Web Advisory Committee meeting (January 16, 2013)

January 16, 2013– Needles Hall (NH) 3004 – 3:00 p.m. 

Present:

Jay Athia, Marta Bailey, Kristy Budd, Natalie Cockburn, Janice Cooke, Michelle Douglas –Mills, Donald Duff-McCracken, Chris Francis, Guillermo Fuentes, Eva Grabinski, Chris Gray, Marlon Griffith, Jim Johnston, Vadim Kononov, Collin McIntyre, Amy Meredith, Liam Morland, Kris Olafson, Dave Polsky (Guest), Megan Saunders, Terry Stewart (Chair), Andrea Sweet, Jeff Voskamp, Jonathan Woodcock.

Regrets:

Pat Lafranier, Karen Jack, Alison Gelata, Isaac Morland.

Absent:

Amy Aldous, Heather Anderson, Jay Athia, Amy Aldous, Dave Annable, Cynthia Breen, Chris Carignan, Nigel Henriques, Tammy Marcinko, Paul Miskovsky,  Suzana Pinto. 

1. Chair’s Remarks

  • The Chair welcomed Dave Polsky from the Litcom Consulting Group.  Dave is working with the IST Organize for Success initiative, which is being chaired by Bob Hicks (Director, Client Services, IST).

​2. IST Orga​nization for Success (Dave Polsky)

Dave spoke to the group regarding the future of IST.  Dave is a consultant with the Litcom Consulting Group who are working with IST and the Organization for Success initiative.  The Litcom Consulting Group has realized after speaking with UCIST that an environmental scan is needed to broaden the understanding of what the University needs from IST.  They have also been consulting with other Universities to see how they have reorganized their IST areas. 

The consultants are looking for any thoughts or opinions and are inviting comments regarding the organizational structure service level issues. Contact David Polsky - david.polsky@litcom.ca

Dave’s presentation, Organize for Success Project Overview, is available online.

Questions and Com​ments:

Q.  Communication with the campus is lacking in IST.  When a technical problem is going on in IST they do not notify the rest of campus. What would fix this?

A.  Any sort of consistent notification, ie. web page or tweet.  A webpage notification would be better.

C.  When submitting an RT for something to be fixed, the person responding back does not appear to have read the entire RT.  The normal response back is asking you if you have tried something that you have already attempted and initially explained in the RT.  This is a waste of time for everyone.

C. An information architect is needed on campus. Sometimes we depend on the library for their expertise.

C. The wall of Directors is frustrating, one is never sure as to who to contact for what information.  Sometimes a situation comes up were you need to work with multiple areas in IST; they tend to be more reactive, than proactive.

C.  At the Help Desk Level – Liaisons for the Faculty, the idea is for one contact Manager for each Faculty. This would work well, formalizing the process. This person needs to be an advocate.The Math Faculty has contacts for each Math area.

C.  IST lacks trust in the users.  Faculties would like more control, sub-service control.  IST needs to communicate what is available to the campus.

C.  It is a software project; IST does not have a Software Development group.  Where areas are lacking IST might want to look at it.

Q. What does IST being innovated mean?

C. We need to contact other Universities to see what they are doing and are not doing, and do that.

C.  IST needs to be proactive in their thinking.

C.  IST are techy people not business people, a Business Analyst Project team may help. A Business Analyst team would make a good middle man.  The university needs better communication.  Sometimes there are three and four groups on campus working on the same project and no one knows.  Somebody needs to know what all of campus is doing.

C.  It has been brought up before that more stakeholders need to have a say.

C.  A common programming language needs to be used.  Two people can be working on the same thing but are using different languages.

C.  There needs to be more visibility on projects going on, on campus.  Silos need to be brought down.

C.  In Engineering at the Department and Faculty level, if there is a technical problem and a solution is found, they check within their area to see if it would help anyone else in the department. Announcing a project after it is done does not help.  The same project could already be underway in another area.

C.  We would benefit from the sharing of events.  An example of information not being shared is the different projects underway regarding the TV displays.

C.  A project management office is needed on campus.  If there is a lot of red tape, why would people move ahead with a project? A PMO is not meant to be an enabler, they are not a wall.  If your project is a large or small size project a PMO would be able to point you in the right direction.  A five to six week project needs to be prioritized.  It is hard to prioritize when it comes down different silos.   The WCMS is technical not business, project business guidance is a need.

