ICC Notes from February 8, 2007 ITAC-NI Meeting:

back to ITAC-NI notes index

notes by Steve Lasley


The meeting was held, as usual, on the second Thursday of the month at 10 AM in room 219 of Dauer Hall. In the absence of ITAC-NI chairman, John Sabin, Erik Deumens, QTP, ran the meeting.

UF Domain Name Policy

Introduction


Marc Hoit introduced what was essentially the single agenda item. Marc had asked the ITAC-NI committee to offer feedback regarding the campus Domain Name policy at this meeting. He noted that there is a very brief current policy (dated March 2001) available via the web. Dr. Hoit, however, had forwarded a more complete working document. Marc wanted feedback on how and by whom this policy should be managed; he wasn't certain at this point that our committee was the appropriate place for that.

Discussion


After some brief discussion, the group agreed that this policy is not really an IT matter at all. Our committee might serve as resource should technical questions arise, but this matter is basically a public relations issue.

The crux of the matter is that UF needs to have a review process for new domain requests that approves or denies such requests according to policy and in the best interest of the university overall. Some requests will be clearly valid and other clearly invalid. Currently there are a number of requests pending, which led to this discussion. In-between requests will be the difficult ones and will require a fairly broad knowledge of the university to handle wisely.

One suggestion was to advertise such requests via the DDD-L list so that chairmen and directors across UF can see the domains being requested and provide feedback on conflicts that might arise with other units at UF. Other suggestions were to keep a history of denials so requestors may clearly see the reasons that certain previously requested domains were denied. That might help temper requests in the desired direction. Any sort of review process will increase request processing time, of course. Some consideration needs to be given to that so that requests are met as quickly as possible, but poor choices aren't approved due to inadequate consideration.

Marc Hoit said he would take this management matter to Joe Hice in University Relations for further consideration.

Note from future: A revised policy draft has been made available by Christine Schoaff of the UF Web Administration team based on input from various sources.

Next Meeting

The next regular meeting is due to be March 8th.