TECHNOLOGY PLANNING & PRIORITIES COMMITTEE
MARCH 4, 2016
Present: Janet Scannell, Bev Nagel, Paul Thiboutot, Elise Eslinger
Absent: Tommy Bonner, Fred Rogers, Carolyn Livingston
Guest: Julie Anderson
Agenda:
1. Approve minutes from Jan. 22nd meeting (and prior)
2. Summary of activity from technology advisory groups
3. Summary of increase in demand/cost of computers (prep for 5 year budget conversation at April meeting)
4. Email, calendaring and storage project
a. reaction to the announcement
b. project charter and timing of rollout
c. proposal for divisional staff involvement
d. proposal for how to approach the transition from Collab to Dropbox
1. Minutes:
The minutes from the Jan 22, 2016 and November 13, 2015 were approved.
2. Advisory group summaries:
Janet commented that our advisory groups are starting to take hold in good ways and reported on topics they have been discussing.
IT Security Group: has met with their St. Olaf counterparts and plan to meet every couple months. To protect college information being accessed on mobile devices, Rich Graves would like to turn on a pin code requirement. It was noted that this is different from the “second factor” authentication offered by Duo which the President’s Office and the Business Office have started using to give extra security every time you need to enter your password from any computer or other device; it does remember the second factor for 60 days. We won’t make Duo required any time soon, but ITS would like to turn on the “pin code” requirement for faculty and staff checking email on a mobile device – most of whom have a 4 digit pin code already. The concern is whether this is too much change for people if we turn this on in April or May before the email conversion. TPPC attendees favored implementing this, depending on if Rich can do it by constituency, i.e. make it optional for faculty.
LIBIT (Library & IT) group: has discussed Drones – Faculty want to use them for research projects, but the College does not have a policy around them (and FAA is controlling their use in “air space”). The Future Learning Technologies Group is continuing grant efforts to spur innovation (many around use of video) and is involved with a review of the College’s use of Moodle and how well it is meeting academic (and non-academic) needs.
Web Advisory: Web Services has purchased new software that identifies broken links, misspellings, and accessibility issues.
ESAG (Enterprise Systems): Carleton has arranged for several of our IT and functional (Registrar’s and Business Office) staff to be part of advisory groups working with Ellucian earlier in their product development and direction setting. There are numerous staff from Carleton who will be attending the Ellucian Live conference next month. There is a task force that investigated how preferred gender can be stored; next step is for the DoC and DoS to think about training around using gender information. The intention is to not have the data gathered and available before faculty & staff are prepared for it. ITS created a way to record student pronunciation of their names – the OneCard office will be handling the recording of student names starting at this spring’s Sr. Showcase and continuing with New Student Week.
3. Summary in increase in demand/cost of computer:
Janet highlighted some budget items and pressure points in preparation for discussion of the 5 year preview of ITS expenses which will be discussed at our April TPPC meeting.
· There is more demand for “research computing” among various new faculty with associated infrastructure implications. A similar pressure is the demand for “big data” such as storage of video files.
· Enterprise systems – What is our intention for the next 5-10 years? Do some or all departments stay with Ellucian or look at other products like Workday? We’ve made a 5 year commitment to Salesforce, but will be evaluating the Ellucian CRM offering as it matures. What are the implications if we end up with multiple of these options? There would be implementation expense and staffing/support implications from increasing the number of solutions Carleton is using. Janet would like to do some planning and strategic thinking about how we would do a strategic plan around these options & implications.
· Cost of hardware is going up, especially Apple desktop and laptops. ITS gets more requests for laptops. Janet showed some graphs of these trends.
4. Email, calendaring, & storage project:
a. Group shared their observations about reactions to the decision. Mostly well received. Some are a little nervous about the change.
b. Project charter and timing of rollout.
Julie Anderson highlighted the objectives of the Charter for Email/Calendar/File Share Implementation. It included the members of the Project Team and various subgroups; communication, process, training, technical (email/calendaring), and technical (Dropbox). There is a kickoff meeting next Wednesday.
Estimated timeline: March will be info gathering, April – migrate round of early Gmail adopters (ITS, Library, few others), mid-May new incoming students, early June first migration of faculty, returning students, then staff. We will offer people a chance to change their username to more than 8 characters. They are planning on plenty of visibility and awareness with lots communication.
c. Proposal for divisional staff involvement:
Because this project reaches everyone, we’d like to take this opportunity to pull in 1 or 2 key people per division or department to be the go-to resource person in their area. Julie A. outlined the role this person would play. We would give them training and they’d be closely tied to the project team. We anticipate utilizing the department administrative assistants and embedded technical staff throughout campus. Janet asked committee members to think about how/who in their divisions they want to connect with this role.
d. Dropbox transition:
We are in final negotiations with Dropbox to determine access for part-time employees, students and pricing. There is a task force working on identifying storage best practices. Our expectation is that departments will want at least a month to prepare and create a migration/storage plan with guidance from ITS. By the end of next December we would like all departments moved-over. We will offer four timeframes (spring, summer, fall, winter break) and they can pick what works best for them. We are also proposing the need for an ongoing role in departments of a file management steward. The intent is to work with them in advance of migration and wrap in policies about archives and retention. How should the stewards be determined? Janet will connect with Peggy Pfister to work through our academic administrative assistants.
5. Fines – ITS, PEPS and CAMS are proposing a fine structure for late returns, damaged, lost or stolen equipment. The committee favored moving ahead with the recommendation. It coincides with the fee structure of the Library.
Meeting adjourned at 3:00p.m.
Submitted by: Candyce Lelm