C.  IST needs to look at the book -Stuff You Don’t Learn in Engineering School  IST needs to develop these skills. 

Q.  Any thoughts towards putting all services to twenty-four hour help with “real time chat”?  The University has students all over the world.

3. Approval of Minutes.

​4. Busines​s Arising

  • None.

5. Digital Initiatives Update (Eva Grabinski/Andrea Sweet)

Andrea provided an update on the review of the university's colour palette to meet web accessibility legislated requirements (working on this with Kevin on WCMS team and Christine and Monica in Creative Services as part of the visual identity refinement project).

  • Currently DI is looking into the University’s colour palette.  Researching the colours and looking at how close they can get to the current colours on campus.  This will help maintain the integrity of the University’s id. At this point the project is not available for viewing.
  • ​Andrea will be sending out an email to gauge interest in an Adobe InDesign and Accessibility training course
  • Kenny (DI coop student) is working on an inventory of uWaterloo blogs (Jonathan can provide update on this); could benefit communications specialists around campus in identifying domain experts and providing content to link to via uWaterloo social media accounts; can be used to help assess if a central blogging capability would be of value to the university
  • Reminder that Social Media Committee website exists

6. Waterloo CMS Update (Kris Olafson)

  • Site​ Managers: time to review permissi​ons! It’s the start of a new term - don’t forget to review permissions on your site for past co-op students.  (We recommend that you remove the role(s) assigned to a user rather than removing their account from your site.)
  • Co-op student resources. Have you hired a co-op student to work on your website?  See this list of resources (https://uwaterloo.ca/web-resources/news/co-op-student-resources) that will help them get up to speed.

To see a complete list of sites in the WCMS and sites in the progress of being migrated check out the WCMS migration schedule on the Web Resources site at https://uwaterloo.ca/web-resources/wcms-migration.  Add your site to the WCMS migration schedule. 

  • Join us for our Developer Drop-in LabsIf you are interested in providing feedback to the Waterloo Content Management System (WCMS) development team, please join us!  Held the 4th Wednesday of every month from 1-4:30 pm, MC 2060.
  • Question and comments:

Q. Where is the Student Portal Project at this time?

A.  The Student Portal project is currently waiting on the results of the Mobile Development Environment Platform RFI to come back so that they can determine how it complements the portal.  The Portal working group has met once, and it is meeting again next Friday, February 1st (and every two weeks after that).  If you would like to join please contact Natalie Cockburn or Kris.

C.  The Student Portal and Mobile working groups are meeting for the first time Friday, January 18th.

C.  CMS had a meeting regarding events on sites.  We could benefit having events categorized.  If you are interested in being part of this, please contact Kris Olafson or Sarah Forgrave.

C.  Welcome to the Arts Faculty, to the campus CMS.

7. Other Business

  • January 1, 2014 the new accessibility standard will come into effect.The standard applies to all public facing websites, up to January 1st, 2012.  ‘A’ is the minimum requirement.  ‘AA’ is the goal we will need to be at eventually. Lawsuits could begin in 2014 for any public facing websites not up to standards. There are courses offered through SEW on how to update your site. Liam Morland is also available for assistance.

Question and Comments:

Q.  Is Liam available for Faculty meetings?

A.  Yes.

Q.  If a Faculty member has a personal website, what does this law say? 

A.  Karen Jack from the Secretariat would be person to contact.  She would be able to determine if the website belongs to UW.

C.  An example of this type of situation; a student said bad things about GM on a website, the University said that the website did not belong to us. Karen Jack has been asked to look into the risks. Governance is definitely a risk

Q.  Is there a way to scan the website for accessibility?

A.  Currently programs are being looked into that can scan sites.  This will open up a can of worms - contacts, training, and support. One can do a first scan with the Wave accessibility tool. 

C.  There are approximately 200 sites in the WMCS now; and we are looking at 400.  How are we going to support sites not yet in the WCMS?  We are discovering many different challenges.

8. Next Meeting 

  • 3:00-4:30p.m., February 20, 2013. MC 2018a.

9. Meeting Adjourned at 4:30 p.m.