Melissa Conrad
Secretary to the Committee
March 19, 2013
Present:
Dave Wallace (Chair), Melissa Conrad (Secretary), Bill Baer, Pascal Calarco, Bruce Campbell, Andrea Chappell, Marko Dumancic, Erick Engelke, Bob Hicks, Bill Ince, Dawn Keenan, Dave Kibble, Robyn Landers, Paul Miskovsky, Jason Testart , Martin Timmerman
Guests:
Sean Mason, Carl Nagel, May Yan
Regrets:
Terry Stewart
Agenda
- WatCard’s Role in Student Printing Project (1:30pm – 1:45pm, May Yan)
- Moving and de-provisioning users in Waterloo Identity and Access Management (WatIAM) (1:45pm – 2:00pm, Sean Mason)
- Chair’s remarks (2:00pm-2:10pm)
- Approval of the minutes of the meeting of February 7, 2013 and business arising (2:10pm-2:20pm)
- Digital media asset management (2:20-2:35pm; Pascal Calarco)
- IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, and Organize for Success Update (2:35-2:45pm; Andrea Chappell, Dave Wallace, Bob Hicks)
- Updates (2:45-2:55pm; Various)
- Email (Martin Timmerman)
- Active Directory (Martin Timmerman)
- Green IT (Marko Dumancic)
- IT security (Jason Testart)
- Campus Firewall Project (Bruce Campbell)
- Other business (2:55-3:00pm)
- Next Computing Technology and Services Committee (CTSC) meeting
[Will be held Thursday, March 21, 2013, at 1:30 p.m., in Mathematics & Computing building (MC) 2018A.]
WatCard's role in Student Printing Project (May Yan)
May Yan was in attendance at the meeting to update the group and also to clarify her role in this project. Yan made it clear that she was in attendance to represent the WatCard Office, not Retail Services (and its revenue generating copy centers).
Background
The WatCard Office was notified that a replacement was being sought for XAS and therefore, an arrangement was made with Heartland (the WatCard vendor) to trial Go Print at no cost from June 2012 to February 2013. The free trial period has ended and a pilot is now being arranged. Environment and Applied Health Sceinces (AHS) will both be participating and St. Jerome’s has also expressed interested.
Next steps
In April a Request For Proposal (RFP) will be put together to seek a replacement for eXtensible Accounting System (XAS). A business plan will need to be created that clearly indicates what this would mean to the faculties. We need to understand the business model - will revenue be distributed as it is today? If not, what will change? Some of the larger, more complex implications need to be understood.
CTSC, and perhaps a reconvened printing subcommittee, will need to compare the current plan to the original requirements to see where we are today. As a start, a discussion will be held at the next CTSC meeting.
Moving and de-provisioning users in WatIAM (Sean Mason)
Sean Mason provided an update on moving and deprovisioning users. In advance of the meeting, he distributed 5 documents:
- Identity Management (IDM)-Deprovision
- IDM-Deprovision
- IDM-Deprovision
- IDM-Moving-Checklist
- WatIAM-Precedence-Rules
Mason reviewed the documents. It was noted that there are definitely challenges and that the process is complex, to say the least.
De-provisioning
The proper de-provisioning of access assigned to a user that vacates a role at the university is an important aspect of information security. De-provisioning actions should be performed in a timely manner, often requiring prearrangement. As with renaming actions that may be taken, there are a large number of systems on campus who’s user base is not managed centrally, so processing delays need to be planned for, and manual actions scheduled.
The group discussed issues surrounding de-provisioning of users. Jason Testart will fold points raised into his “road map” presentation on April 18th.
Moving
Moving a user from one department to another continues to be problematic for many users. Each instance requires feedback from two or more departments, and official communication from all of these departments and several authoritative sources.
It was agreed that we should provide documentation for both administrative staff and for technical staff. Mason will look into publishing two versions of the information created and presented to CTSC:
- Documentation for administrative staff to aid them in renaming, moving, and de-provisioning access to users
- Documentation for technical staff to aid them in renaming, moving, and de-provisioning access to users
Chair's remarks (Dave Wallace)
Organize for Success
Department-wide meetings were held with IST staff on March 6th/7th. A presentation to the Staff Relations Committee will occur on March 8th.
Architecture Discussion with Desire2Learn (D2L)
Architecture discussions are occurring with D2L. This will be of interest to groups considering cloud services.
Approval of the minutes of the meeting of February 21, 2013 and business arising
The minutes of the meeting of February 21, 2013 were approved.
Digital media asset management project update (Pascal Calarco)
Calarco provided an update on the Digital Media Asset Management Project.
Topics included:
- Project objectives
- Statement of work
- Working definition for the project
- Deliverables
- Team composition
- Findings/Requirements
- Optional features identified
- Digital video capture/delivery systems in use
- Few integration possibilities with digital video
- Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) or community source
- Recommendation: asset bank
- Asset bank: technical
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 compliance
- uWaterloo test instance
Calarco’s entire presentation is available (PDF).
Next steps:
- Get clarity on what this project is and what it is not
- Determine where this fits with other projects that are currently underway
- Prepare a post-pilot roadmap or migration path
IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, and Organize for Success Initiative update (Andrea Chappell, Bob Hicks, Dave Wallace)
IT Strategic Plan
- University Committee on Information Systems & Techonology (UCIST)
- looking at the things to do, projects, pending projects
- using the Strategy Map, assess those to come up with a first cut of priority activities to meet the Strategic Objectives, and the top 6 in particular
- Task Force (TF)
- The Task Force worked to identify indicators (measurements) that map to the strategic objectives; Sandy is working on the materials, massaging it based on presentations and discussions in the TF meetings. She should be able to deliver those on Monday.
- Indicators details will come next
- TF Theme Teams are also pulling text from the consultation data to provide examples of what student, faculty, staff are looking for, as material for the website.
- Launching to the campus
- A short 2-page document was created after the most recent round at UCIST. This material will be posted to the website, along with the mission, Strategy Map, definitions, explanation of what has happened so far, the 6 strategic objectives of initial focus, etc.
- Time line has slipped since the main resource, Natalie, has left, and the person moving into that role has been away.
- Open House on March 26th
More information on the IT Strategic Plan can be found at the web site.
Enterprise Architecture
The working group is set to meet with members of IST’s senior management for approval of project charters and to share some of their accomplishments to date. Results of this gathering will be shared at an upcoming CTSC meeting.
Organize for Success
Covered under Chair’s remarks
Updates
Email (Martin Timmerman)
No update.
Active Directory (Martin Timmerman)
Timmerman will distribute an update via email.
Green IT (Marko Dumancic)
The Green IT group meets on March 18th to review the hydro report.
IT security (Jason Testart)
A communication sent to people who run data extracts in Quest informed them that rather than receiving the data as an email attachment, they will now access the extract file within Quest. The reasoning provided was that it is not secure to transmit restricted data via email. We need to look at this further to determine exactly what this means: What can be sent by email? What should be sent through other means? What are the strengths of the alternatives? Jason Testart will prepare proposed guidelines for presentation to UCIST.
Campus Firewall
Need project team members to focus on enumerating a list of open services and determine whether they need to be blocked or exempted.
Student Printing (Bill Baer)
Covered under agenda item #1.
Other business
None.
Next meeting
The next meeting will be held on March 21, 2013, at 1:30pm, in MC 2018A.