Information Technology Council 2005-2006

ITC Meeting Minutes

May 21, 2005 3:00-4:30

In attendance were: Loretta Early (representing Dennis Aebersold), Robert Dougherty, Robert Kelly, Cheryl Carney, Burr Milsap, Donald Maletz, Fran Ayres, Sarah Robbins, Mike Sewell, and Deborah Trytten.
Absent: Adam Westerman, Nick Hathaway, Dimitrios Papavassillou, Hunter Crowther-Heyck, and Matthew Matos.

Approval of March Minutes

Approval was moved by Don Maletz, and seconded by Robert Dougherty. The minutes were unanimously approved.

Web Policy
The introduction of the web policy was criticized by a member of the Faculty Senate as representing a list of rules and regulations without any indication of what the policy provided for the faculty. A few sentences, shown below, were added to the policy. These changes have been accepted by the faculty member, and legal counsel. The changes were accepted by the ITC without a formal vote.

Web pages on the internet are the preferred source of information for many individuals.  Therefore, the University’s web pages will be, for many, their first and only view of the University of Oklahoma community. Our web pages need to reflect our values including respect for intellectual property, respect for individual’s privacy, the need to make our information available to everyone without regard to disability, the need to support open public dialogue, and respect for the law.

Network Policy
There is urgency in completing this policy, since IT needs it to be in place as soon as possible. After we’ve reviewed the policy, we’ll need to decide whether the policy is mature enough to go forward to the Faculty, Staff, and Student Senates at this time. Since the senates will not be able to vote on this policy until Fall of 2005, waiting until Fall 2005 to send the policy forward will entail only a one month delay. This delay is acceptable to IT, if necessary to obtain a high quality policy.

This document was based on a dated 1996 document.  This document contained outdated terms (like “backbone”), and still referred to DCTS, a precursor to IT.  The topics in this document are basically the same. Wireless networking has been added to the document.

The remainder of the meeting was a point by point discussion of the Network Policy, as summarized below.  The latest revision of the policy is attached.

• The need for “ethical” in the introduction was questioned.  The word is vague, and may not have meaning in this context.
• We may want to add some additional words to soften the introduction, as was done with the Web Policy.
• The purpose of the policy was discussed.
• The issue of whether this policy was comprehensible to faculty, staff, and students was discussed. Substantial progress has been made in making the policy readable.
• Wording the replicates the Acceptable Use Policy was removed.
• Special software and data products, that may have been purchased for a particular college for example, may not be accessible off campus due to licensing agreements. The issue of universal access independent of platform is also problematic, given that some software products are platform specific, and there are non-standard systems that would be very expensive for the University to support.
• Rewording suggested, and later rejected: University public data and network resources should be available to users regardless of location for standard platforms.
• Rewording: Members of the university community will have availability to network resources on and off campus regardless of location for standard platforms.
• Disclaimer near top reworded: subject to administrative, physical, and fiscal constraints.
• Given the number of revisions, the need to review this policy in its final form again, at a later date, was discussed.
• Item 3 repeats the security policy.  The first sentence in the section was left in the policy and the rest was removed. The security policy should be cited in this policy.
• The ITC policies which are labeled as “Interim” were discussed. These policies need to be revisited soon, to make them permanent policies.
• The accessibility section was discussed.  The “tools of access” were determined to be software products like screen readers, and other software accessibility aids. 
• Rewording: All members of the university community should have appropriate access to University network and services without regard to disability within administrative, physical, and fiscal constraints.
• First two sentences of a) were removed because they were unnecessary.
• “Improper” was removed from “Improper discrimination”.
• a) was removed.
• b) was removed.
• c) was left as is.
• 5) has a lot of nos.  It needs to be reworded in a positive sense.
• Example: Users shall only access information and services to which he or she has legitimate access rights.
• b, and c were covered in the acceptable use policy.
• 6)  The a) heading should be removed. This was taken from the University of Michigan policy. Wireless networking will ultimately have to be centralized to work properly on the OU campus, as rogue networks can interfere with each other and the standard campus wireless network.
• Anxiety with allowing IT to control purchasing of wireless network hardware was discussed.  We don’t want the wireless network to be locked into unnecessarily expensive hardware like the phones on campus. In the end, we decided that we need to trust IT.  If they do not live up to this trust, we can revisit the policy next year.
• Concerns that this policy will allow rich departments to have wireless access and poor departments to use rogue networks was expressed.  We wish there were a better solution for departments with limited means.

It was determined that the ITC needs to discuss this policy again before putting it forward.  This will delay implementation of the policy for only one month.