Information Technology Advisory Committee (ITAC)

1:30 - 3:00 pm  - I.G. Greer 224

1. Welcome & Introductions
2. Update on Technology Issues & Activities
3. Discussion of campus communication issues
4. Other business

1:30 - 3:00 pm  - I.G. Greer 224

1. Welcome & Introductions
2. Update on Technology Initiatives
3. Follow-up to faculty/staff/student expectations
4. Update on Banner Implementation
5. Discussion of technology planning
6. Other business

1:30 - 3:00 pm  - I. G. Greer Hall - Room 224

Persons Present:

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

Voting members present: Brian Brown (Student Services), Tom Leonard (University Advancement, for Teresa Canton), Gabe Fankhauser (Music), Kevin Howell (Fine and Applied Arts), Gail Hearn (Chancellor’s Office, for Len Johnson), 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 (Academic Affairs)

Guests Attending: Steve Breiner (ITS & ITAC Recorder), Miriam Makhyoun (SGA President Elect), David Hayler (Network Services)

1. Welcome & Introductions

Jeff Williams called the meeting to order at 1:35 PM and began by introducing Ms. Miriam Makhyoun, who was recently elected president of the Student Government Association. He then asked the membership and guests to introduce themselves to Ms. Makhyoun, who will soon be appointing the SGA student representative to ITAC.

2. Update on Technology Initiatives

A. David Hayler (Network Support Services - NSS) reported that NSS had installed a sophisticated intrusion detection system, called Tipping Point, on the campus network to help stave off distribution of potentially intrusive code and to prevent unauthorized access to campus systems. He stated that the rather expensive system would allow the university’s current hardware to remain protective of the network as a program of eventual replacement occurs in coming years. He stated that the system allows us to continue to use current equipment that would, otherwise, be vulnerable to attacks similar to the one early in the semester which allowed essentially an isolated system to cause a network saturation.

B. Hayler also reported that a network outage at University Hall, the Physical Plant, and the old Lowes Building over the past week had been caused by vermin which had chewed through the fiber cable serving those areas. Williams stated that network service had been restored by using the secondary link provided by Skyline Corporation and that full redundancy would be restored as soon as possible.

C. Doug May (Academic computing Services) addressed the recent determination that attempts to self-limit e-mail storage needs on the parts of “high capacity” users had clearly failed, and that the decision had been taken to allocate whatever storage was necessary to address the needs of those few users. The decision was based on a desire to finish the migration of all users’ e-mail accounts to the iPlanet system. Brian Brown (Electronic Student Services) asked whether the implementation of the decision would still leave any residual “VMS connections” to e-mail. May responded that he did not believe so and Williams confirmed that soon after all users were migrated successfully to iPlanet, the e-mail, currently routed via VMS would be routed directly to iPlanet without an intermediary, thereby completely isolating e-mail transport from the VMS systems. Makhyoun asked whether there is currently a way within AppalNET to determine what portions of students’ e-mail storage quotas were in use. May replied that there was not a “real time” option for obtaining that information, but that all users receive an email stating their percentage usage when it reached 90% of quota. Williams, in a related vein, stated that the upcoming adoption of Campus Pipeline 3.0 (known locally as AppalNET) will allow us to move to a free-standing LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) that could handle essentially all authentications for the various systems we provide on campus, substantially reducing password and synchronization headaches.

D. May reported to ITAC that the state information resources auditors were now on campus for a (roughly) three week stay to examine our information systems. He noted that the network reregistration process that was required of all administrative machines earlier this semester would likely help eliminate exceptions (aka violations) noted by the auditors with regard to unauthorized machines having access to the campus network. Williams stated that, to maintain compliance with state computer security requirements, we would need to periodically repeat the reregistration process, and that the mechanisms for doing so were becoming less burdensome to general users. He also mentioned that the auditors may “snoop” for unauthorized wireless access zones which, if found to be present, would require their removal and policy changes to forbid their use. He further stated that, according to his assessment, the primary focus of the auditors was security, and that concern with the security issue even went so far as to find formal exception with publicly accessible web pages that provide too much information about network security structure or personnel.

3. Update on Banner Implementation

Greg Lovins (Business Affairs) provided an update on the status of Appalachian’s Banner implementation. He noted that recent corrections to the Banner Payroll system had apparently prevented a number of the kinds of problems noted earlier in the year and that some “self-service” components in Banner for Employees were nearly ready for use. Banner for Alumni was on track for implementation in July 2004 and Banner Finance projected to fully in July 2005. He noted that training for Banner Finance was progressing and that a new Chart of Accounts would be released along with training in its use before that time. Lovins further reported that the Student and Financial Aid components would deploy over the next four years.

In order to keep users informed about progress with the Banner implementation, Business Affairs has established a developing web site, http://www.banner.appstate.edu, that will, as it develops, contain reasonably current information about multiple fronts in the Banner project. Williams noted that, as the project moves forward, the kinds of problems we anticipate generally involve data migration issues and unfamiliarity with the product on the parts of new users.

Steve Breiner (Instructional Computing) asked whether the coming self-service components would allow time entry via the web. Lovins and Williams replied that that was an important goal for the product, but that it would likely be a while before those capabilities can be deployed.

4. Follow-up to faculty/staff/student expectations

Williams asked May to lead a conversation to follow up the previous meeting’s discussion of user expectations of IT resources and organizations at Appalachian. He distributed a printout containing a distillation of faculty, staff, and student concerns that had arisen from multiple constituencies and asked that the ITAC review the list and report back any important expectations not included. He noted that many of the common responses were listed under only a user category but that the commonality among multiple groups was understood.

Breiner suggested that it might be appropriate to add a category of institutional expectations of IT users, i.e., the responsibilities that those users have to the university to use technology safely and appropriately, and obtain appropriate training to do so.

The discussion continued for a time about specifics regarding the listing provided by May. As the discussion wound down, Williams mentioned that the ITAC list server would allow posting from all of the membership in order to allow the discussion to continue using electronic means during the summer recess.

5. Adjournment

Williams reminded the group that, due to the numbers of members off campus during the summer, there would be no meeting in May, but that discussions or other communications would be available through the ITAC list server. The meeting adjourned at 2:37 PM.