Information Technology Advisory Committee
TO:
Information Technology Advisory Committee
[Jim Brown (Chair), Kay Clouse, Ian Dees, John Dixon, Jean Donham, Matt
Johnson, Scott Olinger, Dee Ann Rexroat, Todd White, Andy Wildenberg]
FR:
Jim Brown
RE:
Minutes of meeting of 2 November, 2004.
Members present: Jim Brown, Ian Dees, John Dixon, Jean Donham, Matt
Johnson, Scott Olinger, Dee Ann Rexroat, Andy Wildenberg, Todd White.
1. Minutes of 10-5-04 approved as distributed.
2. Brief updates
a. Virus protection requirement for connecting to RESNET? IT is investigating a tech
solution to this problem, one in which students would have to connect is a preliminary
way in order for the network to check whether they have current virus protection software
installed. Don’t yet know if this is workable in a community-consistent way or whether
students could then acquire appropriate software from Cornell to be downloaded at that
time. Stay tuned for further developments.
b. Provision of diagnostic/repair services to students on campus? A small group of students
has submitted a proposal to provide these services for a fee to be paid by student users.
College would likely need to provide a space. Conversation suggests that most problems
students encounter could easily be handled by tech-astute students [most are infection
issues, software problems, and user error problems]. John and the IT group are
evaluating the proposal, will investigate further, and will get back to ITAC with a
recommendation.
3. Review of printer/copier chargebacks
a. The review of printer/copier rearrangement of summer 04 has resulted in substantial
compass-wide savings, although it did not, of course, address budget issues affecting
individual departments. Per impressions costs for the last three months are more than a
penny less than the same period a year ago, dropping from around $.05 to $.04 per
impression.
b. John and Jim are to discuss with Council the lack of appropriate changes in printing and
copying budgets since the shift to networked printer/copiers started including equipment
costs in the per-impression charges.
c. At the time networked printer/copiers came to campus, the college also started charging a
per-impression fee for users of laser printers in order to provide inexpensive paper and to
include charges for costs of maintenance and replacement. These funds are not being
segregated into a specific account but are being reflected in a budget line in the IT annual
budget. IT will be surveying the status of laser printers on campus and will formulate a
replacement schedule which recognizes individual printer use patterns and will likely
include a trickle-down strategy for meeting departmental needs.
d. Charges per impression for color laser printers were reviewed. IT has not been tracking
expenses by printer but will in the future so that we can review the default page charge to
determine whether it accurately reflects costs in our use patterns.
4. Graham/Leach/Bliley Act
This federal regulation requires institutional attention to security for personally identifiable
information. We discussed network security issues, including password qualities and a
required password change interval. John will discuss further with his staff and will return
a recommendation to the committee.
5. Service Outage issues
John supplied a list of potential outages of IT-managed resources and we discussed the kinds
of institutional responses suitable to the range of problems. We suggested a strategy
specifying categories of outages based on the immediacy of response needed, taking into
account issues of health and safety, educational mission, critical business, number of
users affected, etc. John will consult with IT staff and bring back to the committee a
draft of outage categories and nature of response for each category. We will pursue the
potential costs of responses [monetary and personnel] when we have a better idea of the
number of items in each category and the probabilities of outage for each item and
category.
6. Spam management tools
We had insufficient time to address this matter and will place it on the agenda for the
November 30 meeting.
7. Items for future agendas
a. large format printing: Theatre dept use; Geology dept replacement option; service center
option
b. contact strategy for informing community about outages and recovery from them