Committee meeting - September 5, 2019

Carol Lu
Secretary to the Committee
September 5, 2019

Present: Jason Testart, Trevor Bain, Erick Engelke, Don Duff-McCracken, Andrea Chappell, Robyn Landers, David Gawley, Bill Baer, Steven Bourque, Carol Lu (Secretary)

Regrets: Andrew McAlorum, Paul Miskovsky, Daryl Dore, Adam Savage, Greg Smith, Dave Kibble

Agenda

  1. Chair’s remarks [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes of the meetings of Thursday August 22, 2019 [5 min.]
  3. UW Emerge status and replacement (Steven Bourque) [10 min.]
  4. Other Business [10 min.]
  5. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  6. Next CTSC Meeting
    [Will be held Thursday September 19 at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 1021.]

Chair's remarks (Steven Bourque)

  • Last meeting there was a brief discussion about allowing the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA) to join CTSC
    • Should take into consideration that there may be conversations containing confidential information
    • From an IT perspective, there are not a lot of differences between UW and WUSA
      • Should the University Colleges also be included in the committee as well? 
    • An email was recently sent out regarding Adobe licensing
      • Bill Baer will be collecting information from various groups/faculties in order to investigate any cost saving opportunities

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

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

UW Emerge status and replacement (Steven Bourque)

  • Status update
    • There are no new developments since the last update was provided
    • There is a news item on the IST website and a Knowledge Base article outlining the details of the notification tool
    • The Mac version will be announced later in the fall term
    • The new emergency notification tool replacement options do not support Linux
      • The UW Emerge project team made the decision to move forward with an option acknowledging that there will not be Linux support

Comments and discussion

  • The source code has been recompiled and is available for download here: https://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~erick/emergecli
  • Better communication would be ideal
  • Is there a risk to not supporting Linux? 
    • At least three Computer Science classrooms will not get emergency desktop notifications
    • Students are still able to recieve emergency notifications on their devices via the WatSAFE app

Roundtable

Instructional Technologies and Media Services, IST (Andrea)

  • 2FA has been reactivated for LEARN
    • There are concerns regarding quizzes/exams where device use is not permitted
      • A meeting will take place this week to discuss a resolution 
  • Course evaluations
    • eValuate is used in all Faculties
    • A round of consultations with the Faculties to get feedback on processes to administer surveys and report results has been completed, except for Science which will be organized at a later date

Math (Robyn)

  • Secure erasure and disposal of SSDs
    • Seeking suggestions, concerned with complying with University procedures
      • Robyn will send out an email to the committee with the current suggested action
      • Connect with Chris Roth from MFCF
      • Could sent to Central Stores for shredding
      • Steve will look over IST resources for information 

Information Security Services, IST (Jason)

  • Student name change project
    • Project between IST, Registrar's Office, and The Centre
    • Students' preferred name is not always being used by professors
      • The Quest steering group has recommended that a distinction be created between legal name and preferred name
        • Legal name change requests should be handled by The Registrar's Office and The Centre
        • Preferred name change requests should be handled by IST via WatIAM
          • Changes made in WatIAM will be reflected in Quest
    • Most professors should not need access to a student's legal name; professors should only need access to students' preferred name
    • Only a few UW systems need access to students' legal names
      • If there is a situation where a system needs access to legal names, please contact Wendy Hague
    • This change is expected to be implemented in Winter 2020/Spring 2020
  • WatIAM name change project
    • There is a project looking at the 'internationalization' of names in WatIAM
    • There is discussion around whether the University of Waterloo should accept non-roman characters in names
      • If there is a desire to accept non-roman characters, this will affect how user IDs are generated
  • Daily Bulletin podcast

Comments and discussion

  • The class lists provided to professors will contain preferred names
  • Will there be instances where professors will come across a student's legal name even after predominantly seeing their preferred name? 
    • Professors will only see the preferred name
    • Legal names will only exist in restricted areas
  • What name will appear on a student's degree/diploma? 
    • There is a suggestion to have students specify the name they want to have on their degree on the Intent to Graduate form

Technology Integrated Services, IST (Steven)

  • The Nexenta software designed storage pilot will be starting soon
  • Set up will take place later this month (some time between September 23 - 27)
  • Plan is to get Nexenta running and monitor its performance
     

Engineering (Erick)

  • Interested in having department reps participate in testing the employee Office 365 email migration
    • IST will be looking for participants once testing is announced
  • Looking for a way to access current student records
    • Contact Daryl Dore or John Kemp
  • Any update on the ONA replacement? 
    • This is actively being worked on but no timeline has been established yet
    • Prototypes have been created and some testing has occurred

Arts (Bill)

  • Faculty/staff computer rollovers
    • Tracking purchases and purchase dates is the responsibility of each department as opposed to the faculty
    • Are there any departments that support updating home computing? 
      • IST and Math do not support updates on home machines
      • Environment supports updates 
      • Computer Science provides loaner laptops and charges a subscription fee 
        • Contact Lawrence Folland for details
  • Asset management tools
    • Current tool is 2 years old and becoming high-cost, seeking suggestions for lower-cost alternatives
      • Environment has developed an asset management tool system (James McCarthy)

Environment (Don)

  • Using Apple School Manager as of August 2019
    • Working with Cassandra Bechard and Glenn Anderson to move from the Volume Purchasing Program by December 2019
  • Department has started using Grouper and is satisfied with its performance
  • Would like to participate in the testing group for employee Office 365 email

Computer Science (David)

  • Looking for an update on campus network upgrades
    • CS has finished re-imaging Macs but machines would not do a network install after re-imaging