TECHNOLOGY PLANNING & PRIORITIES COMMITTEE

NOVEMBER 2, 2016

Present:  Janet Scannell, Elise Eslinger, Bev Nagel, Paul Thiboutot, Carolyn Livingston

Absent:  Fred Rogers, Tommy Bonner

AGENDA:

1.       Review minutes from September 7th meeting (attached)

2.       Debrief on TuG meeting and next steps with Master Plan

3.       Operational updates

a.       Security (training, Duo, CloudLock)

b.      Dropbox

c.       MISO debrief by division

4.       Disaster Recovery goals (if time permits)

Review minutes from Sept. 7th meeting:

Paul motioned and Elise seconded the approval of the Minutes from our Sept. 7th meeting.

Debrief on TuG meeting and next steps with Master Plan:

Janet attended The Tuesday Group meeting this week to reflect on and give them more context for the ITS technology master planning. After discussion, their recommendation is to extend it out into a two-year process with the focus this year on assessing Reason and wireless.  The Admissions website and print materials are being redesigned.  A firm, mStoner, has been brought in to do this work in Reason, but we’re envisioning that this may bring out requests for changing the rest of the site or things that could be done with other tools.  Student satisfaction with wireless showed up again on the MISO survey so we would like to put some effort into finding out why they are displeased.  Dave Flynn has expressed interest in bringing in an expert to look at our equipment and setup to see if there are areas to make improvements. To get a student perspective, Carolyn suggested that Janet send a set of questions to the RAs and meet with them next term.

We also discussed the difficulty of prioritizing projects and budgeting, especially as it relates across divisions. 

Fostering innovation – how can we foster innovative thinking?  The Future Learning & Technologies Group will be ending soon, so how do we continue their efforts with regard to pedagogy and curriculum?  Suggestions in this area included an exploration grant and fostering learning circles with people from other divisions. It was suggested that Janet work with our existing IT advisory groups around a set of questions and come up with some concrete steps for next year.  We have a number of programs that need assessment like Colleague, Advance, Moodle, and Slate. We can’t do all of these, so what are the priorities, costs, and limitations?  Carolyn commented that the lack of systems to communicate with one another is a priority.  To begin, this year we will start with Reason.

Operational Updates:

     Security:  We were informed recently of several things related to security.   Information security training for faculty and staff and setting up two-factor identification is encouraged for staff who use sensitive data.  Janet encouraged TP&PC members to have two-factor setup by the end of the year.  CloudLock was bought with St. Olaf through the Mellon grant and lets us monitor for confidential information in cloud locations and looks for specific patterns.  ITS will be turning it on this week.

     Dropbox: some new features have been delayed, but we now have access to them in beta testing.  ITS is in the process of moving the academic departments to Dropbox.

     MISO by division:  Janet has plans to visit departments winter term and share with them MISO information specific to their division plus share expectations around support. 

Disaster recovery goals:

  Dave Flynn has been having conversations with St. Olaf about this and planning for what core services we would need available in event of a disaster. How long can we go without certain services?  Which things do we need within 24 hours?  There is an emergency preparedness team at the college and the committee thought that as a good starting point Janet should reach out to Linda Thornton or Wayne Eisenhuth.

Meeting adjourned at 2:25. 

Submitted by

Candyce Lelm