Attending: Robert Wolpert, Rafael Rodriguez, Ed Anapol, Landen Bain, Pakis Bessias, John Board, Kevin Cheung, Jim Coble (for David Ferriero), Mike Gower, Jimmy Grewal, David Jamieson-Drake, Roger Loyd, Melissa Mills, Kyle Johnson (for Caroline Nisbet), John Oates, Mike Pickett, Bill Scarborough, Betty Le Compagnon
Visitors: Annette Foster, Nancy Wooters, Neal Paris, Dave Kirby, Paul Baerman, Delores Taylor
Review of Minutes and Announcements
Minutes were accepted without change.
Rafael announced that pricing for ADSL offerings has changed (downwards).
No meeting in 2 weeks. Next meeting is August 13th.
Update on IT Job Structuring
Betty described the project. The first phase was the Sibson study on salaries. The next phase is to restructure the jobs themselves and how they are organized.
Angel reports that phase II (Design) includes the steering committee of Betty, Landon, and Clint Davidson along with a Design Team of HR, MCIS, and OIT representatives. They will utilize internal resources and focus groups of IT people outside of OIT and MCIS. They expect to complete this by December - completion being a restructure of job family 8 with an objective to reduce 80 job titles to 6-8.
Delores Taylor is the co-team leader with Angel. Any recommendations for participants for focus groups to angel.marlowe@duke.edu or delores.taylor@duke.edu.
Phase III is Implementation - which will include a more automated process for upgrades and pay rate changes. The desire is to have a clear (career) path for IT professionals.
David J-D: Does this apply to all IT people?
Betty: All job family 8 plus those who "should" be.
Kevin: Does this include student employees?
Angel: If they are hired in a job title in family 8 then yes.
Year 2000 Update
Betty: 533 days and counting.
Annette Foster is the Y2K Compliance Officer and is leading a new group including Dave Kirby, Neal Paris, and Nancy Wooters.
Dave Kirby: The recent seminars went well with a good audience. The idea is to bring together all the elements that are or should be working on this issue. They will bring in Risk Management and Internal Audit as well. They will look at externals including pagers, city/county services, etc. They have found a wide range of readiness among groups from "not much" (assessment) to fairly mature. In a few months we will hear more about costs.
Annette: gave synopsis of conference. Met with CLIF and CLAC and brought in speakers from Keane and IBM. She outlined the problem and impact, stressing the inter-relatedness of systems and data. The risk is high for business interruption. Alarms systems, lab equipment, etc. need evaluation. Steps include assessment, remediation, testing, and development of contingency plans. She wants to dispel the myth of "plenty of time."
Dave K: Don't rely on vendor assertions. Contingency plans needed for systems you don't know will fail.
Betty: The recent nationwide pager failure was the result of Y2K testing.
Richard: Will ITAC need to make decisions?
David J-D: Is there a checklist departments should use?
Project Enterprise Update
Mike P: We have lots of good people but not a lot of time. Material Mngt Information System and DHIS Ordering will be replaced. 3,000 Hospital staff need to be trained. The elaboration of the health system is compounding the problem of meeting the deadline. Notes that each business arrangement with these hospitals is different.
Mike G: Six months from today for bringing up G/L. The differences between the organizations involved need to be considered in configuring the system. Says University Payroll system is not Y2K.
Note: The University plans for the legacy payroll system to be year 2000 compliant and efforts are underway to accomplish this.
John B: What about contingency planning for payroll (in the event the deadline is not met)?
Mike P: We have patched payroll and there are other alternatives. There are big risks involved. Should have a good risk analysis in a few months. SAP lacking in functionality for certain issues like foreign nations.
Mike G: SAP is committed to fixing these. They need this functionality for other companies.
Mike P: There may be some work-arounds until these items are fixed. We have purchased a lot of hardware including SP2, RS6000, and S/70s with hot-swap features. SAP 4.0b has 50% more tables and requires 50% more disk space. MCIS will help host these machines.
Strategic Plan Discussion
Betty: Asks for reactions as to relevance of various parts.
Landon: Rereading this document reinforced his admiration of the document's timelessness. This has held up well and recommends we stick to updating the appendices.
John B: New categories of issues have arisen such as buying/merging with other hospitals. May need to update the principles.
Landon: While the scope of this document was University-wide it didn't really speak to patient care. Asks for caution that we don't fiddle with something that has held up this well.
Jimmy: Move things that need changing to the appendices.
Richard: Identify topics that need to be addressed for special committee updates for next year.
Betty: Keep original document but provide links to the Senior Officer's version.
Richard: Are rhere principles not included?
Landon: Perhaps "Principles for Reform" should be renamed.
Betty: Principles for Progress? (Principles for going forward).
Richard: The document did not focus on the classroom.
David J-D: We have a new provost coming. Maybe a fresh computing review is in order. Emphasis in this document was on administrative computing. Focus this year on IT in academic computing.
Jimmy: Asks for protection of freedom to choose one's own tools.
Richard: Who do we proceed? Consensus seems to be that principles are sound but names may need changing and some may be missing.
Landon: Consider leaving 1-5 intact and revisit 6 and following.
Betty: We have an entire organization working on institutional data but only 2 paragraphs in the document devoted to this.
David J-D: Suggests putting costs on these.
Landon: Objects. Says distinguish between the plan and projects. Projects have costs.
Richard: Think about headline items for next year's focus. Any other points?
John Board: Does OIT want a plan for internal actions?
Betty: The organization has evolved since this plan. OIT isn't ready for external review yet.
David J-D: Why not have an external review before Jim Dronsfield leaves and use that when considering restructuring after he retires?
Richard: Can ITAC help in reorganization efforts?
Betty: Possibly but haven't considered that yet.
Other Business
Jimmy: Would like to establish a Duke University Emerging Technologies (DUET) facility for early testing of new technologies. Suggests WinNT 5 as an example. It would foster development of new technologies on campus, perhaps influence the development of these. It would also increase our public leadership in IT. He will be preparing a formal proposal with more details and is considering contacting potential corporate partners.
Landon: Notes the existence of the Center for Information Technology formed in the Hospital.
Kevin: This is way to plan for the future.