Technical Liaison Meeting  10 November 2008
Chair – Malcolm Bain, Director, IT Services
1. Introductions
The chair, updated everyone on the recent appointments within IT Services.
 Kevin Donachie – User Services Manager
 Chris Reeves – System Developer, will initially focus on Identity Management System
 James Porter – IT Helpdesk Technician, 18 month post to cover for Chris Gordon who has
been seconded to BI to work on the Student Portal Project
 Finlay Miller’s post has been made permanent and full-time. Finlay works providing
Support for Students with Disability, and the PC Clinic.
Vacancy still exists for a Windows System Developer
Bill Gudgeon and Chris Coutts introduced themselves and work as part of the support team within
the Bute Medical School
2. IT Services
 University ICT Strategy document – this can be located on the University website. Strategy
for IT Services works alongside the ICT strategy and expands over two years to bring in the plans
in the wider ICT strategy. This document is a work in progress and will periodically be re-visited
and updated . The chair recommended that everyone read the ICT strategy document but also
stated that it is read with the awareness that the contents are not rigid.
 Data Centre Plans – this works in with the University ICT and IT Services strategies.
The squash courts at Butts Wynd have been identified as a suitable location for this project and will
be converted to provide a back-up data centre. Four companies have been selected from a group of
seven and invited to tender for this contract. The tenders have to be completed and returned by 21
November 2008. Phase two of this project will be to build a main data centre located at the North
Haugh and this will house machines from various units within the University. The intention at the
out set of the project was for the main Data Centre to be located on the North Haugh but issues
surrounding power prevented progress. These issues have now been addressed which means that
the North Haugh site is once again a strong possibility. This project has already been presented to
PARC and is scheduled to be completed by summer 2010. The backup data centre is scheduled for
completion by September 2009 and in use by January 2010. The purpose built Data Centre will
house all machines / servers / storage over the next 20 years. Plans suggest that the back up data
centre will house all equipment from College Gate and various exchanges and will have a UPS. IT
Services will be visiting research groups to establish who would be interested in installing
equipment within the main data centre.
 Central File Store: a meeting was schedule with Sun systems to discuss replacing the existing
system as although functional, it has never fulfilled all tendering items. Sun has presented an
attractive offer to replace the existing system, free of charge, with one which will offer increased
disk capacity from 1 GB to 10 GB per user. It is expected that a system for evaluation will arrive
week commencing 17 November 2008. If the evaluation goes well the existing system will be
replaced free of charge with the goal for the commencement for this being summer 2009.
 IT Systems Business Continuity: an external company has been awarded the contract for this
project and will come into the University to advise on business continuity in general as well as IT
systems. A report will be presented to the University by February 2009 and will document and
advise on all interrelating systems and on the planning for continuous running. The report will
highlight high priority system outage and also include how to plan for system outage. This is
Technical Liaison meeting 10 November 2008
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independent advice and the company will be visiting schools and service units to discuss further
with various personnel.
 Helpdesk Replacement System: Over the next year we will be collaborating with Edinburgh
University and the University of Abertay in replacing our current service desk system. Edinburgh
has now appointed a project manager so we expect this project to start moving rapidly ahead. The
new system will be ITIL compliant.
 Network Infrastructure: a strategy and planning group has been formed as recommended
within the ICT strategy with its members including the Vice Principle, the school Deans, Malcolm
Bain, Heidi Fraser-Krauss, and Ester Ruskuc. The first proposal of the group was to approve the
Network Connection Policy. This can be view on the University website, and was also published in
the IT Services Newsletter. The document highlights a structure and set of guidelines which states
what can be connected to the network and that anything connecting to the network should be fully
anti-virus protected etc. Concern was raised that the policy was created and approved without
proper consultation with the Computing Officers group and questions were raised as to how the
group could influence decisions. The chair informed the Computing Officers that the network
connection policy was developed using the University of Dundee current network policy as a
template. It was acknowledge however, that it is good working practise to consult with the CO
group prior to sanctioning any policy and agreed that in the future a draft of policy will be
circulated for comments and fed back to the Network Infrastructure Group. The chair will also
send out a copy of the current draft Information and Security Policy to the CO group for feed back.
The group were asked to submit any reports to the planning group for debate.
