February 27, 2003
PRESENT PRESENT ABSENT
Dr. Jack Armistead Dr. Gary Pickett Ms. Sandra Bohannon
Dr. Jon Booker Mr. Danny Reese Mr. Bryan Gaitan
Mr. Frank Bush Mr. John Smith Dr. Martha Kosa
Mr. Rick Cashion Ms. Darla Wilhite Dr. Bob Niebuhr
Mr. Charlie Ferrill Dr. Carl Owens
Dr. Tom Furtsch Dr. Jeff Plant
Dr. Craig Henderson
Mr. W. J. Holcomb VISITORS
Dr. Glenn James Mr. Jerry Boyd
Mr. Mark Lynam
Dr. Francis Otuonye
The Information Technology Committee met at 3:00 p.m. on February 27th in the President's Conference Room.
AGENDA AMENDENTMENT: Mr. John Smith made a motion to modify the agenda. Dr. Booker seconded the motion. Motion carried.
APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Dr. Tom Furtsch made a motion to approve the agenda. Dr. Jon Booker seconded the motion. Motion carried.
APPROVAL OF SEPTEMBER 12, 2002 MINUTES: Dr. Jon Booker made a motion to approve September 12, 2002 minutes. Dr. Tom Furtsch seconded the motion. Motion carried.
INTERNET2 REPORT: Dr. Otuonye reported to the Committee that Internet2 is a not-for-profit consortium, led by over 200 US universities, and is developing and deploying advance network applications and technology. The primary goals of Internet2 are to:
Dr. Otuonye said the Internet we have was not meant for millions of users. Internet2 will provide all users with higher speed access. Internet2 applications require enhanced networking functionality such as high bandwidth and low latency that is not available on our commercial Internet connections. Dr. Otuonye said Internet2 would not replace the current Internet. He also said there are four applications for Internet2:
ITS VACANT POSITIONS: Mr. Reese said we have several vacant positions we are in the process of interviewing for: ACS Manager, Assistant ACS Manager, and Systems Programmer. Permission to advertise for the Computer Technician position has not been given yet. Mr. Reese said no positions have been cut out of the budget for next year. The ACS Manager interview was completed today, and the committee will meet tomorrow to decide whom to make a proposal to.
ITS BUDGET STATUS: Mr. Reese said our budget is already negative. Mr. Reese said we have depended on laps money for the past several years as operational spending money. He said that most of our budget was committed at the first of the year. Mr. Reese said we would have to be looking at an increase in our budget or a decrease in services.
TAF BUDGET STATUS: Mr. Reese said the TAF budget has not been affected, and we are spending funds out of it. He said we are filling projects that were approved for this year's budget. Dr. Jon Booker asked if TAF money could be raised. Mr. Reese sated that we are at our max, which is $125.00 per student. Mr. Reese said there is set of guidelines of how the TAF money can be used, and that it has to be used for direct student benefit.
ITC PLANNING SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT: Mr. Reese said that we are talking about streaming forms that are being used and converting them to an Excel format. It was suggested that we combine a couple of the forms together that we use and make a draft out of them. Mr. Reese said he plans to work on the draft this weekend.
SIS UPDATE: Mr. Richard Cashion said there has been a movement on how to eliminate the use of Social Security numbers in the databases. The first phase of that has been moving into SIS. Mr. Cashion said there were two options, and we decided to stay with option one which is to stay with Social Security number as a primary key and not to generate new campus ID's at this point. Mr. Cashion said we are having some problems with TOS new releases. Below are listed the three major components:
Mr. Cashion said this added about 600 fields, 30 new screens and about 600 programs to SIS. Mr. Cashion said next fall the campus would be moving to option two.
SCT PLUS REPLACEMENT: Mr. Reese said that SCT has two lines of software, one is called Plus and the other is called Banner. We are using the Plus 1970's vintage design file system software. We have nice Web front ends, which looks nice to the students. Mr. Reese said the Plus software was very hard to update and maintain. The Computer Center people within the TBR started a movement last spring to move to the other version of software, which is called Banner. Mr. Reese said we were ready to do Banner presentations across the state, but the Chancellor decided he wanted to study the IT situations across the state, and he told us to stop with our presentations. Mr. Reese said the TBR has been developing a RFI, which went out the first part of February. The purpose of the RFI is to find out if there is anybody that will compete. If the answers come back from the RFI that only SCT is declared a legitimate respondent, then we cancel the source with them. Mr. Reese's guess is that we will have to do a bid and this may take up to three years.
OTHER BUSINESS: Dr. Gary Pickett asked about the CIO position and its job description. Mr. Reese said at the last Computer Center directors meeting there was a job description being circulated. Mr. Reese said this was a very high-level one-page description. Mr. Reese said he did not know if the job has been advertised yet. Mr. Reese also said that the presidents were opposed to the CIO position and that Dr. Barker had been put on the search committee. Mr. Reese also said the CIO position was being upgraded and that this position would report to the Chancellor.
Mr. Bush talked about duplex printing in the student labs. He said we have students requesting that we do not have the duplex option turned on by default because their professors do not like printing on both sides. Mr. Bush said he thought we should enable the duplex as default.
ADJOURN: Dr. Jon Booker made a motion to adjourn the meeting at 4:25 p.m. Dr. Tom Furtsch seconded the motion. Motion carried.