Information Technology Advisory Committee (ITAC)

1:30 - 3 pm - Raley Hall - Room 2021

Persons Present:

Ex officio members: Jeff Williams (ITS, Chair), Doug May (ACS), Martha McCaughey (Faculty Senate)

Voting members present: Brian Brown (Student Services), Al Harris (COB), Len Johnson (HRS), Greg Lovins (Business Affairs), Emory Maiden (A&S), Ed Pekarek (A&S), Don Rankins (Registrar), Dick Riedl (RCOE), Dragan Stefanovic (A&S), Peter Wachs (Student Development), Bill Ward (Acad. Affairs)

Guests Attending: Steve Breiner (ITS & ITAC Recorder), David Hayler (Network Services), Pamela Graham (Arts & Sciences), Tom Leonard (University Advancement), Douglas Brantz (Fine & Applied Arts), Tom Van Gilder (A&S), Steve Hopper (ITS Applications)

1. Welcome & Introductions

Jeff Williams called the meeting to order at 1:33 and welcomed those attending. He noted that, to accommodate the schedules of some representatives, meetings during Spring Semester would be scheduled, tentatively, for the second Friday each month. Williams then asked for a change of order in the agenda, one to which the membership consented.

2. Wireless encryption (WEP)

David Hayler provided a report on anticipated requirements by state auditors that Appalachian begin using encrypted traffic on its wireless network components. To address the anticipated requirement proactively, Network Support Services (NSS) will implement 40-bit Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP) on all wireless access points in network Domain 7 (Raley, Library, Student Union, RCOE, Broyhill Inn, JET Building, and Rankin Science) beginning on December 18, 2003. The current plan for distributing WEP access keys involves a web site through which users must authenticate to obtain the appropriate encryption key. NSS is currently evaluating the feasibility of newer security technologies for future implementation. Al Harris asked how users, whose only connection was wireless, might obtain the access key. Hayler responded that the Technical Support Helpline staff would always be able to obtain the key for users needing the service. Brian Brown suggested that an bulletin board key distribution system, though publicly accessible, would maintain the benefit that wireless “snooping” would be impossible.

Williams mention that there would be a period, December 29-31, during which network access would be unavailable or intermittent, for planned maintenance and redeployment of equipment to different locations. Don Rankins asked if a “status page” might be posted to let users know what areas and/or services were unavailable at what times. Williams replied that, since DNS (Domain Name Services) would be unavailable during the maintenance, users would be unable to access the status page, event if it were posted, and so that was not an option being considered.

3. Email migration for faculty and staff

Williams distributed a document summarizing the storage requirements for e-mail as of very recently. He provided some detail about the e-mail migration, earlier announced to this group and others, scheduled to begin on December 19, 2004, at 5:00 PM, and expected to take between 24 and 36 hours for completion. He mentioned that a web site, detailing the users’ parts in the process and publicizing that users would need to change their passwords after the fact. Further, he described pending improvements to the password change mechanism that will allow a single action to reset and synchronize a user’s password(s) on multiple systems: VMS, AppalNET, pm.appstate.edu, MS Exchange, and Novell. Users will receive space quotas roughly 25 megabytes (MB) larger than their current e-mail space usage, with allowable increases in increments of 25 MB up to a maximum (for “regular” users) of 150 MB. Users will all receive notices of the pending migration and “special” users whose e-mail now exceeds the 150MB limit or who will be unable to use the modem pool (because of the password change requirement) will receive personalized e-mail notices of the space limits and an explanation of how to maintain or restore their access when the migration occurs. In order to minimize the potential for data loss, e-mail on the VMS system (from which e-mail is being migrated) will not be erased for a substantial time after the migration.

Ed Pakarek mentioned that the current password change mechanism allows the user to select characters in his or her password that are illegal in some local computer systems, Williams stated that the new mechanism would prevent that possibility and that, if a user had such passwords now, the change mechanism would accept the old password, but would issue a challenge-response authentication that would work in the event a password would not. Tom Van Gilder asked whether web pages hosted on VMS would be retained. Williams responded that the migration would, for the foreseeable future, only affect e-mail.

Terry Combs then discussed the changes that were being made to allow the migration to proceed without requiring users to “touch” their client configurations. For most users, after having changed their passwords as required, their email should work exactly as before without any intervention on their parts.

