Present: Mark Aldenderfer, Arlene Allen, Eric Brody, Larry Carver, Glenn Davis, John Davis, Matt Dunham, George Gregg, Rick Johnson, Bill Koseluk, Tom Lawton, Shea Lovan, Elise Meyer, Bruce Miller, Alan Moses, Linda Moskovits, Joan Murdoch, Larry Murdock, Stan Nicholson, Dan Ringwald, Fuzzy Rogers, Glenn Schiferl, Deborah Scott, Jamie Sonsini, Bob Sugar, Paul Weakliem, Craig Welsh
Budget Update
Mark Aldenderfer, reporting on the ACE meeting, stated that the financial status of the State is uncertain at best. Governor Davis has instituted a hiring freeze for the State. UC President Atkinson has advised UC to “be prudent”. There is no official freeze for UC, and currently each campus has been given the leeway of deciding on their own regarding hiring freezes. UCSB has adopted a “wait and see” attitude for the time being. It is likely that UC may need to give some money back at mid-year, and possible sources for these funds are converting CISI funding to deferred bonds, eliminating new educational initiatives with the remainder coming out of the campuses.
Call for Speakers
Mark also presented a call for speakers for the new Glen Culler Lecture Series. $15K has been made available to fund presentations on Information Technology topics. Please send all recommendations to Mark.
Context Redux(Continued from 11/15)
Champions for proposals presented their cases as follows.
- #5: Unfunded Instructional Use of Technology Projects
Alan Moses, Tom Marazita, and Bill Doering’s proposal addressed shortfalls in funds for technology needs that are not campus-wide. These needs roughly break into three different groups: Enhancements to existing technology, new technology, or migrating research technology into instructional use. Both the existing funding path and the existing project evaluation process are desired to remain in place. Cost was unascertainable. The group felt that it was important to include this item in the report as a context item, but due to the fuzzy nature of its cost and the desire to continue to have its funding go through the existing process, it would be best addressed via a paragraph separate from the rest of the proposals. Alan is to draft a paragraph to Elise Meyer.
- #4: Centralized Digital Archive for Research Material and Publication
Larry Carver (with L&S input) indicated that several institutions have already begun investigating digital archiving, and there are many issues involved. There is no clear indication at this point if this is a good thing. It was proposed that funding be provided in order to conduct a workshop, which would then produce a white paper for evaluation and intended for long-term use. Travel to other sites might be required. This would be the first step of a program with undefined future possible costs.
- #3: External Review of Computing
The original issue was to propose an external review of campus computing resources, however this was modified to focus on the current ITPG proposals for some mechanism to “pull all the threads” to make sure that the implementation of the technologies proposed will actually solve the specified problems. This could include making sure that all of the backend pieces were available and making the appropriate resources available to the end-users. Many approaches were discussed from having implementers include this analysis as part of the ITPG proposal process, to hiring consultants to review specific technologies or implementation plans, to a formal external review, to using available Gartner resources. The Directory & Portal proposals are an example of projects that could benefit from this review, for example, what are the hurdles that need to be crossed in order for those projects to not just be technical successes, but also be functional successes for the end-users out in the departments? Some felt that existing campus staff were in the best position and had the most relevant knowledge to comment on campus computing resources, others felt that hiring external consultants or experts could provide value if the area that they were reviewing was small enough in scope.
- #2: Web Middleware/Portal Services (hardware, software & staff) and Web Resources Integration Staff
Deborah Scott presented the key points of these two proposals. When asked which proposal was the most important, the Web Resources Integration Staff FTE was identified as the most important piece. This FTE also provided the “thread pulling” capability desired in the External Review of Computing proposal above. Another question that came up that was not resolved was where this position should be located. It was noted that developing a Portal was an operational goal for Student Affairs.
- #1: UCSB Directory Staff and Authorization Software Package
Glenn Davis presented the history of how the UCSB LDAP Directory came to be, and Bob Sugar added that he was very appreciative of how IS&C volunteered to provide this service and was supportive of the efforts for getting funding for this service. When asked which proposal was the most important, the UCSB Directory Staff proposal was identified as being a requirement for any continued development with the LDAP.
- #0: Laptops for Departmental Checkout
Instructors prefer to use a laptop dedicated to their use for their classroom instruction rather than the existing methods of the podium systems, or daily-use laptop rentals. John Davis presented this proposal to provide long-term laptop rentals to departments to address this issue. There was agreement from the group that this was a problem but there was concern that instructors would want dedicated access to these laptops rather than sharing them with others in their department so that they could guarantee that the software worked right and hadn’t been altered by another user. People who supported instructors' use of technology in the classroom felt that the proposal should include technical support in addition to the hardware to make the solution more robust.
We ran out of time before we could discuss the agenda items “Voting Process” and “Proposal Process." These items would be introduced via email to the mailing list.
The next meeting is December 13th, 9:30am in the Mary Cheadle Room, 3591 Library.
Back to ITPG Meeting Schedule
