Minutes of the AHS IT Committee
Oct. 5, 2012
Present: Jose Arocha, Tom Karakolis, , Katherine Marshall, Bill McIlroy, Steven Mock, Terry Stewart
1. Chair’s Remarks (Bill)
- Mandate. The Chair handed out modifications to the mandate to be discussed later in the meeting.
- Research data space. The Chair will be calling together all of the researchers with large data set needs for a discussion of this issue.
- Email for grad students. New grads automatically get an email account on mailservices but can move to the Exchange by requesting it to anyone on the IT group.
- Grad students and VP Training; 2 people @ last event, receive update.
- IT Newsletter. The Chair reminded the group about the recent AHS IT Newsletter.
- AHSIT Committee minutes. Thanks to Shilpa for recording minutes. Terry and Bill will ensure that meeting minutes are posted.
2. Report of IT Director (Terry)
- The report of the IT Director will be available online. The following are supplementary notes.
- IT Strategic plan
- UCIST Steering Committee (Terry is a member);
- CTSC is the implementation team (Terry is a member);
- Ian McKillop is representing the Faculty of AHS at the Task Force –
- Ian is a good candidate because he has an understanding of IT enterprise architectures and framework
- IST Reorganization for Success
- This is an IST initiative only
- External consultant not announced yet
- Nexus migration –
- moving to one system for simplicity and consistency
- Change in password rules – Nexus rules more strict and force updating password
- No date for sharepoint migration yet
- Campus Firewall Project – does not affect AHS
- Timeline: to start December 2012
- Migration of AHS web site to CMS
- Kin will be done by December
- Fitness units and MAREP are under way
- Course brochure comes out every 2 months
- Individuals who want their own site should put in a request to IST and attend the class offered by IST entitled: WCMS site maintainers
- There are 6 co-ops available for Fall 2012 to assist migrating and setting up a new page
- Request Tracking
- Email/online forms are not used in AHS but other faculties have queue system
- Should AHS?
- Use as adjunct method – effective for those who may be off site (i.e. students)
- Decision was made that we should wait until IST project complete before implementing any new system
- Audit System
- Terry will monitor this project and report back
- Virtual Desktop
- Initiated from Student Technology Advisement Committee
- An campus-wide project
- hardware has been ordered for a pilot study
- Licensing is a large concern because some companies won’t allow it or will want to charge for every student
- Question of how much hardware to buy?
- Research
- Interraidata SAS appliance – updated
- Virtual desktop – accessible to use with log in info with security measures in place
- Licensing – paid for by research funds
- Flowfinity
- Send survey from server out via smart phone device to nurses for example to fill out and send back
- Automatically updates server
- Expensive – paid for by research funds
- HSPRN Project
- Just starting up
- Ian McKillop heading
- Various Kin projects
- Research Data space
- Those collecting large amount data use NAS drives which are meant for home use, not research, but they are cost efficient
- Security audit – NAS drives are a problem because they are insecure – therefore they are put on private network and researchers cannot get on them from home without the VIPN
- Not a solution because they are not more secure, there is no backup if they break (or backed up with another NAS)
- The proposal for a solution – AHS acquire a 25 tb server or work with IST to outsource space from them;
- Chair will organize a meeting of NAS drive users to discuss this topic
- How will they be funded?
- The estimate is 15 people and 30 Tb
- Interraidata SAS appliance – updated
- Other Projects
- Zero Administration Network Implementation; AHS Computing wanst to ensure every network port is attached and connected when needed;
- This will save time in connecting machines to the network;
- Money is set aside for this
- STEP – Scheduling Timetable Exam Project
- Going live for Spring term 2013
- WATITIS
- – internal IT conference held each December
- Chaired for the second year by Lowell Williamson
- Zero Administration Network Implementation; AHS Computing wanst to ensure every network port is attached and connected when needed;
3. Access to software/centralized continuing discussion
- Cornell – has an external desktop environment but using a different system
- UW has a pilot system in place
- Will be centrally would be funded
- Steven available to serve if there is a Committee formed
4. Mandate
- Representation from Research Centres
- Two options: bring in as needed or standing member on committee
- Bill will discuss with Susan
- Still waiting for undergraduate student representative;
- Bill will ask AHSUM group
- AHS internal strategic planning process
- Is one needed at this time
- Faculty Strategic Plan and UW IT Strategic plan in progress
- Decision was made to remove 2b from the Membership and Mandate and “revise to say assists priorities and is in line with the strategic plan”
- Don’t need a full strategic planning with all that is coming on
- Is one needed at this time
- Bill, Katherine and Terry will rewrite and bring to next meeting for review
5. Laptops
- Encryption (security concern)
- How to encourage encrypted files to avoid security issues
- If human subjects is the concern – the Office of Research Ethics will be interested in this topic
- Not just human subjects but also marks, emails with students, and more. These are all confidential
- How to help facilitate to avoid future possible problems?
- Remote access to network drives instead of USB ports?
- Cultural aspect must change as well
- Add to first year orientation?
- Many use Dropbox which is a concern because they should be using encrypted files
- Also a concern with NAS drive and theft issues
- The Office of Research Ethics addresses this with more arbitrary methods. It is now being mentioned by IT to grad students