INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT FORUM (ITMF)

Thursday, November 6, 2014

GA. CENTER, Room V/W

1:30-3:00 p.m.

Attendees: Forrest Bridges, Maria Cleghorne, Sherry Clouser, Lee Cornell, Anoush Ebrahimi, David Fulcher, Jonathan Hardy, Russell Hatfield, Jeff Hilyard, Brad Hunt, Rick Lanard, Lynn Latimer-Wilson, George Matthews, Bill McGee, Sohayl Moshtael, Jerry NeSmith, Peter Norris, Sam Pauff, Wayne Peacock, Jeff Pentz, Kerri Testement, Brian Watson

Approval of Minutes: Minutes from the September 4, 2014 ITMF meeting were approved.

Featured Speakers/Discussion:

TechQual Recommendations – Lynn Wilson, EITS

Lynn gave and update on the EITS annual planning process. Every March EITS gives an assessment called the TechQual survey to randomly selected faculty, staff, and students. The scope of this survey is to provide input from the campus community on the quality of IT services at UGA.Please review Attachment I for more information.

EITS Monthly Report – Kerri Testement, EITS

  • Office ProPlus Free Downloads to Extend to Employees: Starting in December, UGA faculty and staff will have access to download and install Microsoft Office ProPlus for free on up to five personal devices.
  • Lync Online Pilot Now Available: EITS is offering a pilot of Lync Online, which is a video conferencing, instant messaging, online meeting sharing and presence tool that makes it easier for multiple people in an organization to collaborate on their efforts. Lync Online will be offered campus-wide for all students, faculty and staff under the UGAMail accounts in early 2015.
  • Training Class Available on Using Office 365: EITS is offering a training class, called “What Can UGAMail and Microsoft’s Office 365 Do for You?’ at UGA’s Training and Development Center on November 20th, from 10 a.m. to noon. The free class is open to any UGA employee who wants to learn more about how to use UGAMail.
  • New Listserv for DNLs: The Office of Information Security has launched a new listserv for Departmental Network Liaisons (DNLs). The listserv is for designated DNLs to communicate campus security issues that directly affect DNLs.
  • Consolidated Firewall Exception Request Form: EITS will consolidate the web form to request firewall exceptions. Previously, DNLs had to submit separate requests for Internet, departmental and Boyd Data Center Firewall exception requests.
  • SecureUGA to be Launched Soon:SecureUGA, and online security awareness training program, will soon be available for all faculty, staff, student workers and contractors to complete by January 20th, 2015. The University System of Georgia requires employees and contractors at USG institutions to complete annual security awareness training, such as SecureUGA.
  • eLC to be Unavailable during upgrade: eLearning Commons (eLC) will be unavailable starting on Saturday, December 27th and ending by Friday, January 2nd, for and upgrade to version 10.3. The University System of Georgia is upgrading Desire2Learn, which powers eLC at UGA.
  • Self-Service Website to use CAS Authentication: UGA’s Self-Service website for employees will be updated to use authentication through CAS (Central Authentication Service). For visitors, they will no longer need to provide their MyID and password on the Self-Service home page.
  • UGAMart URL Redirect Coming in December: A URL used to access UGAMart, the University’s purchasing system with vendors, will be redirected on December 6th. EITS is transitioning the site to a new server.
  • Email Address Policy for Faculty/Staff to Change: In order to streamline and unify the process of effectively communicating with all faculty and staff, the Vice President for Information Technology is moving forward with a change to University policy that would require all official University email communications to faculty and staff to use only UGAMail addresses. The change will eliminate the current requirement for faculty and staff to identify their “preferred email address” in order to receive official University emails to non-UGA email accounts.
  • MATLAB Campus-Wide License:UGA now has a campus-wide license to provide all faculty and staff with access to MATLAB, Simulink, and 47 additional toolboxes. The new agreement permits the installation of the software on campus-managed and user-owner computers.
  • New Windows Patching Schedule: EITS is changing its regular Windows patching cycle, starting in November. The new schedule calls for Windows patching to be completed on the second Friday, after a patch has been issued by Microsoft. The maintenance work typically starts at 10 p.m.

Red Hat Linux Patching Scheduled for November 21-22: Red Hat Linux patching will start at 10 p.m. on Friday, November 21st and is expected to continue until Saturday, November 22nd, at 7 a.m. Please note this is the same timeframe for Windows patching for November. During the patching, a number of UGA systems will have a brief outage.

Open Forum for State of IT Presentation:Dr. Timothy M. Chester, Vice President for Information Technology, will present the annual State of Technology at UGA presentation on Tuesday, November 11th, at 2 p.m., at the Georgia Center in room K/L. This presentation is open to any UGA student, faculty or staff member.

PAWS-Secure Subsidy for Faculty, Staff Areas:The Office of the Vice President for Information Technology is offering a 50% subsidy for installation of PAWS-Secure wireless in faculty and staff areas on campus. PAWS-Secure is available throughout campus in areas primarily used by students by funds available through the Student Technology Fee.

Skillsoft Support Change:Skillsoft has announced it will decommission support of the SSL 3.0 protocol and will only support connections with the TLS protocol. Most modern web browsers have native support for the TLS protocol. Skillsoft is advising its customers of this upcoming support change.

Mentorship Program to Accept Applications:The EITS Mentorship Program will accept mentor and protégé applications for the spring cycle starting on November 10. Applications will be accepted until November 26th. The EITS Mentorship Program is open to all UGA employees.

Please review Attachment II for more information on EITS projects.

Meeting Adjourned