August 1, 1996

The Information Technology Advisory Committee met on August 1, 1996 at 4 pm. Members present: Landen Bain, Anne Beckwith, David Jameson- Drake, John Bord, Carolina Nisbet, Dave Kirby, Annette Foster, Robert Wolpert (chair), Betty Le Compagnon, Janet Pumo, Michael Pickett, Paul Harrod, Steven Natelborg, Melissa Mills, Roger Loyd. Guests: Charles Register, Gail Bullock, Jay Senerchia.

The meeting was called to order by Wolpert. The review of the previous minutes was postponed until receipt.

1. Announcements

B. Le Compagnon: A technology fair will be held August 31, 4-6 pm, on East Campus, with an OIT table for informing new students about technology at Duke. Anyone needing materials distributed via the table should contact OIT.

M. Pickett: ITAC consideration of the document on mainframe migration is scheduled for the next meeting; OIT staff are re- drafting the assumptions section.

2. IBM and Duke

Janet Pumo (Senior Consultant, IBM Consulting Group) and an IBM team will be working with OIT and Duke more generally to make analyses and recommendations concerning technology implementation. Principal areas: client-server readiness assessment, and information technology coordination at Duke. Client-server study will focus first on the procurement process work redesign, since it is far enough along to be ready for such analysis. Wider implications of client-server implementation will be studied. The IBM group began work with Duke (coordinated through OIT) on July 31, 1996, at the invitation of President Keohane.

3. Procurement Card Project Overview: Annette Foster, Gail Bullock, Jay Senerchia

A. Foster distributed a document detailing the selection of GE Capital as Duke's procurement card vendor. Duke is licensing the client- server software PARIS (Purchasing and Accounting Reporting and Information System) from GE to manage these transactions, which will provide a quick and less expensive way to handle low-dollar, non- repetitive purchases.

Implementation begins in early fall 1996 with installation of PARIS and an interface to CUFS General Ledger. Some departments will pilot- test in late fall. Teams will work with each Duke department to plan the installation university-wide.

4. Web Needs at Duke: Charlie Register

C. Register described the management process for review and revision of Duke's web pages, including the webmaster work done through OIT. He sees a need for a Duke-wide group to provide fairly specific directions and information, so that the web pages represent Duke well. Membership should include students as well as faculty and staff. A few names were mentioned; ITAC will consider this further at its next meeting.

Discussion of web needs included these ideas: 1) Does Duke need a full-time webmaster in OIT? 2) Should we be using the web not only for hyper-documents but for hyper-transactions (service-provision)? 3) Should Duke re-direct money now spent to print catalogs into web services? 4) Three separate components in web design are all important to Duke: a) content, b) finding strategies, c) art-- "look and feel" of Duke's web pages. 5) Should OIT use duke.systems.www as a natural newsgroup to discuss these matters? 6) How should Duke insure that every department has a strong and current web presence? How should this be funded? How should it be staffed?

5. Upcoming E-mail Changes: Charlie Register

C. Register reported installation of bigger, faster, more powerful servers for mail. IMAP and POP have now been distributed among various servers; people using clients such as Eudora and PCPine will have a one- time configuration change to reset to a specific post office. Clients running directly on ACPUB will not need to be reconfigured. The new formula for a user's post office is MAIL-XX (where XX are the first two letters of one's username). A document noting the changes is being prepared for wider distribution.

6. Subcommittee Updates

J. Board (Strategic Planning Subcommittee): A draft of the strategic plan has just been completed and forwarded to the subcommittee. ITAC may consider it on August 15.

D. Kirby (Remote Access Subcommittee): Distributed a document summarizing the group's work to date. A briefing book on various issues in remote access has been prepared for members of the group. The group is pursuing a trial of ADSL technology with GTE, and tracking Time- Warner's plans in cable modem technology. Groups 2/3 have begun to produce usage models (in draft) needed in several university functions (telemedicine, distance learning, remote office work, etc.).

7. Other Business

The meeting adjourned at 5:25 pm.

Respectfully submitted,
Roger Loyd