing. Leave it where it is in Academic Programs. The OIT will be more tuned to distributed computing throughout the campus.
JoAnn: Our biggest problem has been lack of funding. We give the deans a picture of what is needed to protect our academic mission. Certain issues (like bandwidth) have to be handled at the OIT level. We can't go any further. We have started to share resources to leverage the piece of the pie.
Bob Kuntz: The Office of Network Technology rather than the Office of Information Technology would narrow the focus.
JoAnn: Yes, you are right, but we do need to coordinate.
Bob: I tried to be very careful as far as the operational aspects, but when we talk about coordination we are getting beyond just networking issues.
Bob Kuntz: What kind of coordination?
Bob: For example, three units are providing net-stations. Do we have enough? It's not the function of any one unit, be we can provide coordination.
Bob Kuntz: Maybe that's the ITPG role.
Jeff: Managing software licenses is a more mundane issue. Can an office handle this in a better way? I sometimes go to buy.com because it's easier.
Alan: I'm not unhappy with narrowing the focus, but the model shouldn't mask the fact that operational issues have a wide range of impacts. The OIT should take on the function of a yearly conference, for example, addressing issues like "what is the classroom of the future?" I am frustrated that decisions are made at the local level that have impact on our intellectual model; that people are brought in too late in the process to influence decision making.
Bob: Is networking too narrow a view? I though we needed to be looking at broader issues.
Bob Kuntz: It worked best when it was a voluntary ad hoc organization rather than mandated.
Bob: I used to be of the same opinion, but the difficulty is that the same group of talented staff participate, all of whom have full-time jobs. These people are overloaded.
Bob Kuntz: You can run a network in that manner.
Bob: We have authentication, security, etc., all being done by volunteers.
Bob Kuntz: How broadly are we defining network?
Sarah: It comes down to the legwork in getting the coordination done. It's a lot of work. A new law has passed regarding copyrights. We have a decentralized web presence. How do we implement this in a distributed manner? The OIT would have to make this happen. Maybe this falls under the rubric of network.
Bob: The reason you have to have the network group is they have the expertise, but you need to have some people whose responsibility it is to do campus-wide work.
On a different subject, there is a proposal for campus-wide policy for electronic communications. We need to review it to see if there are any serious problems with the proposed policy. There are these kinds of system-wide policies that this Board should influence.
Glenn: The minutes have the URL for the policy. Comments are being taken now.
Bob: I will be sending email to the group.
Peter: For email policy, all system administrators should participate in deciding this policy. We are really understaffed. If we had more staff we could allow their participation. This would allow for continued ad hoc participation.
Bob: We need to have core staff, though, whose mission is to do this, and they would call on the staff to continue to participate on these committees. Yes, we have too little staff and we don't pay them enough.
JoAnn: Yes, the coordinator provided by the OIT will help to bring about the issues of staff retention. It has been positive at the college level.
Bob: Okay, how do we make this convert?
France: The framework you have outlined is a good one.
Bob: I want to stick with IT rather than network so that it is more inclusive of academic issues. So, we take the base sets of responsibility, redraft it to be more concise.
A vote was taken:
1 not in favor
2 abstain
17 in favor
Bob: I will revise and recirculate the draft OIT Responsibilities. Given the responsibilities, let's decide what the service includes. In the material Elise emailed, the largest unfunded amount is intra-campus wiring. Now the responsibility to the campus is to the communication lockers. In many campuses the responsibility is to the wall plate. In our model the cost of service is uneven. Everett and Todd asked this board if policy should change to be to the wall plate. This will address the difficulty we now have of moving units to new locations in which the wiring is different. It would be uniform across the campus.
What information do you need to discuss this issue intelligently?
Sarah: What degree are the expectations that communications to the campus are email, web-based, paper?
Bob: There is certainly a trend to that direction, but we don't have a policy.
Dave: We talked about kiosks so everyone has access to HR systems because we want to promote the web and internet. Security and authentication become more important.
Bob: Then everyone must be up to some standard.
Michael: What about the inventory to the state of the campus for connectivity?
Bob: Yes, there is that information in Elise's document.
Dave: I don't see why 1.5 is an annual expense.
Michael: I am trying to see who are the haves and have-nots.
Elise: New renovated buildings have new wiring.
Bob: There is a list of buildings that are known to have wiring problems. The question is how to treat them. Next time we will have Elise explain what her committee found to be the needs.
John: Is it part of the renovation?
JoAnn: It is put in the project, but the wiring is the first thing to be cut.
Dave: State funding doesn't usually cover network wiring.
John: Can we define the inclusion of communication wiring as a standard part of a renovation project?
Jeff: This is one situation we might want to work with the campus planning committee. Maybe we should communicate to the CPC that communication standards will change during the lifecycle of a building.
Bob: I want to discuss the faculty survey.
Dorothy: I was trying to identify research needs versus teaching needs.
Jeff: What about if we take the questionnaire and mark up the copies?
Steve: Because I am a faculty member and I do research, I don't know which hat to wear when answering these questions.
Sarah: Why not eliminate "type of position held," since we would not provide services differently based on this. Also, the questions clearly identify research needs as well as instructional needs.
Bob Sugar adjourned the meeting at 4:00PM.
