ICTF Meeting

Hilary 2011 Meeting (No.12)
Monday 21 March 2011
at 14:00
in Rewley House

Minutes

  1. Welcome
    Welcomed by Jeremy.

  2. Minutes of Last Meeting
    Agreed

  3. Chairman's Report
    Introduced Newsletter and thanked the contributors. Talked about PICT and where emphasis is presently in ICT at Oxford.

  4. ICTF Steering Group Report
    Conference is approaching. Conference is on 14th July. Put out an appeal for speakers. Conference steering committee gets to test the conference food! Extra bodies are needed on conference organising committee.

    1. Emma Potts on Student Systems.
      Update on replacement program. Oracle support for OSS stops in 2013. Need more development and better data sharing with e.g. DARS, HR, Research Services. Key developments:
      - User interface (should be intuitive and not require training for simple use).
      - Reducing duplication of data entry (2 way date exchange with student systems)
      - Reducing development time to respond better to business process changes.
      Governance has wide representation across the Collegiate University.
      Two shortlisted suppliers. Dialogue process is in train with both. Detailed evaluations with demos and workshops completed March 2011.
      Implementation is next phase.  Will be done incrementally, module by module. Start Aug 2011.
      Aim for final go-live with core student record on 1 Aug 2013.
      http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/ac-div/studentsystems/

  5. ICT Project Development Envelope Three year forward look, supplementary note and slides (Paul Jeffreys)
    Paul wanting to give facts about how money will be spent on IT.  £1.35M per year.  Been operating for three years now.  Three year forward look "warns" the University what expenditure is on the horizon.
    Backbone network replacement was not going to come from the envelope but PICT has now asked if a contribution from the envelope can be made.  Over the next three years there is an average of £220k/year left.
    Other parts of the University bidding.  JISC VIDaas bid may alleviate some of this and backbone upgrade contribution level as yet unknown.  Envelope will be stretched beyond capacity.
    Interesting stats about PC/Mac, Antivirus and Smartphones by UG and PG as well as by division were presented.

  6. Items from representatives on other bodies

    1. Colleges ICT Committee (James Dore)
      Nothing to report.

    2. Software Licensing (Sarah Lawson)
      Newest license is nVivo.  Power Manager under discussion.  ICTF members should put requests to Sarah for new software to licence.  Funds are limited to about £100k excluding Campus.

  7. Reports from Special Interest Groups

    1. ICT Managers' Group (Jeremy Worth)
      Work has been done on this.  About 115-120 people are on ITSS register.  Jeremy will write to these people explaining how he thinks the group will work.  Strategic issues and staff issues may be usefully discussed at this new group.  Has not hitherto been a forum for IT Managers to discuss issues.

    2. Oxbridge Collaboration (Sarah Lawson) Report available
      Surveying to find out what collaborations already exist - telcomms, sakai etc.
      Looking to develop "buddy" systems across the two Universities.
      Step forward is to convene a meeting to discuss progress.
      Server punt race proposed.

    3. Colleges IT Forum (Simon Thomson)
      VOIP work is being done.  Costings being put together for colleges.
      Policies are a bit scarce so people are starting to write and share them.
      Tour for SDC was useful and CITOF is looking at ways to use the SDC.
      Central PC survey was discussed.  Most useful thing for College IT Staff would be an image repository.
      Bradford Campus Manager training desired.
      O'Reilly safari subscription desirable.

  8. Information Security Best Practice Update (Miranda Llewellyn)
    Miranda gave an update.  Flyers were distributed.  ISBP is part of OxCERT and guided by IS-AG sig of ICTF.  Self-assessment done in 2009 and identified areas for improvement and gaps in policy.  Aim is to provide information security toolkit and an updated IT Policy.  Has met with Legal Services and Council Secretariat.  ISBP docs will have same status as IT Regs. http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/security/ISBP/flyer18.02.11.pdf

  9. News on VoIP and opportunity for questions (Alan Hillyer)
    Current Merlin MDXs went into Oxford in 1986.  Situation is that Siemens will only guarantee maintenance until 2017.  University has c. 28,000 extensions on 21 MDXs.  About 10% is now moved to VOIP.  About 1/3 of the VOIP is student connections in rooms that previously only had data.  Student bedroom service from NTL has been replaced by VOIP is several units.  New buildings or moves of department have moved to VOIP.  VOIP has facilitated easier de-camping for people un units being relocated or refurbished and folk get to keep numbers.
    Convergence is being actively considered.  OUTN considering restructuring with Networks Group so that more resource can be put into converged options research and development.  PC can plug into phone with a converged setup.
    New VOIP software release is on the way (v 8.5) possibly in May.
    Looking for SIP trunk through JANET.  Suppliers not keen to do this through Janet.
    Question from ComLab about high cost of VOIP kit. Headsets have been a difficult issue and need different adaptors for different phones.  Not all are interchangeable.

  10. PC management, an ICTST perspective (Andrew Hynes)
    Discussion on the recent survey to gauge interest in a possible Central Windows PC service and other options for managing PCs.
    96 usable responses to survey.
    Resources and tools should be popular with ITSS - images, software packages etc.  ICTST needs to recover costs so this can't just be a matter of ICTST providing tools etc. for free.

  11. Shared Data Centre (Peter Jones)
    An update and opportunity for questions.  SDC is for the whole University.  In basement of new OMPI building.
    Room will be pre-populated with racking so cold areas can be sealed in and air forced properly through active kit so less energy is wasted.
    Question about vLANs into SDC was discussed.  It could be done but would not be as resilient as using a dedicated data centre network.

  12. Reports from Central Units

    1. OUCS (Stuart Lee)
      Just highlighted the Sharepoint launch.
      Estates Bursars have met again and seem more inclined to pay towards services than to infrastructure such as the backbone.  More discussion at Trinity Term EBC.

    2. Libraries (Dave Price)
      Christine Marsden.
      Implementation of Integrated Library System scheduled for 18 July.  New client software for users will be needed.  Currently being packaged.  Relevant people should have been notified about training.  Things won'[t change much for end users.  SOLO will still be main search tool.  Sunrays will continue to be supported.
      Book store now has 2.7M books.  On target to empty New Bodleian in July, ready for refurb.

    3. BSP (Jeffrey Thomas)
      Ian Wilde spoke.  HRIS roll out is going well.  E-recruitment happening already.
      Resolve replacement will be developed for Oxford but then also sold elsewhere.

    4. ITS3 (Tony Brett)
      No questions

  13. Any Other Business
    None

  14. Date of Next Meeting (7th July 2011)


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