4. SCT Banner Update

Greg Lovins presented a brief report on the SCT Banner implementation. He stated that Banner HRS services and Banner Alumni Services should both “go live” on July 1, 2004. The “Web for Employees” product is proposed for deployment in December 2004, with many more self-service features enabled than in our current system. Banner FRS is proposed to “go live” on 7/1//2005. Lovins mentioned that the delay in FRS deployment was due to need for more training than can be completed by the original “go live” date, and that there was also a need to for more time to interface the FRS product with related ancillary services. Lovins stated that “end-user” training for user-accessible Banner features would begin in Fall 2004.

Steve Breiner suggested that the Banner implementation team look at an interim solution to obtaining employee information (e.g., benefits, leave balance, voluntary contributions, etc.) that had been available in PDIS before updates to that system had ceased.

5. Coordination of service activities - Ed Pekarek

Pekarek brought to the table an issue beginning to bear heavily on some academic departments: fullfillment of service requests requiring action by multiple departments or areas. He mentioned that simple equipment installations sometimes require numerous contacts and lengthy waits, due to the lack of a system for coordinating response to a departmental request. To emphasize the point he distributed a rather complex organizational chart and pointed out the multitude of campus groups that would need to be involved in an operation such as a simple projector installation. He suggested that common kinds of operations, for example, installing a digital video projector, should require only a single request to a single campus entity that would then handle any necessary communications to complete the request. Departments should not have to contact and coordinate timing and dispatching the multiple campus entities involved in the process (electrical shop, telecommunications shop, network support, carpentry or mechanical shop, College or ACS computer consultants, etc.) Requirements to spend significant time on such processes severely detract from the ostensible function of academic departments: educating students. He mentioned that it sometimes seems incredibly complex to have a relatively simple action completed.

Doug May responded that he had been working with the Council of Chairs on issues of project management, with a goal of establishing a single point of contact for certain common kinds of jobs. He proposed that the goal would be that a departments (or individual’s) request would be the start of a predefined process that takes the job from request to turnkey completion. Van Gilder wondered whether the process being developed would require the college consultants to continue managing the projects, as they must do now. May replied, “No, we would do that,” indicating that the process would, indeed, strive to require only a single contact by the requestor. Dragan Stefanovic suggested that students might be hired to perform a study of the organizational structure of IT support services and that he would be willing to help coordinate such a project with the academic departments. Rankins suggested that there may be facilities management software, currently available, to help streamline these kinds of processes.

May commented that he would distribute the proposed plan on which he, with the Council of Chairs is working. Stefanovic mentioned that he will engage some students to explore the possibilities for a student-assisted, project management process.

6. Other business items

Martha McCaughey asked that any suggested changes of the Computer User Policy be widely distributed and made available in a timely manner before consideration by the committee.� It should be noted that the approval process for IT policies is now be regulated by the State and it involves many levels of review and approval.

Emory Maiden asked about the future of Appalachian’s telephone modem pool. Bill Ward replied that there were no plans to update the modem pool and that the when the current equipment fails, it will not be replaced. No dates have been mentioned for elimination of the service, but no resources are or will be allocated for its repair.

Rankins mentioned that the registrar’s office had noted some incompatibilities between some web-based services and Netscape 7.0… he wondered whether that might be overcome, in part, by establishing a “compatibility matrix” of services and browsers. May replied that the lack of standards (agreed to by both service software vendors and browser producers) was the cause of the problems and the problem showed no sign of moderating in the foreseeable future.

Brown expressed concern that the ability to register computers for other users on restricted VLANs had been removed from the ERMIE (Internet registration) administrative interface. Hayler replied that the restriction only affected cases where a consultant tries to register a computer in a special VLANs when registration is at the behest of non-administrative users. He further stated that every machine on the administrative VLAN(s) must be registered by the responsible user, for security and audit-trail related reasons - all users are now required to view and agree to the Appalachian Computer Use Policy before being allowed to join the network - allowing registration of those machines by surrogates would circumvent this requirement.

7. Adjournment

Williams mentioned to the group that the next meeting, scheduled for 12/12/2003 would occur, is agenda items were requested from constituents; otherwise the next meeting would occur in the upcoming semester.

The meeting adjourned a bit before 3:00 PM.

