October 9, 2003 Minutes

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY

COMMITTEE

10/09/2003, 9:00-10:30 am

ATTENDEES: Carole Chapman, Dave Gillett, Scott Heffner, William Le, Allison Lenkeit, Chuck Lindauer, Willie Pritchard, Eric Rosenthal

GUESTS: Gerry Gyuire, Sharon Luciw

Convened: 9:07 am

1. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING

· Minutes will stand approved as posted

2. INTRODUCTIONS

3. EXPECTATIONS/GROUP NORMS

· Committee members should attend as many meetings as they can

· Expect that everyone has reviewed the agenda and minutes, off line, before coming to the meetings

The agenda and prior meeting minutes are posted approximately 24 hour before a meeting

· Decision-making is based upon a consensus

In the history of the committee there has only been one time where there was a vote
Usually able to reach a consensus decision through conversation and discussion

· Open conversation is encouraged about any particular topic

· Most discussions are open and free flowing

· Although each member represents a particular constituency group, this is a district wide committee, with district wide decisions

Members need to think outside of the role they are playing and consider technology issues from a district perspective

· If any member has an agenda item, they need to notify Willie or Pam more than 24 hrs in advance of a meeting

· Time permitting; at the end of each meeting, committee members can bring up items of interest that may not have been on the agenda

4. GENERAL NEWS - WILL BE COVERED UNDER #6

5. SUBCOMMITTEE REPORTS - HARDWARE/SOFTWARE STANDARDS, NETWORK & SYSTEMS, INFORMATION SYSTEMS, COMPUTER USE POLICY

· Hardware /Software Standards - Willie Pritchard

Met on Tuesday, October 7th
Has revised the standards matrix

Have removed the Special Purpose Configuration from the matrix
If there are individuals who feel that the standard configuration does not meet their needs, they can go to their respective Tech Services Supervisor and work together with them to come up with a configuration that is appropriate for their needs and fits within the areas that we can support

Will now be a 2X2 matrix
Tweaked the general purpose configuration to both Apple & Dell; completely revised the Dell laptop to have a lighter, but still fully functional, computer
Willie hopes' to have new configurations posted by early next week
Scott would like to have ETAC's approval on any changes by the committee, before posting to the web

If there are any objections by the ETAC committee, then the issue can be taken back to the HW & SW standards subcommittee
Currently the subcommittee is unable to meet often enough to keep up with the changes by the vendors
Many times the vendor changes the standards
Scott Heffner would like to be able to give input on changes generated by the subcommittee to the standards
Chuck Lindauer proposed that the subcommittee be allowed to continue to do what they are doing, make their recommendations, and then allow ETAC to review their decisions, before going through with the actual updates, provided there are no hardships
In the past, the Chair of the committee, was given the authority to make little tweaks to the standards so that orders were not delayed
The subcommittee can notify ETAC by e-mail that new standards have been posted, if there is a conflict with meeting times

William Le, VP of the DASB, wanted to know if the subcommittee had any plans to expand the list of configurationswith more economical models

Wants to replace computers that are 8 years old
Feels that the current standards are over kill - specifications & too expensive
Committee feels it doesn't make sense, because the cheaper computers are not industrial grade and the overall repair costs are too high
Committee does periodically revisit the issue

The enforcement procedure for computer purchases:

If purchasing gets an order for a standard computer, it gets ordered
If a req comes through for nonstandard equipment, without a signature from one of the designated ETS managers, then they send it back to ETS and we contact the group
If purchased by an individual without going through the normal process, and it is not a standard, ETS will not support it

· Network & Systems - Sharon Luciw

No update

· Information Systems - Gerry Gyuire

No update

· Computer Use Policy

In spring of 2002 ETAC determined that there was a need to revise the then existent policy
Created an Ad Hoc subcommittee which began to develop a draft document of a purposed new policy

The draft document was finished at the end of the academic year for 2002
In the Fall of 2002 the ETAC group came up with a process for getting input from the different constituency groups and the general community
There were a number of ways for people to give input: there was an open period when people could provide written input;had two open meetings, one on each campus; then went through the governance groups (the senates , the college Roundtable at FH and the College Council at DA, the CAC and then the Board)
After each form of input, the subcommittee updated the policy draft to reflect the changes

The Board did approve a Computer Use policy at its first meeting in July that was changed, fairly significantly from what ETAC had approved the prior March
The policy is now in effect and all employees of the district should have received a letter from Willie with a copy of the full policy
Currently working on ways to inform the student body about the new policy
FA still has objections regarding the "no expectation of privacy", they feel there should be "reasonable expectation of privacy"

There were several efforts to resolve the issue but FA still objected
The District feels that this is a fundamental part of owning the network

6. REPORT ON SUMMER EVENTS: STUDENT ID CARD, ONLINE/AUTOMATED FORMS PROCESSING PILOT, MAUI REPLACEMENT, PORTAL PROJECT, COMPUTER USE POLICY, VIRUS ATTACKS, IMPACT OF BUDGET CUTS AND ETS REORIGIZATION

