OXFORD UNIVERSITY IT USERS' GROUP

A meeting of the University IT Users' Group was held on Tuesday 14th January 2003. The following people attended the meeting:

1088 MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING

The minutes of the meeting held on 22nd October 2002 were accepted as correct.

1089 MATTERS ARISING

1089.1 Minute 1085 - Request for Representative from MIS to be Present at Future Meetings - Pete Biggs reported that he had not yet contacted Margaret Taylor regarding having an MIS representative at future meetings to discuss ISIDORE & OSIRIS issues. [Margaret Taylor is happy for a representative from MIS to make a presentation about specific issues if requested.]

1089.2 Minute 1086.1 - Time tabling of Commitments for Graduate Students in week 0 of Michaelmas - Robert Taylor & Pete Biggs to draft a letter to Graduate Studies Admissions and EPSC to ask for a dedicated Colleges' induction day for graduate freshers. Pete Biggs reported that this has still to be done.

Minute 1086.3 Virus E-mails & Spam - David Rischmiller to look at the feasibility of OUCS offering a central directory for Sophos using the Enterprise Manager version. See OUCS Report Item 7 & 8.

1090 CHAIRMAN'S REPORT

Pete Biggs had produced a written report that was placed online with the agenda. Pete added the following points:-

1090.1 Review of OUCS

A review of OUCS is due this year - postponed from last year. The ICTC will perform the review but hopefully the draft report will be presented at the IT Users' Group meeting for comments.

The University IT Strategy will also be reviewed later this year which will provide a good opportunity for departments to update (or create) their own strategy.

1090.2 OSIRIS

The new University accounting system, OSIRIS, should come into operation this year and this may require some technical issues to be resolved by IT Support Staff, particularly with the setting up of suitable PCs to use the system.

1091 COMPUTING SERVICES REPORT

Paul Davis had produced a written report that was placed online with the agenda. Alan Gay had nothing further to add. The following points were made:

1091.1 Anti Virus Software

David Rischmiller was asked about the availability of the Sophos software. David reported that OUCS has now received the software including the Enterprise Manager and it would be made available very soon. David was also asked if a central update system would be provided by OUCS. David replied that this would be investigated now that Lynne Munro's replacement had started working at OUCS. David said that the Enterprise Manager solution was best suited to a Windows Corporate environment so it may not be suitable for use at OUCS.

OUCS are also about to start testing Sophos for use in email filtering. This will be done by virus scanning the mailers and rejecting those emails that come up positive, returning them to the sender.

1091.2 Spam

OUCS now tags all E-mail that is suspected of being SPAM by using DNS Black lists and testing validity of sender address. Herald will soon have a system which can detect these spam tags and users can choose to direct the spam messages to a folder where they can be deleted. The responsibility for deleting the tagged spam messages is firmly placed with the user.

David Price asked if the spam messages for a particular mailer could be deleted by OUCS if requested to do so. Alan Gay replied that OUCS could delete all spam messages to a particular mailer but this would make the current policy confusing. The deleting of false positives is something to be very wary of and it is a politically sensitive issue which needs careful thought. However, he agreed that OUCS would consider the request.

[Alan Gay later reported that the OUCS mailers are currently tagging 17% of mail that passes through them. This mail includes internal traffic within Oxford, which is why the percentage is low]

1092 LIBRARIES REPORT

David Price had produced a written report that was placed online with the agenda. David Price had nothing further to add. There were no questions concerning the report.

1093 REPORTS FROM OTHER COMMITTEES AND GROUPS

1093.1 South East Region Computer Users' Committee

Peter was not in attendance and there was nothing to report.

1093.2 Network Advisory Group

The latest minutes for the Network Advisory Group can be found on the web at http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/oxford/network/nag/. There were no further comments.

1093.3 IT Support Staff Group

Tony Brett had produced a written report that was placed online with the agenda. Tony added that John Ireland would be standing in as Chairman of the IT Support Staff Group while Tony covered for Jane Littlehales as head of the ITS3 Unit at OUCS, during Jane's maternity leave.

The two day IT Suppliers Exhibition had been a success and would hopefully be repeated this year.

The IT Support Staff Conference has a provisional date set of Thursday 26th June 2003.

1094 ITEMS RAISED BY REPRESENTATIVES

There were no items raised by the representatives.

1095 ANY OTHER BUSINESS

There was no other business.

1096 DATES FOR NEXT MEETINGS

The next meeting of University IT Users' Group Representatives will be held on Tuesday 29th April 2003 at 2:00pm, in the Audrey Wood Seminar Room [changed to the Simon Wood Seminar Room, on the same floor] of the Martin Wood Lecture Theatre, Parks Road.