 PC Classroom update: the XP build is still a work in progress. There are issues surrounding
software installs as XP assumes system rights on the PC and this is causing problems thus, delaying
progress. Browser version on the new build will be Internet Explorer 6. There were suggestions
put forward from the group for additional browsers such as Firefox but there are issues with open
source working on the managed PC. Opera was also suggested and this does work within a
managed environment. Additional work has been completed on the existing Windows 2000 build
to make it more manageable in the meantime. Lenovo PC’s are to replace the shuttles in the
classrooms and will have the new XP build installed. There are plans to add 18 more PC’s into the
main library to meet the demands of the students.
The Edgecliff classroom is now available for postgraduate access only.
There was a request from the CO group for documentation outlining how staff requests for
software are incorporated into the PC build.
 Fibre link between University of St Andrews and University of Dundee: the work on the link is
still ongoing and the fibre cable over the River Tay is now in place. A live connection should be
available this month.
 Wireless: the ICT and IT Services strategy is to continue to roll out wireless to the campus over a
two year period. Completion date for this project is 2010.
 Information / Security Procedure: there are requests for information being
received from external organisations in regards to the security procedures applied to data. A recent
policy developed by the Home Office requests that any data taken off site and which contains
information related to students must be encrypted. External organisations are asking the
University to submit reports detailing what procedures we have in place for this. The Home Office
policy also states that Excel / Word documents must be password protected. File and access details
must never be sent off-site together. Any information taken away from the University must be a
copy only with the golden copy remaining on the University network. Over the next few months
further advice and information will be sent out from IT Services. Investigations have commenced
on sourcing USB devices that encrypt ‘on the fly’. Further investigation is bring carried out on the
possibility of introducing a system that applies encryption to all data held centrally.
Technical Liaison meeting 10 November 2008
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 System Monitoring Page: a webpage is being developed to display system availability at
a glance. A traffic light system display will be used and any system interruption will be presented
on the system monitoring page so that University staff and students can access this and see at a
glance any disruption to service. This page will also contain information relating to system
maintenance notifications along with dates and times. The helpdesk will update the page for now
but hopefully we can work towards implementing an automated system. The intention is to have
this page in place this academic year.
 WebCT: the helpdesk reported that there is an increase in the number of printing issues caused
by the format of uploaded .zip files in WebCT. The CO group were asked to convey this back to the
schools / departments / units. When printing off zip files from WebCT students receive the
heading on the page only and receive no additional information.
3. Information Interchange
Equipment deliveries: Natalia Biletska, Computing Office for School of Modern Languages and
English, asked if it would be possible to amend the current equipment delivery system. At the
moment all orders are managed via the school secretary in Modern Languages and sent to IT
Services for purchase via hard copy requests. The equipment is then delivered to the desk of the
recipient. The secretary has no trace of what has been delivered and when. Members of the CO
group suggested that this school follow the example of the other schools and arrange to have all
new equipment delivered to the Computing Officer, subsequently they can install and update all
asset registers. It was also suggested that orders are no longer sent via hard copy but emailed
direct to the helpdesk. This will record the request on the call management system and also allow
for order tracking.
4. Actions
Information and Security Policy distribution – Malcolm Bain
Document outlining the process followed for including software into the existing managed PC
build.
Links
Network Connection Policy –
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/staff/itsupport/PoliciesandProcedures/
Lorraine Brown
Patricia Heggie
Andy Eccles
Malcolm Bain
P J Robertson
J Bews
M Woodcock-Kroble
Brenda Dobie
Raymond Schiavetta
Jennifer Kerr
Malcom McCandles
Jackie MacPherson
Stephen Evans
Gareth Saunders
Bram Boskamp
Caroline Peter
Graham Halley
ITS
Maths
History
ITS (Chairman)
ITS
Chemistry
Classics/Art History
IT Services
IT Services
Management
Psychology
Psychology
Business Improvements
Business Improvements
Economics
ITS
ITS
Technical Liaison meeting 10 November 2008
Chris Gordon
Bill Gudgeon
Steve Smart
Chris Coutts
Heather McKiggan-Fee
Phil Le-Feuvre
Raymond Moir
Natalia Biletska
Business Improvements
Bute Medical School
Biology / Medicine
Bute Medical School
Saltire
CREAM
Saltire
Modern Languages
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