Committee meeting - September 19, 2013

Meltem Kurtman
Acting Secretary to the Committee
September 23, 2013

Present:

Dave Wallace (Chair), Meltem Kurtman (Secretary), Bill Baer, Bruce Campbell, Andrea Chappell, Marko Dumancic, Bob Hicks, Dawn Keenan, Robyn Landers, Bill Ince, Carl Nagel, Terry Stewart, Jason Testart

Guests:

James McCarthy

Regrets:

Erick Engelke, Dave Kibble, Paul Miskovsky

Agenda

  1. The final draft for new Green IT Advisory Group (GITAG) Terms of Reference (James McCarthy) [1:30pm-1:50pm]
  2. Chair’s remarks (Dave Wallace, Chair) [1:50-2:00pm]
  3. Approval of the minutes of the meeting of September 5, 2013 and business arising [2:00pm-2:05pm]
  4. Roundtable: IT projects in the faculties [2:05-2:30pm]
  5. Updates (2:30-2:50pm; Various)
    • Email (Bruce Campbell)
    • Active Directory (Bruce Campbell)
    • Green IT (Marko Dumancic)
    • IT security (Jason Testart)
    • Campus Firewall project (Bruce Campbell)
    • Student Printing (Bill Baer)
    • IT Strategic Plan (Andrea Chappell)
    • Organize for Success (Bob Hicks)
  6. Other business (2:50-3:00pm)
  7. Next Computing Technology and Services Committee (CTSC) meeting
    [Will be held Thursday, October 3, 2013, at 1:30 p.m., in MC 2018A.]

The final draft for the new GITAG Terms of Reference (James McCarthy)

The old and revised Terms of Reference were distributed to the committee members prior to the meeting.

McCarthy noted that he had given an update to CTSC in late spring. Since then the Green IT Advisory Group (GITAG) has worked on a revised Terms of Reference and expended its membership. Goals are more prioritised and focused. This group can best serve by providing Green IT (GIT) education to the campus community since they are not in a position to enforce. The group sees itself as a resource for the campus.

Comments and Discussion

  • The Chair asked if the best practices are tracked anywhere. McCarthy explained that there is no repository of the best practices. The GITAG website is being used informally to share information.
  • Question was asked if there are Professional Development activities. McCarthy responded that the group had to learn on their own.
  • Are there other GIT committees in other universities?
    • Normally GIT falls under sustainability in most other universities.
  • GITAG is trying to be a resource to people who are writing policy on campus.
  • Suggestion was made to work with Procurement to make GIT part of the evaluation criteria for bids so that the lowest bid would not automatically be the winner. Solutions that are GIT sensitive should be embedded in how we do business on campus.
  • Who does the GITAG plan to act as advisory?
    • McCarthy stated that the GITAG plans to be advisory to CTSC.
    • Wallace advised that this intent should be included in the Terms of Reference.
  • Most universities have a Sustainability Office.
    • Wallace noted that it can also happen here since the University is establishing an Equity Office.
  • A discussion took place about appointing a member of CTSC as the Chair of the GITAG. Some members voiced concern about this approach as this could result in a person as Chair not having a direct connection with the advisory group. It would be better if a member of GITAG would volunteer for the Chair’s position and champion its goals. Wallace suggested that McCarthy would consider this approach first, and if he is unsuccessful in finding a volunteer to come back and speak to CTSC again.
  • CTSC approved GIATG’s revised Terms of Reference.

Chair's remarks (Dave Wallace)

  • There will be an Open House about Organize for Success on October 17th. Details will follow.
  • A Career Paths discussion by a panel of experts will take place on November 6th.
  • There will be a University of Waterloo and Gartner Roundtable event on October 2nd in which trends in higher education will be explored. An expert from Gartner will be here to lead the discussion; people from all across the country will be joining us over the internet. Let us know by sending an email to mank@uwaterloo.ca if you are interested in attending. More information about this event is available at on the IST notice board.

Approval of the minutes of the meeting of September 5, 2013

The minutes of the meeting of September 5, 2013 were approved.

Roundtable: IT projects in the faculties

Environment (ENV) (Marko Dumancic)

  • Web based booking system now deployed at our helpdesk. We broke the previous booking system after moving from 32bit to 64bit Windows. This booking system will soon deploy to the ecology lab. It should be relatively easy to migrate to any interested parties.

