Committee Meeting - January 7, 2016

Darren Bondy
Secretary to the Committee
January 18, 2016

Present: 

Bruce Campbell (Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Trevor Bain, Steven Bourque, Marko Dumancic, Erick Engelke, Dave Gawley, Bob Hicks, Dawn Keenan, Robyn Landers, Paul Miskovsky, Carl Nagel, Jason Testart

Regrets:

Andrea Chappell, David Kibble, Sati Singh

Agenda

  1. Chair’s remarks [10 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes of the meeting of December 10, 2015 [5 min.]
  3. Review of CTSC agenda topics [20 min.]
  4. Summary of committees/governance (Bob Hicks, Bruce Campbell)
  5. Other Business [10 min.]
  6. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  1. Next CTSC Meeting

[Will be held Thursday, January 7, 2016, at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 111.]

Chair’s remarks

  • If you have not done so yet, please RSVP to Darren for the CTSC/UCIST luncheon next Friday, January 8th as soon as possible.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

The minutes from the meeting on December 10, 2015, were accepted as distributed.

Review of CTSC agenda topics

  • Will vote/reprioritize the topics and add any additional topics at the next CTSC meeting.
  • Still looking for volunteers for the topics that have not been discussed yet.
  • There is an active RFP for the Identity and Access Management project that closes later this month; Jason Testart will present a detailed update after that time.
  • Trevor Bain has begun working on the electronic classroom update; has touched based with Andrea Chappell regarding this topic.
  • Where does the University strategic plan lineup with CTSC’s activities? Is there a parallel there?

Summary of committees/governance

  • At the last UCIST meeting in December there was a discussion about web directions and representation on the various committees such as Web Steering Committee and Web Advisory Committee (WAC).
  • Andrew McAlorum will come to UCIST and CTSC once a term to provide progress and priority updates.
  • We also encourage representatives for faculties that are on WAC to communicate regularly with their faculties to ensure they are representing their interests.
  • Bob Hicks has put together a diagram that highlights the various IT committees on campus and which groups report to each other.
    • Suggested that the various IT committees that have connections with CTSC should attend a meeting to provide an update.
    • This diagram should be updated to better represent the current connections between various committees as well as some committees who no longer meet regularly.

Other business

None.

Roundtable Reporting

Applied Health Sciences (Trevor Bain)

  • Getting ready for the new term.
  • Continuing to work on Mac management in SCCM; had a video conference with the vendor to get a sense of their roadmap.
    • Will continue to be in contact with them.
    • Have managed to deploy software to Macs via SCCM and do some remote management.

Environment (Marko Dumancic)

  • Busy with beginning of new term work.
  • Encountering a perennial issue with our joint graduate program in Geography with Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) where Waterloo does not have any information about the WLU students that come to campus for classes; this issue should be solved soon.
    • Not necessarily a tech issue but there are technical elements to it.

Engineering (Erick Engelke)

  • Refreshed a new set of workstations.
  • Got an all-flash file server into production.
  • Completed our first pilot with eValuate; hoping to launch fully with it this term.
  • Lablocker was used last term in our department; continue to gauge interest of other areas.
    • No solution for Macs at this point.

Computer Science (Dave Gawley)

  • Currently reevaluating the way we manage our Macs; in preliminary investigation at this point.
    • Considering the JAMF Casper suite.
    • This is a good topic to discuss further at a future meeting.
    • IST is also looking at Mac deployment; Steve Bourque will get Manfred Grisebach’s group to attend a meeting to provide an update.

Client Services, IST (Bob Hicks)

  • The absence management software that Kevin Paxman wrote years ago is currently going through a security scan; if it passes the scan, IST will offer it as an interim solution until the university can implement a campus-wide solution.

Arts (Dawn Keenan)

  • Will be building a Finance lab in Hagey Hall in the next weeks.
    • Still looking for a lab manager, the posting has gone external.

Science (Paul Miskovksy)

  • Had to renew license for SPSS in one of our labs; available on the Webstore.
    • Would be beneficial to have Sandra Laughlin attend a future meeting to discuss software licensing.
  • Mirko Vucicevich is working on the digital signage software full-time right now.

Library (Carl Nagel)

  • Just returning from holidays today; still catching up on everything.
  • Adam Savage installed our Nutanix box this week.
  • A Digital Archivist was hired for the Library recently.

IT Security (Jason Testart)

  • Busy right now with application security reviews.
  • Reviewing responses to the RFP on IDAM.
  • Asked the WatIAM team to start a project to consider removing the userid’s/accounts that belong to applicants that didn’t commit/attend the University.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be held on January 21, 2016 at 1:30pm, in EC2 111.