· Portal Grant

The District received a grant for Portal software
The software, training and implementation is worth over a million dollars, over the course of five years

There will be an ongoing cost for the software maintenance and license agreement of $29,750 - paid for through the savings we have encountered by changing our phone contracts (a savings of about $50K per year)
The grant comes with the entire Oracle 9I AS platform

It is a web-based environment
It is highly interactive and is customizable and allows you to personalize to your own personal interests
Will be able to create custom web pages
Granted to us from Oracle and CampusEAI (makes portal software)
Will have portal available sometime in January
After training, our technical staff will be able to create modules (port lets) that can be customized in each user group, with specific applications
The standard pages of the current college and district web sites will not go away

However, some of the functions they now provide will happen within the portal environment

This grant gives us a query tool that can be used in place of MAUI at a savings of about $150K (the approximate purchase price for new replacement software)

Unlike MAUI, this software will be able to be used by either computer platform

The grant includes LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol) software, which we were going to need to get soon, at an estimated cost of $20K or more
So not only did we get a grant for over $1 million we also saved the district an additional $170,000 that we would have had to purchase anyway

· Student ID Card

Perception that there is a lot of money spent on student ID cards, particularly the Smart Card
ETS has been charged with finding a less expensive solution that sill provides the same or similar functionality as the current card
A committee has been formed and is now at the point that they have an RFP document in near final form
Hoping to replace or reduce the fees for the current student ID card
Earliest possible implementation would be spring quarter, much more likely summer quarter next year
Would be a multi purpose card with a photograph and possibly a mag strip and a smart chip
Cards will be district wide, but the marking and the design will be different for each college
The cards will not be able to hold large sums of money

· Online/Automated Forms Processing Pilot

Putting together an RFI (request for information) from vendors

In the process of trying to see what products are available, what capabilities and functionalities they provide and at approximately what cost
After getting back info on the RFI, will proceed with an RFP to get formal proposals on the cost

Will try to incorporate the forms into the portal environment

When logging on, you would get the forms that are appropriate to your needs
Authenticated signatures would be incorporated into the form,
Will be able to track where your form is in the process

· Maui Replacement

See Portal Grant

· Virus Attacks

During August the district had twointense virus attacks, that also happened all around the country (MS Blaster & So Big viruses)
The district was lucky and able to respond quickly to minimize the impact
The So Big virus impacted how much e-mail went through our server system

Normally our server handles between 30 - 40K messages a day
By the second day of the virus, we were up to 160K messages a day
The time that was spent dealing with these viruses, was the equivalent to about 600 staff hours or 15 staff weeks of work

Impacted ETS at a critical time, when we are getting ready for a new academic year

A large reason viruses get spread around is because of users' computers not having the latest virus protection and users not being careful about email attachments
ETS will make a real effort to educate people and help them understand that there are certain types of messages that you do not open
We anticipate that viruses and hacking attacks are not going to go away and will continue to happen and be a problem for us
ETS is looking for ways to help users become more aware and ways to implement systems to help prevent attacks

Currently the district does not have a SPAM filter or server side virus protection
Tom Roza (supervisor of the data center) has found that effective tools cost $20-30K

· Impact of budget cuts and ETS reorganization

Effective June 30 th , 2003, ETS lost a large number of staff in the budget cuts - 21 staff members
Reduction in staff has caused ETS to reorganize

The reorg went into effect last week
The current ETS organization consists of 59 staff members

The new management organization consists of Willie, two technical managers (Gerry Gyuire, & Sharon Luciw), and Bob Barr, the   Director of Institutional Research
Gerry's area consists of the data center & all the information systems application programmers
Sharon's area consists of the call center, the desktop support through tech services at both campuses, and network, communications, and telephone system group
There is anticipation that ETS's response time to meet work requests, will degrade
The whole district will be facing more budget cuts next year

·Willie will make a presentation to the committee at the next meeting about budgetary issues the district if facing regarding technology

· ETAC will need to review and revise, as appropriate, the current technology strategic plan; by next spring it will have been four years since the last revision; so this will be a major effort for the group

8.OTHER ITEMS FROM THE COMMITTEE

· Still having difficulty recruiting representatives, particularly faculty due to meeting time

· Discussed a new meeting time

Would be better for teaching faculty if meetings were shorter or earlier, or in the afternoon
All committee members are to e-mail Pam three day and time options for a new meeting time

· The estimated savings to the budget (MAUI replacement; &LDAP) for the acquisition of the portal grant have not been incorporated into Kathy Blackwood's overall budget

Adjourned:10:35 am

Next Meeting:October 23, 2003, 9:00 AM, Foothill Carriage House Conference Room

Last Updated: Friday, November 21, 2003 at 3:17:39 PM
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