Thu, 26 March 2010 1400-1443 at ChemistryResearch Lab.
Apologies: Stuart Lee, Gerard Robinson, James Dore, Jo Ashbourn
A new newsletter (the fifth, Vol 2 issue 2) is out. It’s good to see some new contributors but there is still scope for others to offer items.
It has been a quiet term with fewer than usual meetings. Some major exercises, such as Groupware Advisory Group, coming to an end.
Finance is, as ever, being squeezed throughout the University.
The main focus is the conference – July 14 at Kassam. Please contact the Steering Committee with your ideas for workshops and plenary sessions. Sponsorship has begun to be committed, everyone is encouraged to ask about conference sponsorship when doing their purchasing deals.
There was no report except to say that a new College rep is required by this group. This is a small group handling University-wide agreements (only those on a smaller scale that MS campus though). All the Divisions are represented and the commitment would only need to be about 1 hour per term. Anyone willing should contact Tony Brett as Richard Saxton is retiring next week.
The ISPB (Information Security Best Practice) pages are linked from the ODIT site.
All the reports from the ISBP exercise have now gone out. Each contains a summary as well as a comparison against the massed returns.
The whole is being collected into a report to PICT.
The work is leading towards an IS toolkit and to pool best practice examples.
Please do give your feedback to the Advisory group
Tom Anstey reported that some people/departments are being pulled in multiple directions. Medical departments are expected to follow the (might tighter) Cabinet Office guidelines which contain 70 mandatory checkpoints.
In the ensuing discussion it was suggested that HMG’s main concern was potential for embarrassment and that these guidelines might be forced upon us.
Paul Jeffreys said that the University would, as a policy, take onboard as much as it could from these guidelines.
There was a strong view that HMG may (falsely) view the University rather than the departments concerned to be its partner and try to enforce the guidelines more widely than was required or sensible.
There was no report, there had been no seminars this term. Please get in touch with Jon Lockley with ideas for talks for next term.
Today is collaborative – several Cambridge IT staff were video-linked to the event.
It is suggested that joint SIGs could be formed, also there could/would be joint meetings of the reciprocal collaboration SIGs. It was reported that a request for information about existing collaborations had identified about 20 existing college and departmental collaborations.
Paul indicated that there was about £1.5M/year to be allocated and that people were welcome to bid for a slice. He noted that the 2011-12 pot would be 10% down, £1.35M. Funded items included Groupware, ISBP. Central Machine Room soft-fit (racks, cooling). There would be racks available for rent in the Central Machine Room.
Karl Harrison asked whether it would be possible to make direct ODBC calls to DARS as he does not want to work from XL reports. This will be answered ‘off-line’.
There were further enquiries re. dates for the data warehouse and the Cambridge collaboration.
Following the meeting several Cambridge IT support staff spoke by video link about how things are in Cambridge