1:30 - 3 pm - Raley Hall - Room 2021

1. Welcome and Introductions
2. Wireless Encryption (WEP)
3. Email migration for faculty/staff
4. SCT Banner Update
5. Cordination of Service Activities - Ed Pekarek
6. Other business items
7. Adjournment

1:30-3 pm - Belk Library Room 119

Persons Present:

Ex officio members: Jeff Williams (ITS, Chair), Doug May (ACS)
Voting members present: Al Harris (College of Business), Kevin Howell (College Fine & Applied Arts), Greg Lovins (Business Affairs), Emory Maiden (Arts & Sciences), Ed Pekarek (Arts & Sciences), Don Rankins (Registrar), Dick Riedl (College of Education), Peter Wachs (Student Development), Bill Ward (Academic Affairs).

Guests Attending: Tom Bennett (Library), Larry Boyer (Library), Tom Culver (Network Services), Doug Brantz (Fine & Applied Arts), Thomas Van Gilder (Arts & Sciences), Pamela Graham (Arts & Sciences), Bill Harbinson (College of Music), Michael Bennett (Reich COE), Tom Leonard (University Advancement), Mick Kreszock (Instructional Technology Services).

1) Welcome & Introductions

Jeff Williams called the meeting to order at 1:30 PM and greeted the membership, thanking those attending for their willingness to attend. As a new member, Emory Maiden introduced himself to the group. It was noted that we were still waiting on student representatives to be appointed.

2) Planning/action/policies to minimize future virus/worm attacks

Williams began this discussion by briefing the group on the outage Thursday morning, September 11, due to loss of electrical power to the Raley computer room.  A mistake was made during the inspection of the fire prevention system, triggering a major shutdown.  It took most of the day to restore all services, but there were lingering performance issues with VMS.

Doug May discussed the sequence of events dealing with the Blaster worm problem that hit on August 19th. An automated process was put in place to make sure a computer had applied the critical patches and was cleansed of viruses before network registration could take place.  This prevented further resource issues by preventing infected computers back on the network.  ACS has implemented a process to use the auto-update feature to download updates from a local server and install them on computers attached to the network. The user will have the option to reboot, but not to have the updates downloaded and installed. May stateed that users must agree to use this process to have network access.  After some discussion, the group agreed this was justifiable and necessary to protect the campus resources.  On faculty and staff State owned devices, this requires the Netware client to be installed. For personal computers attached to the network whether they belong to faculty, staff or student, they would be required to make sure their computers were had current updates.

Tom Culver updated the group on several network expansion options. One option being investigated is the further separation of the residence halls to prevent the impact on services in the event of another major virus attack. Other plans include the replacement of the core and edge hardware over time to push control of the network closer to the user’s device and take advantage of newer technology.

3) SCT Banner Update

Greg Lovins reported on the progress with implementing the SCT Banner software system. Human Resources went live in July 2003 and there are on-going activities to work out issues. The Web for Employee component should be available soon which will allow users to access information on the web about Human Resource and payroll.  Lovins reported that we are currently participating in training for technical, Finance and Advancement as we prepare for an implementation in July 2004.

4)  Pharos Printing Update

Doug May reported that he has been discussing the various options with the SGA on the printing credit.  In the past, current students could pick up a card at the beginning of the each semester with $6 encoded.  This was to provide a transition for going from a free printing to a per-page charge system.  The new Pharos system has been very successful in eliminating waste, but the question about the credit keeps coming up. May has suggested to the SGA that if the credit was eliminated, then funds could be used for other things in support of the labs including newer workstations, expanded hours and software. He is waiting on the SGA to make a recommendation. It’s a matter of where to spend the available funds.

5)  Email migration for faculty and staff

Williams gave a status of the email migration of faculty and staff to the iPlanet (appmail.appstate.edu) system. The planning efforts have been accelerated due to the VMS response issues over the past several months. Two critical pieces need to be implemented before we begin the wholesale migration. The first is account management in AppalNET.  Currently faculty and student accounts are being created and maintained, but we need to address the issue of disabling and possible reactivation of accounts.  We have to develop a similar process for maintaining staff account.  The second piece has to be with backing up the data with an option to restore files at the user level.  At this point, backups are done for catastrophic failures. The advantages of migrating email remain the same as the original discussion last year.  That is, users will have one enterprise email to manage without the necessity of managing multiple accounts.  It will help resolve some of the password synchronization issues.  At some point, we will no longer automatically generate VMS accounts for all users.  Users that have a need for this resource will be provided with another process to request accounts. It was pointed out to the group that is has also been discussed in the Friday morning technical consultant group.

6) Adjournment

Williams adjourned the meeting at 3:00.