Notes from August 25, 2003 ITPAC Meeting:

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notes by Steve Lasley


Dan Cromer asked and received support for a new user account policy that network access would be ended at termination of employment and that courtesy e-mail access would continue for 6 months thereafter. It was also discussed that an attempt should be made to obtain e-mail forwarding addresses as part of the general employee exit process.

Dan Cromer made ITPAC members aware that UF policy prohibits the web-hosting of personal information on UF servers and that IFAS policy should be the same.

Steve Lasley relayed information on recent ICC recommendations regarding anti-SPAM efforts (Continuing Anti-SPAM Investigation and (Anti-SPAM Blacklist via Turf Table), stating that the ICC endorsed the SPAM-related motion passed at the last ITPAC meeting.

Steve Lasley sought and received ITPAC's endorsement of the ICC recommendation on "IFAS Software Deployment". Dan Cromer added the caveat of "when possible", noting that emergency situations might arise when the two weeks prior notification goal would be unattainable.

Steve Lasley sought and received ITPAC's endorsement of the ICC's "Three Motions for Improving IT Processes within IFAS".

Vernon Parmenter raised the question of whether Dan's group was getting the word out about Cognos. Dan explained that this was the Enterprise Reporting portion of the UF Bridges (formerly ERP) project, and that this was available for perusal by all at the myUF Web Portal. Eventually, this will be how all employees will access relevant UF information based on their particular role.

Jane Luzar reported that the student records and tracking reporting systems will be moved to a much improved web-based system come September, and the NERDC (now UF Computing and Networking Services--UFCNS) SASS screens will be a thing of the past. It is the UF Registrar's hope that this system will obviate the need for the student portion of the UF Bridges project, as they do not feel that the PeopleSoft software meets UF's specialized needs in this area.

Jane Luzar presented information related to the status of the Future of Interactive Communication Task Force Committee's investigation into moving to H.232 technology for interactive videoconferencing. There is currently some question of whether or not IFAS will need to invest $80,000 in their own MCU equipment, or whether UF can reasonably supply this critical function. That committee will meet again soon to finalize their recommendations.

Jim Syvertsen raised the issue of needing to assure the "health" of network connected computers, specifically the need to assure that Windows systems have up-to-date security patches. This topic is also being raised with the ICC to investigate what procedures might be implemented to enforce any policy that might be developed to this end.

Joe Joyce brought up the question of what else needs to be done to prepare IFAS for Active Directory. Joe wants the AD budget revisited to insure that its needs are adjusted and met. Dan Cromer pointed out the need to get everyone notified of the importance of upgrading all Windows computers to at least the Windows 2000 level for business practice and security purposes. The possibility of creating a policy to that effect was discussed as well as the need to get the word out on this. The ICC was noted to be key to this effort, but an informal committee consisting of at least Dan Cromer and Steve Lasley were charged with looking into these matters.

The next ITPAC meeting is planned for the first week of December.