ITD Senior Staff Meeting December 5, 2006
Notes and updates
Update on new ITD telecommuting procedures
Debbie Carraway reported that the procedure and guidelines for the ITD
telecommuting pilot project are ready. She, Susan Klein and other managers
and directors have been working with Human Resources on the necessary
documentation since August to make sure ITD procedures are in compliance
with university guidelines. Sam has also given his approval. Debbie said the DELTA's telecommuting documents and procedures were a big help in facilitating the project.
Supervisors of staff who are eligible to telecommute will be discussing
the details of the procedures and gathering appropriate signatures
during the upcoming Interim Appraisals. The ITD Telecommuting Agreement
and Procedures documents will be online under the For ITD Staff web
pages: http://www.itd.ncsu.edu/staff/business_procedures.php
Update on new campus document scanning initiative
Susan Klein gave an overview of a recent meeting with Materials Management where they alerted various campus groups of their plans to change and coordinate document scanning practices on campus. Materials Management includes Purchasing, University Graphics and the Copy Center as well as WolfCopy, and their WolfCopy equipment across campus is being upgraded to include scanning as a standard option. One idea is to change purchasing procedures so that departments are scanning their invoices instead of Purchasing staff. This would be implemented with the new Peoplesoft Financials upgrade Also numerous departments. such as Research Administration are interested in paperless administration practices and are using scanning/imaging in various ways as a means of storing/archiving documents. So the new WolfCopy equipment could efficiently meet these needs and help standardize practices. Materials Management may also offer a centralized scanning service to campus. There is no definite time-line for implementation of these plans, Susan said. She pointed out that these plans changes will have significant impacts on our WolfCopy support model as well as the file storage needs of campus. The staff discussed these and other implications, OCR options, training needs and additional funding.
Upcoming Web Page Accessibility Regulation deadline
Saroj reminded folks that the deadline for compliance with the campus Web Page Accessibility Regulation is coming up this January. She said that there may be last-minute questions to the Help Desk or other ITD consultants about implementation, etc. Susan invited her to attend a Help Desk staff meeting to answer questions and further familiarize staff with resources. Lou Harrison said that LTS staff would also be able to answer questions and provide help. Saroj noted that the "train the trainer"sessions offered by ITD and LTS were well attended and that two more are scheduled for this month, so that there is a growing support system on campus. She will be doing a survey of university, college and departmental pages early in 2007. She expects the level of compliance to be very good.
Updates from Sam
MCNC will be holding its NCREN Community Day this day Friday. (http://www.mcnc.org/events/communityDay06/) Sam is chair of the MCNC Advisory Board and reported that MCNC's UNC-GA funding and business models are being reviewed in response to various pressures, including PACE. The MCNC Video Network services are among those being looked at to find the most equitable way for the UNC campuses to fund and support the services provided. There was discussion about the ways possible changes might affect NC State.
Sam mentioned several exciting new VCL developments: Prof. Hugh Devine has been seeking funding to add blades to the VCL for innovative new uses for CNR students and others. The university has also received some new federal funds for a project which may also use the VCL (Sam doesn't know the details at this point).
Due to the rapid growth in the number of servers and other equipment, campus data centers have about reached the limit of space, power and air conditioning capacities, Sam reported. He, ITD directors and others have been working on possible solutions. One challenge is meeting campus needs for expanded file storage and tape backup systems.
Unit Review preparation
On January 19, Sam will be giving an 1-1 1/2 hour overview of ITD's accomplishments over the past 5 years as part of the Provost's new process to evaluate vice provosts' leadership and units' performance. (See the new Reg at http://www.ncsu.edu/policies/employment/performance_mngt_review/REG05.50.5.php). Sam sees this as a good opportunity to tell the ITD story to campus decision makers in an effective way. Information gathered at the full staff meeting will be very helpful in this regard. There will be a pre-presentation/rehearsal for full staff before the 19th for input and feedback.
The senior staff discussed some of the potential "capstone" ideas for the presentation. In addition to ITD's traditional role of enabling contemporary learning and research campus-wide, staff discussed the broader and growing role of ITD as an integrator of services, and as the "go to" organization on campus for integrating projects and processes. Staff also discussed the growing trend toward multiple numbers and kinds of partnerships: e.g. partnering with colleges and administrative and other units, partnering with LITRE and individual faculty on specific projects, partnering with researchers on both the content and tools for conducting research projects, partnering with other units on campus events and projects, partnering with vendors on major new initiatives, partnering with whoever appropriate for solving individual or campus-wide problems. One catch-phrase that emerged was "ITD- We're your partners"; another was "ITD- Works well with others."
Other news and announcements for staff
Dennis Norris reported that NC State's Internal Auditors will be doing an audit of ITD services this coming spring.
Sarah Stein thanked everyone from ITD who participated in the recent TLT Roundtable meeting on privacy issues. She was impressed by the sophistication and thoughtfulness of the discussion, and she stressed how important the impact and input of ITD is for the campus.