Meeting minutes from December 5, 2006
9:30–11a.m., IHETS boardroom

***APPROVED 1.11.07***

 

Present:  Jeff Pittman, chair, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana;  Laurie Antolovic, Indiana University; Bob Holmes, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana; Phillip Jankowski, Purdue University North Central; Diann McKee, Indiana State University; Frank Sabatine, Ball State University; Bryan Spetter, Franklin College

IHETS staff: Virginia Beyer, Cheryl Denski, Tim Fisher, Rauf Khalid, Bill Kramer, Bob Noe, Ed Stockey, Susan Sullivan, Betty Hart

The meeting was called to order by the chair, Jeff Pittman. Introductions and opening remarks followed.

Approval of Meeting Minutes                                                                                     
Pittman asked for a motion to approve the meeting minutes of November 16, Holmes moved that the meeting minutes be approved as written, it was seconded by McKee and they were unanimously approved.

Service Pricing Workplan
A decision to approve and move forward with the work plan was passed at our meeting on November 16. Many unknown variables exist for developing the final 2007-09 service pricing models for members and non-members.

The 2007-09 appropriation will impact the final service pricing model selected for members and non-members as well as potential additional revenue from the ITFS licenses. In addition, the Finance Committee’s development of service pricing models are dependent upon the output from the Technology Services Workplan (Technical Operations Committee) and the E-learning Services Workplan (Partnership Committee).

Fisher requested that the timeline for an interim pricing model for services was extended to mid January as it is anticipated that more information will be made available by the other two operating committees by that time.

Enhancements, which may be in the form of market expansion of the service or training packages on how to use the service, may be attractive to some institutions.

The final service fee pricing will not be developed until April 30, 2007 by which time appropriation and other revenue information should be known. Fisher asked that an additional activity be added to the workplan to reflect ‘application of service pricing guidelines in 2007-08 budget development’ with a May 31, 2007 timeline. No concerns were indicated with the suggested changes.

Kramer added that as we move forward with the fee models we need to have clarification of members and non-members and an update to language and clarification to our beginning legislation.

Also discussed was the need for guidelines for specialized services guidelines need to be developed for services that the consortium may be doing very soon. The consortium’s normal helpdesk business hours are 7am-10pm Monday through Friday and Saturday from 8 am - noon. Some member institutions who would like to conduct Saturday classes extending past noon would be required to pay overtime for a helpdesk employee. We are seeking the committee’s feedback on how we should proceed and asking if there should be a charge for after hour usage? Background materials will be assembled and sent out for discussion prior to our January meeting.

Other items that are currently on the table are proposals requested by IOT. The first proposal is for video services to the state and a second proposal is for IHETS to continue to manage the firewall service for the department of health. The original plan was once the network was migrated over to AT&T that they would take over management of the firewall service but we are continuing this service on a month- to- month basis as IOT has run into problems shifting this service to AT&T. The management of this firewall service nets the consortium around $10,000 monthly.

No urgency exists with the firewall service since we are on a month-to-month but service on the video services proposal would begin in January. No staffing changes have taken place but an equipment upgrade has occurred and a three year contract signed which extends to 2008. McKee and Pittman volunteered to serve on this committee to provide guidance.

Current Fees
Antolovic acknowledged that this information was sent from Chitwood but reiterated the statement on the price list that the figures did not include the IHETS subsidy. The subsidy will continue through this fiscal year and hopefully into the future. Billing will originate from UITS and sent to the schools in the least cumbersome manner. IHETS and UITS will work together to come up with whatever manner is deemed the least burdensome. Antolovic and Fisher will follow-up after the meeting concludes. Any knowledge of a price changes needs to be shared with the Finance Committee to assist them in their budget preparation process.

Description of pricing models -Fisher
This item was included in the attachments for the November 16th meeting and again for this meeting to provide some information as to models used by other similar organizations.

