Present: Mark Aldenderfer, Arlene Allen, Eric
Brody, Glenn Davis, Bill Doering, Ken Dean, Randall Ehren, George Gregg,
Rick Johnson, Bill Koseluk, Shea Lovan, Ed Mehlschau, Elise Meyer, Bruce
Miller, Alan Moses, Joan Murdoch, Larry Murdock, Glenn Schiferl, Kevin
Schmidt, Deborah Scott, Vince Sefcik, Jamie Sonsini, Paul Valenzuela<
Professor Mark Aldenderfer, newly appointed Director
of the Office of Information Technology, kicked off the meeting by noting
the importance of groups such as ITPG in charting the future uses of technology
at UCSB. He noted that the committee structure has served the campus
well and that new or modified groups might evolve within it. Mark
sees his first task as providing "expectation management" due to
the philosophical and fiscal constraints within which we operate.
Strategic planning and network implementation will be focal points for
the OIT. Mark stated that he hopes to integrate planning for all
IT issues, not just those of academic departments. He expects to
concentrate on setting priorities for development over the next three years.
The OIT staff expects to move into their new space in North Hall by mid-February.
Next, DECAF reported on their continuing look
at the integration of academic IT functions across campus. The Web
front-end is viewed as a common framework. The group is focusing
on how to reduce the number of required logins and, thus, streamline student
interactions with the university. DECAF has investigated existing
campus systems and looked at national examples and vendor offerings.
Their findings are contained in a White Paper (pdf) which was passed out at the
meeting. Deborah requested that ITPG members read the paper in preparation
for discussion at the February ITPG meeting. DECAF has also charged
a technical working group with exploring authentication and authorization
techniques for students. This investigation overlaps some of the
efforts of the Auth/Dir group and coordination is desired. DECAF
has focused its efforts on the concept of a portal while looking to Auth/Dir
for guidance on authentication issues. The DECAF technical group is concentrating
on the design of a utility that might support a portal while providing
general purpose authentication and authorization functions.
Auth/Dir reported discussing similar ideas regarding
the infrastructure required to support a portal. Explorations of
how distributed web servers might access a common authentication system
are underway. Philosophical issues regarding centralization or decentralization
of functions such as id/password collection are significant.
The issue of how much we prototype as opposed
to writing an RFP was raised. DECAF feels that some difficulties
could be solved almost immediately while the RFP process might take a long
time. If, for example, we could unify access to about twenty existing
student service web sites, students would benefit.
Darlene Burnett from IBM spoke to DECAF and suggested
that we might want to provide some quickly implemented examples to show
the possibilities to decision makers. We might also want to explore
how much academic and administrative servers have in common or discuss
what a "MYUCSB" type portal might contain. The MYUCLA effort done
within L&S has now caught the attention of the UCLA campus and more
general functions such as grade distribution are being added.
Multiple portal projects are starting up around
campus. If they could use a common authentication mechanism and had
a way to maintain session persistence across various portals and servers,
the experience for students might be better.
The group decided to focus on what might be accomplished
by September. In response to a question, it was noted that "students"
would be anyone who has received a perm number (which happens early in
the admissions process). Also, it was pointed out that the group
was not concerned with applications that are available to the general Internet
because those services don't require authentication.
DECAF recognizes that UCSB is in a decentralized
application development mode and will probably remain so. However,
they would like input about whether they should pursue a centralized or
decentralized solution. They are asking ITPG members to read the
White Paper and comment on whether the problems and issues are framed correctly.
ITPG members might also comment on what the next steps should be, should
they proceed with implementing example solutions, write an RFP or ?.
Someone asked if DECAF was addressing the issue
of persistent email addresses for those who have graduated. DECAF
is not, but it was thought that Institutional Advancement is addressing
the issue. The repository for this service and the process for keeping
links up to date were questioned but no one present knew the answer.
A Lab Operations Advisory Group (LOAG) has convened.
The group will focus on common computer laboratory operational issues,
usage guidelines and how the labs impact the instructional mission of the
campus. The latter issues will be shared with ITPG and ITB.
The LOAG will revisit the inventory of open access
workstations and attempt to keep it up to date. In the process they
will ask if what we now have available is adequate, discuss issues of restricted
versus non-restricted uses of lab facilities, explore how to prevent small
groups from over running the capacity of the labs and investigate the demand
for more distributed open access labs.
Other topics of investigation for LOAG include
the appropriate uses for thin client workstations, a funding model for
lab operations including staff, hardware, software and replacement and
preparations for updating the UCOP workstation study in future years.
Issues around research computing will be left for others to consider.
All participants interested in lab operations are welcome.
It was noted that some departments in Student
Affairs are asking to create computer labs for their student customers.
How to coordinate these developments should also be considered by the LOAG.
The NGB report noted the arrival of most equipment
and the beginning of deployment. Five core switches and five building
switches have been configured. Several switches have been installed
and one more is awaiting fiber termination. The new OIT office and
a connection for Kevin Almeroth's project are coming soon. Following
these installations the rollout will strike a balance between early requesters
and locations dictated by the evolution of the infrastructure. Building
space issues are under coordination by OIT.
Rick Johnson distributed results of the ITPG Student
Survey conducted in December of 1999. Surveys were completed by students
in ten large classes and three laboratories. A total of 2728 responses
were collected out of 5493 surveys distributed. Sixty-one percent
of the respondents were lower division students and almost one third lived
in campus housing. Instructors were gracious about giving class
time to the survey. Results indicate that email, web access and word
processing are the services seen to be most helpful by students and the
services most often required for their course work.
Ninety-eight percent of the students in our survey
reported that their access to computers was at least adequate. Seventy-eight
percent reported that it was good or excellent. In response to a
request to describe any problems that were experienced, 32% of the comments
reported long lines and busy computers, 10% noted that the labs are not
open at convenient times and 30% indicated that they had difficulty with
hardware, connections, software, services or printing.
Not surprisingly, the Library was listed as the
most often visited location (57%) followed by Instructional Computing (30%).
Notably, the UCen made a strong showing in the "Other" category.
Students also reported that they most often turn to their friends (14%),
a consultant in IC (10%) or a Teaching Assistant (9%) when they need help.
Seventy-three percent of the respondents reported
that they are connected at speeds greater than or equal to 56 KBps and
65% thought their connections were fast enough to make good use of their
time. Two thirds also reported that they need both their own personal
computer and access to campus owned machines to do their work.
A comparison of the percentages of students reporting
various IT services as "helpful" as opposed to "required" indicates that
students' use of technology is somewhat ahead of that being required in
their classes.
Those who attended the January 18 ITB meeting
reported on the discussions regarding the expiration of the campus's Centrex
telephone service contract in December 2002. Verizon has estimated
that telephone line rates might increase as much as 18%, or $446K per year.
If our contract expires prior to the campus implementing an alternative,
Verizon will charge us $176K per month. Communications Services reported
on the eight possible options available for replacing Centrex (of which
only four are practical) and described the services currently in use at
other UC campuses. It was suggested that an RFP process begin immediately
to determine the most competitive offering. The ITB agreed and Communications
Services will begin the RFP process. A decision should be reached
by December 2001 if a new service is to be implemented before the start
of classes in September of 2002.
In conclusion it was noted that the Electronic
Communications Policy has been adopted and the Information Technology Policy
& Security Officers group (UCITPSO) has been tasked with drafting implementation
guidelines.
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