Institutional Technology Advisory Committee
Meeting Minutes
February 17, 2009
I. Call to order
The CIO called to order the scheduled meeting of the Institutional Technology
Advisory Committee at 1:05 PM on February 17, 2009 in the IT Conference
Room.
II. Roll call
The following were in attendance: Steve Vieira, John Panzica, Peter Woodberry,
Deb Aiken, Cody Houghton and Kay Johnson.
III. Approval of minutes from last meeting
Minutes were approved previously through email response.
IV. Discussion Items
a) Gratuity Account Policy
The CIO accepted a change offered by Deb Aiken concerning the status of
employees requesting the gratuity account. That change will be made and the
policy distributed once more for approval by the group.
The committee voted to let the CIO make the necessary changes in the draft
policy, distribute it and adopt its approval through email.
b) Student Email Accounts
The CIO accepted a change offered by Deb Aiken concerning the timing for
students to create their account and start monitoring it.
The committee voted to allow the CIO to make the suggested changes, to send
the draft policy out through email and to have the committee adopt the policy
with changes in place through email.
c) Guest Printing at CCRI
The CIO discussed the print management solution that was coming to campus
and how it would work. Specifically he stated that the academic computing
labs would be dedicated to printing by students, faculty and staff. Any
“guests” coming to campus would necessarily print through the libraries.
In a discussion earlier in the day with Ruth Sullivan, she confirmed that that
would be acceptable. As a result, the card purchasing and loading machines
would be located in the libraries only at this time, similar to the manner in
which people purchase cards to use the copy machines.
This will be closely monitored to gauge the necessity of having both a copier
and printing solution and whether they might be combined at some point in
the future.
There seems to be a misconception that IT is charging students for printing.
The CIO explained that the intention is not to charge students for printing and
that information is being gathered from department chairs concerning how
many pages would be enough to give students every semester. Once that
number has been established, the print management system will be setup using
that data and will be closely monitored as well. Adjustments can be made
every semester to that number to hone in on a number repsective of student
needs.
The CIO suggested that he would be developing some language around the
print management system, guest printing and the areas where each is available
for committee approval.
d) Change Management Process for Administrative Systems
The CIO shared with the committee the ISAC goal of establishing a change
management system that would better control of changes that are made in
production environments that have adverse effects on the user community.
Whether hardware or software, everyone must be aware that changes in data,
configurations, networks or anything that becomes an essential service affects
more than one department. The CIO offered a recent example of a report that
was running perfectly and then suddenly delivered a different result based
upno a change made in IT to a particular code. While the code change
appeared to be innocent and isolated, it had the adverse effect of significantly
changing the number of students reported.
The CIO has developed a SDLC (software development life cycle) change
management policy that he is offering for review and amendment to ISAC.
He hopes to get agreement from the various data stewards and stakeholders on
campus. The policy offers three different ways to get changes made in
production. Immediate changes for broken objects, timely changes for
particular objects and long-term planning for larger development efforts are
all covered in the policy.
The CIO will be offering this policy to the ISAC committee on February 22,
2010 at the regularly-scheduled meeting.
e) Social Security Number Reporting
The CIO stated that the manner in which social security numbers is repoted
has no official policy and as such needs to be controlled. In most cases, every
campus has a policy and so the CIO will begin research and bring to the
committee a draft policy for moving forward with this security standard.
f) Project Charters for Prioritized Projects
The CIO stated that the IT department is formalizing their standards and
practices by developing project charters which will be offered to project
sponsors for signature and approval.
In the past, resources were scheduled without understanding how much work
was involved for any particular resource. With no new resources in sight and
with the workload at an ever-increasing level, it is important for IT to describe
and explain how those resources are being utilized.
In keeping with the advisory group decision to work on some prioritized
projects, IT is using project management practices to develop project plans
and assign resources intelligently and appropriately.
Also in this same vein, IT is developing a web site that will list every project,
the project charters, the project plans and progress reports on where the
project stands, what challenges each faces and the timelines forecast. In this
manner, the college can monitor the success IT is having and the resources
that are being dedicated in each project.
Kay Johnson asked the CIO if he would share the list of project charters and it
was agreed that he would.
g) Other issues
Deb Aiken discussed the use of kiosks in registration areas since the
computers that were placed in the Knight campus Enrollment Services area
are being used for anything but what there intended use was. Students are
playing music, surfing the web and doing whatever they wish instead of using
these for Enrollment Services functions such as registrayion or printing
schedules.
The computers in this area were recently locked down to only allow access to
Enrollment Services functions. IT is prepared, upon approval, to do the same
at the other campuses in the Enrollment Areas there.
Discussion followed and it was decided that upon review of each individual
site, the devices in each Enrollment Services area would be setup to offer
particular functions only. This will be handled on a case-by-case basis with
plenty of communication to the parties affected.
h) Adjournment
The CIO adjourned the meeting at 2:05 PM.
Minutes submitted by: Stephen A. Vieira