A meeting of the Colleges’ ICT Committee was held on Tuesday 29th April 2008 at OUCS. Dr Jo Ashbourn, the Chair of the Colleges’ ICT Committee, chaired the meeting and the following members were present:
|
Name |
College |
|
Jo Ashbourn (Chair, Colleges’ ICT Committee) |
St Cross |
|
Chris Bamber |
|
|
James Dore |
New |
|
Karen James |
|
|
Steve Kersley |
Keble |
|
Matt Jennings |
|
|
Sarah Lawson |
Harris Manchester |
|
Ian Plummer |
Balliol |
|
John Veness |
Magdalen |
|
Simon Thomson |
Pembroke |
|
Anne Wilson |
St Hilda’s |
In Attendance:
|
Tony Brett |
OUCS |
|
Dave Price |
OULS |
|
David Rischmiller (Minutes) |
OUCS |
|
Jeremy Worth |
Secretary to ICTF |
Apologies for Absence:
|
Fran Jackson |
OUCS |
|
David Olds |
Queen’s |
|
Mike White |
|
|
Alex Wong |
St Hugh’s |
The Minutes of the meeting held on 22nd January 2008 were accepted as correct.
There were no matters arising.
Stewart Watson from the University’s BSP department was introduced to the meeting to make a presentation about the Development and Alumni Relations System (DARS) that is currently being procured.
There was considerable discussion covering a number of issues. Some of the key points were as follows:
· The system will be based on the Raiser’s Edge product from Blackbaud.
· The overall cost of the project is approximately £2 million.
· It requires client software based on a .net2 framework and hence will only be supported in a Windows environment. Terminal services will probably be used to support non-Windows desktops.
· It will provide a NetCommunity service which is a web portal for Alumni and Friends. This caused some concern with some members due to the existence of their own equivalent services.
· Data input will be the responsibility of the University’s Development Office.
· The system is capable of a high degree of integration with Microsoft Exchange.
· The current take-up from colleges is as follows:
o 17 colleges have expressed a definite interest;
o 4 colleges have expressed an interest for the future, but have no immediate plans to get involved;
o Of the remaining colleges, about 50% are planning to look seriously into the service;
o About 5 colleges have signed up for the assessment process.
· It was suggested that discussions between the University’s Development Office and colleges' own development offices should include the college IT staff to ensure a full appreciation of the technical implications.
· The project has not yet pursued conformance of the system with accessibility requirements.
· The value of this system to colleges is dependent on the degree of trust that is established between the Development Office and the colleges.
The following documents are available:
· the PowerPoint presentation given at the meeting;
· a PowerPoint presentation about the Blackbaud system;
· a document dealing with performance and scalability.
Stewart requested that anyone with any questions should email him at stewart.watson@admin.ox.ac.uk or they can visit him to discuss the issues. Stewart also asked that anyone interested in attending a session on the implementation of the system, planned for sometime during the fortnight of 12th-23rd May (not yet confirmed), should get in touch with him.
Alex Wong was unable to attend the meeting due to illness. As the only candidate for the role, he was prepared to be elected in his absence. The meeting elected Alex Wong as Vice-Chair of the CICTC.
Dr Jo Ashbourn produced a written report. There were no questions.
A request was made to the meeting that any IT Fellow interested in being part of the Groupware Selection Panel should contact the Chair (IT service staff are being recruited for the Selection Panel independently through the ICTF).
Jane Littlehales produced a written report. There were no questions.
Dave Price produced a written report. The new resource discovery services were highlighted.
439.1 ICT Forum Report
There was no ICTF report. Jeremy Worth reminded the meeting about the
ICTF Conference on 16th July. Registration will open sometime in
May. It was reported that Sarah Lawson, as a current CICTC member on the ICTF
Steering Group, would report back in future to the CICTC on matters from the
ICTF.
439.2 SOFTWARE LICENCING GROUP
Sarah Lawson produced a written report. A question was asked about the expected timescale for a VMware licence deal through Eduserv. This was not yet known.
Sarah Lawson proposed a coordinated collection of information about college IT projects, contractors, systems, etc. It was suggested that in order to be most effective, this should not just be restricted to colleges and it was pointed out that the ITSS wiki already includes supplier information. Steve Kersley suggested that colleges could list suppliers and contacts. Tony Brett offered to provide a template document as a guide to what information is required and asked for some examples to be sent to him from colleges, which would then help him to design a prototype for circulation and comments from the CICTC.
None.
Jo Ashbourn asked for volunteers for a consultation group being convened for the University website Staff Gateway project. There were no volunteers at the meeting so Jo agreed to circulate a brief description of the project and a call for volunteers to the CICTC mailing list.
Tuesday 21st
October 2008 at 14.15 pm in the Isis Lecture Room,
This will begin with the annual joint meeting of the CICTC and the Committee of College Librarians, followed by the CICTC's own agenda.