Update on TechOps Workplan – Noe
In the last TechOps Committee meeting we reviewed in great detail our statistical usage of all our services by institution and reached a decision to put together proposals on how to enhance these individual services and improve the usage/adoption rate among member and non-members. The meeting on enhancements is scheduled to take place next week and beginning the first or second week of January, we will move forward with identifying the list of technology services and potential enhancements.

Current Utilization of Technology Services – Stockey
Brief comments were shared as Stockey continued through the lists of technology services (current primary and secondary as well as potential services) provided in the   materials handed out.

• Video conferencing- is the bridging service which is two sites connecting through our bridge. On the one site to one site we are unable to capture the statistics; a total of 35,771 hours, Ivy Tech is the largest user at 28,000.
• Audio Conferencing– Ivy Tech is again the greatest user of the audio conferencing, out of the total 60,996 total hours Ivy Tech used 22,124 followed by Purdue.
• IHETS Interactive- This is a new service and went into full production this fall. Ball State is the greatest user then Indiana State and Indiana Wesleyan following.
• Suvon– This service is used by all institutions. We need to pursue new technologies, primarily VOIP.
• Video and Audio Streaming– A large user of this service is the Indiana House of Representatives, next the Senate, and the Supreme Court.
• Security Services– We provide security services to Purdue University College of Technology and Dekalb County Eastern School. We have 57 sites under contract with IDOH (IOT).
• Secondary Services/Co-Location – We store mapping information for the USDA.
• Secondary Mail Relay– Several higher education sites are users of this service.
• Email Account Hosting– We have 39 accounts across Public Libraries and County Government.
• Primary DNS– We have 34 domains across State Government, WFYI, Universities and several schools.
• SNMS– Used by all network users but as the network migrates over to UITS, this service will go away.

Potential New Services

• Penetration testing is security service that tests the vulnerability.
• Firewall management this is a service that we should pursue, this work has come to us. Security risk assessment looks at the total environment.
• Disaster recovery has increased since homeland security.
• Network storage both for disaster recovery and production purposes
• After hours help desk support
• Primary e-mail for student populations
• Wireless deployment surveying
• Consortia licensing of software was added to the list of possible new services.

The technology committee will review the list of services and decide on what will add value for the consortium members and IHETS will support these services.

Communications Services update – Sullivan
The backend work of the outbound communications project is nearly complete. Our target audience is very specific consisting of higher education members, presidents, chancellors, CIO’s, directors of IT, and members of finance. Content has been sent to the executive committee members for comments and not all have responded. This e-news letter will resemble publications similar to that of Inside Indiana by Gerry Dick, IBJ, and The Indianapolis Star. The newsletter will take the form of a blurb with one paragraph and a link to a web page for full details. Our goal is to have this out by Friday, December 8. Pittman responded that the document looked great.

E-Learning Workplan – Fisher

The objective remains the same but their activities have delayed there target timeline.

The list of services include, online course scheduling, online clearinghouse, inter-institutional student registration, and professional development. A survey is underway and that information will be processed and analyzed.

Circuit Network Transition - Pittman
This was approved on November 17 by the Executive committee. A meeting took place with the UITS staff and IHETS staff members on November 22. Antolovic and Fisher will continue working contact to make this transition as seamless as possible.

ITFS Sub-Committee – Pittman
The sub-committee met briefly on November 28 and staff member Max Gordon requested the assistance of an expert be brought in sometime in January to assist with potential uses for the licenses and the revenue.

P.R.O.B.E. – Pittman
The response to the Probe report was excellent. The meeting with Peter Miller was a follow-up meeting from our written response. The meeting was friendly and I emphasized that we were interested in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our services. We have no problem with producing output measures and performance goals for our services. A metric performance goal package called Theoris has been purchased by the State. Ball State has purchased this package and uses it in their IT area. The PROBE results are to be used according to the instructions in preparation of the biennium budget request.

Antolovic added that IU has many enterprise and software licenses and if they could assist that they would be happy to. We will include this in our enhancement proposals that we will be working on this week.

Next Meeting
Fisher will be e-mailing out potential dates for our next meeting.

The meeting adjourned at 10:50 a.m.