Committee meeting - February 24, 2022

Sarah McKone

Secretary to the Committee    
February 24, 2022
   
Present: Andrew McAlorum, Bill Baer, Erick Engelke, Greg Parks, Lawrence Folland, Lori Paniak, Pam Fluttert, Paul Miskovsky, Pratik Patel, Robyn Landers, Steven Bourque, Trevor Bain

Regrets: Adam Savage, Daryl Dore, Don Duff-McCracken, Greg Smith Jason Testart,

Agenda 

  1. Chair’s remarks (Steven Bourque) [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes from Thursday, January 27, 2021 [5 min.]
  3. Discuss managing assertions (Lawrence Folland) [10 min.] 

  4. Discuss Green IT committee (Andrew McAlorum) [5 min.]

  5. Other business and roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]

  6. Next CTSC Meeting [Will be held Thursday, March 10, at 1:30 p.m.] 

Chair's remarks

  • None.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting 

  • The previous meeting’s minutes were accepted as distributed. 

Discuss managing assertions (Lawrence Folland) [10 min.]

Comments and discussion

  • All members to review the document circulated by Lawrence and provide additions as necessary.

  • Once there is consensus a request can be made to Jason to begin creating workflows. 

  • Other/future considerations: 

    • There is an existing project to review post-docs retaining emails and other system access upon degree completion

    • Other permissions required for these groups to create a streamlined process (ex. LEARN access)

    • Groups should consider creating a sponsorship database to inform when sponsorships should be deleted, who the sponsors are, etc.  

Discuss Green IT committee (Andrew McAlorum) [5 min.]

Comments and discussion

  • The Sustainable IT Project completed and assessment of the current state, and identified a few standards, best practices, and recommended outcome. These were presented to UCIST one of which was to restart the Green IT Committee. This outcome was approved by UCIST. 

  • What does it mean to be a member of the committee? This will be a minimal time commitment, with monthly meetings. Some working groups may exist depending on the initiatives put forward.  

  • Andrew is looking to start the committee in the upcoming months and will send an email invitation to the CTSC and ASU mailing lists. Members are encouraged to share this with those who may have capacity. There is no limit on membership.  

Other Business/Roundtable

IST, Steve 

  • The cost of Infoblox has increased significantly due to a transition to a subscription-based model.  The Infoblox renewal RFP will be cancelled and a review of what is available in the market will be completed. Information will come to CTSC for review. 

IST, Client Services, Andrew 

  • An IT review was completed in 2019 and the final report was written in 2020. Due to operational work, this remained mostly untouched. A new project to review the report, complete an assessment of the current state of recommendations, and layout steps for the next CIO will commence. Connie will be the PM for this project. 

Environment, Don  

  • Request for update on hiring a replacement for Sandy 

  • The software licensing and coordinator role has been filled, and the candidate will start in April. In the meantime, these questions can be directed to the generic account ist-swpu@uwaterloo.ca. 

  • Don would like to know it is possible to access data for AVD on environment hosted server or does this need to be access on an IST hosted server.  

  • Currently this is not possible, back-end VPN tunnel is only able to connect to the IST data centre. 

  • This limitation my go away with the new data centre firewalls. An RFP has been awarded for data centre firewalls. The definitive timeline is unknown, but the PO went out and the estimated delivery is 5 months. When resolved Steve will bring this information to CTSC. 

Engineering, Erick 

  • Would like to know if there is a license agreement with Mathematica. Mathematica has been advertising their services as free for use on campus.  

  • Andrew confirmed there is not a license for Mathematica. 

Computer Science, Lawrence 

  • Previously the software team created a chart with current licenses. Lawrence expressed a desire to have something like this again. 

Math, Robyn 

  • Would like to know about the state of the IT Asset Project

  • The project was completed and is available in Confluence.  

  • Desire to pilot this with DTR assets and potentially mobile devices in the future.