ICTF Meeting

ICTF Termly Meeting , Michaelmas 2012 (No.17)
14:00 on Thursday 6th December 2012
Wolfson Room, Chemistry Research Laboratory

Minutes

  1. Welcome from Jeremy Worth
  2. Minutes of meeting 16 accepted as a true record
  3. Chairman's business
    • Jeremy Worth reported that there had been no IT committee, ICTF had not been represented on any committees.
  4. ITS3 Update
    • Tony Brett gave a report on IT Support Staff Services business.
    • Christmas Dinner is on, please make cheques to University of Oxford.
    • Disk crushing is on, not enough demand for the tape shredding lorry at present but can be securely removed and shredded.
    • IT Suppliers Exhibition is on, thank you all for registering.
    • Lunch and Learn with Ruckus Wifi is on 12 November.
    • Licensing Office 2013 has arrived but requires a KMS upgrade, this is scheduled for Tuesday 11th December.
    • The Deal “On the hub” we negotiated has sold 250 copies of Office to Students. The second 30 day window to buy opens mid January.
    • Matt Jennings requested a white poster please to use less toner.
    • Malcolm Austen pointed out that Office2013 will not install on XP.
  5. Steering Group
    • Natasha Heaton is leaving and so ICTF needs a replacement. This would be a co-opted position until the following year when re-election could be sought. Please talk to Jeremy Worth or Tony Brett if interested.
  6. Workstream 8 Update
    • Sarah Lawson gave a report on Workstream 8 of the ICCP. This workstream is trying to achieve the right people on the right committees, and avoid silo inefficiency. All ICTF can do is make recommendations to IT Services.
    • Sarah outlined the basic recommendations of a position of Strategic Relationship Manager
    • . Colleges and Bradford Campus manager is a good example of the collaboration we seek.
    • ICTF would also like to contribute to an experts list so that representatives could be fed into relevant meetings. We are looking for volunteers to encourage engagement and proactivity.
    • Questions:
      How about an ITSS wiki page for projects (to avoid duplication.)
      Q: What is the timescale for the expert groups
      A: John Ireland, 3-6 months,Subcommittee structures are being worked on now.
      Q: Is there a time scale for when the recommendations will be accepted or not?
      A: Workstream 8 is one of 13, SMARt Objectives have been put forward and next Tuesday we will decide what priorities and funding.
      • John Ireland added that IT services will be eager to communicate.
      • Items from representatives on other bodies
        • A CITC – Nothing to raise
        • B Software licensing – new social sciences rep. Andrew Chapman to take over form Natasha.

      Andrew attended CHEST Licensing group for Mathematics/ Statistics, CHEST tries to negotiate with manufacturers,  MAtlab is resistant. There is a user forum and also presentations by software houses. NAG etc.
      Software group is representative of all staff so please do contact your rep.
      JW:  What is the best contact address?
      software@it.ox.ac.uk
      Action :ITS3 to email links to Software Asset Management.
      Mathematica:  Zoology and Physics. An oddity is that Zoology buys from Physics who have a better deal with the vendor than Zoology can negotiate?

  7. Items from representatives on other bodies - none
  8. Reports from Special Interest & Adisory Groups - none
  9. Reports from Central Units
    1. IT services update
      John Ireland gives a presentation. 3 CIOs send apologies. We are currently in phase 3. JI give the report. Customer services, Director of IT encryption of Laptops
      JI next steps to identify efficiencies/ governance /Admin/ one list of Services and a project catalogue.

      The IT committee now reports directly to Council. For the first time IT is recognised at the top level. There is agreement at high level and regular meetings, these are active and enabled.
      JI Talks about the service desk being under resourced, service desk initiatives such as 24/7 support.
      We must match to needs not what we think.
      Workstream 8 is engagement initiatives. There are good case studies. There are 7 key recommendations. 22 recommendations.
      ICTF sterring group are asked to keep recommendations under review.

    2. BDLSS Andrew Bonnie gives the report.
      A new team of sysadmins has been recruited. The intention is to manage the ILS/Solo Infrastructureand DAMS. All care of the infrastructure is managed by libraries. Legislation os coming for the research Archives, BDLss will be running a pilot in new year.
      There are 11 million physical items and 400million total.
      RCUK has distributed £10 million
      Could be live in April 2013 if legislation goes through. ORA Oxford University Research Archive have £879,000 to spend before April.

  10. updates
    1. Card System – New cards are now 4K desfirMifare. Project is wrapped up.
    2. College Questionairre, 38 colleges have responded , Doing Quantitative assessment.Greg J. say watch this space.
    3. VOIP Alan Hillyer
      There has been an absence of governance therefore there has been no sign off. Project is out to Request for Interest RFI at the moment and full tender process will be next year. 40+ companies expressed interest. RFI closes next Wednesday.
      At IT Committee on November 21st AH presented a management summary of the voip project. Much interest was around network issues. Network Readiness Assessment is required. Also there has been some experimentation with Softphones.
      The focus is on devices most user have more than one device. Jemima and Alistair are trying to integrate Nexus into Voip, enabling features such as dialling out of outlook. (Jabba will work also).
      Federation into the Jabba cloud was mentioned and links with the Lancaster University was mentioned as they are implementing.
      Therefore next term there will be a show and tell and a demonstration of unified comms.
      Converged networks are to be allowed.
      Handsets are expensive and so we are looking for unlimited licences going forward.
    4. Electronic Archive project.
      Sarah Lawson gave a report.
      Richard Ovedon working with ORA,  A pilot solution has been chosen. A mailing list will start.
      SL says the Archivist needs people, there is funding to go out to talk and scope what media you want to archive.
      Shaun is to go and look at disk drives, if anyone has experience of electronic archiving , please get in touch. Volunteers are required.
      TB asked how this related to TSM
      SL TSM is not managed, this is more akin to curating. The aim is to have an every person archive. Auto call back. Some Dark and some light Archiving.
  11. EEM
    Universities are to be penalised if carbon emissions are not reduced over time.
    Dan Tomlinson gives an outline of EEM. There are legitimate objections such as TSM backups.
    Matt Jennings reiterated his request for a standard VM, Dan T says it is trivial to make a standard VM. It is noted (JI) that the standard VM may be of limited use as the individual configuration for each unit or college is the main work effort required.
    Keith Gillow of maths gave a very positive presentation of his green IT system over the past 3 years. A key aim was to be as transparent as possible. The system is easy to use and big wins. Maths has a fully managed cross platform environment of 600 machines (approx. 400 Linux / 200 Windows / Macs 20). Monitoring with Nagios showed all on but not all in use. First year machines were on 0800-1800, following years 0800-1500. Electricity bill has been reduced by 23%.
    Estates are keen to save money.

    Matt Jennings asked about monitoring. It was noted that energy savings were getting narrower.
    KG There is information on Maths Sites. Keith Gillow is glad to share.
    Interface improvements are required and have been prioritised after a meeting in November.
    There are 200 Networks in oxford to do.

  12. AOB:There was no other Business.
  13. date of next meeting: Tuesday 19th March 2013


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