Computer Sciences (CS) (Bill Ince)

  • We made better progress than usual this week with Solaris 8 removal, although there's still more to do.
  • We're exploring using something other than filesystem groups as a way for students to share files for joint assignments. E.g. a modern revision control system, or Desire2Learn (D2L), etc.
  • We're upgrading a WWW server OS (both to get to a current release, and to get Central Authentication Service (CAS) working properly).
  • We're exploring using lists.uwaterloo.ca as a way to handle course email.
  • We have one online course this fall; determining course requirements has been a challenge.
  • We're working to automate our exam seating system (which is used by more than CS). We have a big demo next Monday.
  • Our usual supplier for grad workstations was recently purchased, and that resulted in a big slippage of the delivery schedule. We're exploring options.
  • We're considering staff having administrator workstation access may be more beneficial than not.
  • We're seeing some unnecessary diversity in how we're approaching some aspects of desktop support; that will have to be resolved. Roaming profiles are too often a problem. We expect to be consulting with some others on campus about their approaches.
  • We finally told Information Systems & Technology (IST) what they need to know in the next step of eliminating having our own Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers.
  • We're planning to satisfy the need for more colour printers by using those available from Retail Services, rather than buying our own.
  • We're finally not using our own/old firewall any more, other than to display the rules it was using. The next step is to determine from faculty what firewall rules they expect from the upcoming campus firewall, based upon the (many) rules that were in place on the old firewall.

Applied Health Sciences (AHS) (Terry Stewart)

  • In the midst of planning two buildings. Both expected to break ground spring 2014.
    • Three story addition to be built in Parking Lot M. First floor will house teaching facilities; other floors for Kinesiology Research.
    • New building on Northwest campus for Research Institute on Aging (shared facility with Conestoga College, RBJ Schlegel and the University of Waterloo). Variety of research including collecting video data of aging residents performing everyday tasks such as eating lunch. Working with Network services on getting network access in this building.
  • Applied Health Sciences (AHS) will be occupying a good portion of the 1st floor of Tech Town; it’s about a twenty minute walk from B. C. Matthews Hall (BMH). Others (e.g., Psych) are also moving there; wondering if we can share IT support people.
  • Masters of Health Informatics (a wholly online program) held successful online orientation, using Adobe Connect; 21 students in the programme; all but 2 students were able to connect and participate in the event.
  • Experimenting with System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) in the student labs. Have managed to successfully install all software except SAS. Seems to be a Windows timeout error. For now installing manually.
  • Had some problems with student printing beginning of the term, but it is resolved. The accounting server on penguin was pointing to an old database.
  • Participating in pilot of the Printer Accounting project.

MATH (Robyn Landers)

  • Have a few hundred Mac Minis for grad students and staff. Moving away from "magic triangle" with Windows Active Directory (AD) and Apple OD. Want to stop using our own AD and use campus AD.
  • Talking about switching to CS's inventory/asset application.
  • Curious what next steps are needed to transfer class photo IDs.
  • Still moving mail to IST. Notified Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC); they agree to make this transition.
  • Terry mentioned Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). We have had a VDI lab up and running for some time. Happy to share information on that.
  • Any news on Mathematics & Computing building (MC) electrical power situation and generator?
    • Bruce Campbell noted that there is a plan from the engineering firm. Ready to start that. Three months from Purchase Order to deployment. Math needs to provide an estimate of power consumption. Tie-in will be at Math's expense. There is ministry approval involved. The generator uses both diesel and natural gas.

ARTS (Dawn Keenan)

  • On track to shut down Arts Faculty Active Directory support at the end of October.
  • Ahead of schedule on getting rid of Windows XP on campus. Some people have XP on University of Waterloo owned home computers at home; we don’t have plans to upgrade them.
  • In pretty good shape for MAC administration for having lost our MAC expert.
  • Have ARTS specific software that needs to be packaged by us for labs, then packaging must also be done by IST for podium PCs due to differences in software packaging and delivery.

Library (Carl Nagel)

  • Purchased JIRA with Agile support for project management tracking in the Digital Initiatives department.
  • Will work with ITMS to help specify appropriate technology for our renovated instructional facility to capture library teaching sessions for web distribution and archiving.
  • Part of Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) digital consortium for cloud storage of specific digital assets.

Updates

Email (Bruce Campbell)

Nothing to report.

Active Directory (Bruce Campbell)

Colin Bell is working on the documentation; he can give an update in mid-October.

Green IT (Marko Dumancic)

See agenda item 1.

IT security (Jason Testart)

Nothing to report.

Campus Firewall (Bruce Campbell).

Still have to co-ordinate meetings with IT leaders across campus. There will be a detailed update at the next meeting.

Student Printing (Bill Baer)

IT Strategic Plan (Andrea Chappell)
Chappell will send background information on Governance to University Committee on Information Systems & Technology (UCIST) on Monday. The ITSP audit continues.

Organize for Success (Bob Hicks)

A lot of interviews are taking place.

Other business

No other business.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be held on October 3, 2013, at 1:30pm, in MC 2018A.