Technology Planning & Priorities Committee
September 14, 2015
Present: Janet Scannell, Paul Thiboutot, Tommy Bonner, Carolyn Livingston, Bev Nagel, Elise Eslinger
Absent: Fred Rogers
Agenda:
1. Review the minutes from our July 23rd meeting
2. Status of critical projects: volunteer management, email and cloud storage evaluations
3. Discuss elements of cloud philosophy
4. Time permitting: brainstorm other topics for this year (e.g. Reason, capital planning)
Minutes:
The minutes from the July 23rd meeting were approved.
Status of critical projects:
Volunteer management (CRM) with Salesforce is underway. We recently met with consultants for two days of “discovery” and have purchased the software that connects the data between Colleague and Salesforce. A go-live launch date is set for January 22nd.
Email & cloud storage evaluations: An email steering group has been formed with Elise Eslinger as executive sponsor. They are beginning the evaluation phase and recently had a conversation with Stanford. Last week ITS held open info sessions which covered changes in the areas of: liaisons, Academic Technology role, and Email and calendar evaluation. Our two choices; Google and Microsoft have good cloud options. Janet reviewed factors that will be considered before making a decision:
· Features – calendaring will be an important one for us.
· Ability to do technical administration (mail recovery, spam filtering, things we currently do now)
· Integration with our tech ecosystem
· Cost – of the products and support
· Vendors – now and in the future
· Value to students post-Carleton
Faculty has been made aware in a number of venues of this upcoming change. It was thought that integration with their personal and professional calendars would be a key feature of interest to them.
Janet then went over the proposed steps of the process.
FALL TERM: understanding community needs, research technical and Cloud implications, map the features to Carleton’s needs.
WINTER TERM: community testing of the products, create matrix of strengths/weaknesses, Tuesday Group decision.
SPRING TERM: Implementation
SUMMER: Go-live with groups in various stages.
After weighing all the pros and cons, the Steering Committee will provide us with their findings. The final decision will then be made by TP&PC and Tuesday Group.
Janet continued discussion by highlighting some slides from the IT open information sessions. She’s been working over the past few years to create a new outreach and support model.
· New Support Model
o Contact the Helpdesk for break-fix issues.
o Contact the Service Owner directly (e.g. expert knowledge in Moodle, OnBase, research data)
o Contact the Relationship Manager (staff responsible for Divisions) or CTO for guidance.
· Over the summer ITS created a Catalog of Services linked to their website. It includes descriptions of services, how to get started, and an “I want to” dropdown menu.
We are continuing to think about Cloud storage as it is interwoven with the email conversation. An evaluation was done last winter and narrowed down to five possible options. There are still many questions and concerns about moving to the Cloud. How do we engage the Cloud philosophy and evaluate what things go to the Cloud?
Discuss elements of cloud philosophy:
Janet then led us in discussion centered on establishing criteria for an institution to consider when adapting a new cloud service. They included:
· Existing services – are there any that exist or can be modified.
· Accessibility
· Data sensitivity and ownership – assess the risks and benefits of storing them in the cloud.
· Security and compliance – identify certain minimum requirements
· Continuity risk – what if a vendor goes out-of-business?
· Exit strategies – should be considered and defined.
· Explore the “what if” and emergency planning scenarios
Janet highlighted issues with our current COLLAB storage. There is confusion of where to save and share files. After discussion, Janet encouraged the committee to think about these principles. We will continue discussion of this topic in more detail at the Nov. 13th meeting.
Other topics:
Reason (our content management system) was recently brought up at the Tuesday Group retreat. The Web Team uses this tool to create content on Carleton’s website. A second choice, WordPress, has been emerging on campus. It scales nicely and is a more beneficial tool for students to use. The committee felt it’s time to begin looking at transitioning to something more integrated. Janet meets with Jaye Lawrence and Julie Anderson regularly and will talk with them about how WordPress fits into our current ecosystem.
Meeting adjourned at 11:20.
Submitted by:
Candyce Lelm