Present: Art Battson, Glenn Davis, Doug Denison, Bill Doering, George
Gregg, Bill Koseluk, Tom Marazita, Bill McTague, Elise Meyer, Alan Moses,
Joan Murdoch, Larry Murdock, Jamie Sonsini, Bob Sugar, Pamela Webb
Not Present: Debbie Anglin, Kevin Barron, Ken Bowers, Phil Handley, Sonia
Johnston, Pam Lombardo, Ed Mehlschau, Kevin Schmidt, Vince Sefcik, John
Vasi
A quorum was present.
Bob Sugar presented the really big news that an anonymous (and generous)
donor has provided funding that might be used for refreshments at future
ITB and ITPG meetings!
Bob also reviewed the formation of the Information Technology Board
(ITB). The board consists of senior administrators and faculty with staff
and student representation. The co-chairs of ITPG will attend in an ex
officio capacity. Bob noted that there would be significant interaction
between ITB and ITPG with at least four people providing liaison between
the groups. Bob indicated that the ITB would discuss broad issues
of policy on matters such as student access to IT resources and noted that
ITPG data gathering and discussions would be crucial support for the ITB.
Both groups might do priority setting with ITPG providing details to be
forwarded to ITB for approval. The need for a full-time coordinator
is likely to emerge as the ITPG and ITB conduct business.
Bob suggested that the CNC is now redundant to ITB/ITPG and that we
might ask the EVC to dissolve CNC and move the BEG, CalREN-2 and new Security
and Directory/Authentication subcommittees to ITPG.
In response to the question of whether there would be faculty representation
on ITPG, Bob indicated that would be possible although not a necessity.
In his view, faculty would serve the role of making high-level policy decisions
on the ITB. The trade-offs for not having the joint faculty-staff
discussions characteristic of CNC are the involvement of senior administrators
and the increase in the total number of participants.
In response to the question of how recommendations might flow, Bob noted
that in the past requests flowed from subcommittees to CNC to the EVC.
Now they might flow from subcommittees to ITPG and then to either the EVC
or the ITB, depending on the level of funding requested or the policy implications
of the project. The ITB would advise both the Chancellor and the
EVC, at least initially. Bob noted that committees are usually advisory
while funding goes to an individual for operational management.
Bob noted that there would be at least one more CNC meeting at which
these issues would be discussed.
Elise then returned the discussion to the issue of Student Access and
reminded the group of the dimensions discussed at the previous ITPG meeting:
On/Off campus, 3-tiers of service, open/restricted facilities, etc.
Elise asked if there were significant revisions to the discussion or notes
from the last meeting and, there were none. We then launched the discussion
by noting that a UC-wide report compiled by Stuart Lynn at UCOP indicates
that the current average ratio of students to workstations of all types
is about 14 to 1 and that an appropriate target might be closer to 9 to
1. These ratios imply that UCSB would currently have 1350 workstation
of all types and that our target might be something like 2111. (Stuart's
tables have now been sent to all participants in ITPG.) The group
agreed that the UC-wide report is only a guidepost and we need to create
definitions and targets suitable for UCSB.
Bill Koseluk distributed an update of the Appendices to the Open Access
paper which show that there are about 602 workstations available in open
access labs, Instructional Computing and Letters & Science. Bill
noted some of the differences between access to open and reserved labs
and indicated that actual usage ran something like 35-40% of space reserved
(IC now overbooks to keep labs operating at capacity).
After some discussion of existing types of labs and rules of access
we agreed to request information from all ITPG participants regarding facilities
in the units they represent. All those from units who provide workstation
access of any type to students will gather data and send it to Bill Koseluk.
Bill will compile and distribute the results, probably as an Excel spreadsheet.
The following information is requested:
- Number of seats – existing plus those with funding
committed
- Platforms supported (by tier)
- Current age of systems
- Predicted total life span of systems
- Proposed upgrades to platforms
- Access restrictions:
- Hours of operation
- Graduate vs.undergraduate
- Percent of timefacility is reserved
- Services provided – special software, etc.
- Audience served
There was a short discussion of how site-licensed software might be
better managed on student access machines ("floating keys"). The
degree to which software is currently switched on and off of existing lab
workstations as required by classes in session surprised some.
It is our hope to use the information gathered to define the current
state of student access. Then we can estimate the gap between what
is available now and what would be necessary to permit instructors to make
various assumptions about the technology available to their classes.
ITPG might present a "buffet" of choices with associated costs from which
ITB could make informed policy and priority decisions.
It was noted, however, that present levels of funding are not adequate
to replace existing seats as they age into obsolescence - we can't expect
seats to remain useful without planning for periodic upgrades.
Student Affairs folks noted that GOLD tracks IP addresses accessing
its pages as does the Events Calendar. Perhaps a future count of
different IP addresses could be used to estimate the number of workstations
in service to students. A survey of student computer ownership might
also be included in an initial GOLD screen under the assumption that most
students will find it useful or necessary to access GOLD at some point.
We agreed to meet again on December 18, at 10:00 a.m. in North Hall
1131. This will follow the first ITB meeting which has been scheduled
for December 8.
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