Bill Apsit (for Vic Reimer), Julia Christensen-Hughes, Chuck Cunningham, Ron Elmslie, Jim Kirkland, Scott Maitland, Mark McCullagh, Blair Nonnecke, Michael Ridley, Dave Wilson (for Virginia Gray)

Peter Conlon, Jill McCutcheon, Chris McKenna, John Miles, Dana Paramskas, Brian Pettigrew, Peter Sikkema, Brenda Whiteside

Paul Briggs, Jim Lennie, Ron MacKinnon, Kent Percival, Helen Salmon

1. Approval of the Agenda

The agenda was approved.

2. Business Arising

    Enterprise Web Portal Update – Mike Ridley

Mike and Ron met with Maureen Mancuso earlier this week. She approved the three ISC recommendations. Most of the funding issues have been resolved, but discussion around certain aspects is continuing. The Portal Evaluation Steering Group (PESG) will proceed with defining and issuing the RFQ and moving the portal project forward.

3. Email Delivery On/Off Campus – Paul Briggs

Paul reviewed the role of Campus Services and its responsibility for mail delivery on campus as part of CCS’ mandate. He told the group that with the dramatic increase in email flow over the past few years we have seen an extensive increase in viruses and a massive increase in spam. This has resulted in a negative impact on the network and University. In addition, there has been a rise in compromised machines that generate large volumes of mail (usually virus or spam laden). To get better control of email, all email on/off campus will pass through centrally managed hosts. The impact would be minimal; 95% of mail is already delivered through centrally managed mail services. Only a few departments and workstations will have to change.

The question was raised as to whether or not the regional colleges were affected by this. Paul explained that it was only the colleges with central accounts with the uoguelph domain that would be affected. Mike asked if all the colleges could be part of this process. Paul will work with OAC to investigate this further.

There was discussion as to policies on campus and the fact desktop computing is not included. The question was asked, “Do we need to be more proactive to update virus scanning on desktops and can we enforce this.” Ron Elmslie explained that he raised this with his counterparts as other Universities. There is no technology with the capability to do this. The key is to educate users. Mike suggested that this issue could be addressed as part of the mandate of the task group on campus information technology support model.

It was also agreed that articles in the “At Guelph” and the Ontarion would help educate users on the email/spam filtering and virus scanning.

ISC was supportive of the plan to manage the flow of email and to better control the proliferation of spam and viruses.

4. Wireless Networking – Jim Lennie

At the Feb. 12, ISC meeting Jim was directed to form a taskforce to develop a policy for wireless networking at the University of Guelph. The task group consisted of Jim Lennie, (Chair) CCS, Steve Borho, TSS, Tony Mackay, OAC, Ron MacKinnon, Library, Kerry Lissemore, OVC, Blair Nonnecke, CPES and Kent Percival, CCS.

Jim briefly reviewed the policy. There was some discussion regarding access and guest accounts. Jim explained that these were implementation issues and could be addressed.

ISC was informed that a campus wireless implementation plan would be brought forward in the Fall semester of this year.

Jim asked for ISC to approve the policy. A motion was made by Chuck Cunningham to accept the policy and it was seconded by Bill Apsit. Everyone agreed.

5. An Introduction to Institutional Repositories and DSpace Technologies

Ron MacKinnon/Helen Salmon

Helen and Ron provided an overview of institutional repositories. They explained and demonstrated DSpace, which is a specialized type of digital asset management or content management. It manages and distributes digital items, made of digital files and allows for the creation, indexing, and searching of associated metadata to locate and retrieve the items. They outlined the principles and issues concerning institutional repositories.

6. Video Technologies – new applications and issues – Kent Percival

Kent gave an overview of video technology and video streaming. He explained that multimedia communication is the new medium for collaboration and learning. He reviewed the history of video conferencing and how the technology has matured. He outlined the common infrastructure of both video conferencing and video streaming and the institutional directions.

Ron and Mike agree that campus coordination of infrastructure and support for digital streaming technology would be appropriate and will contact the Provost to recommend a course of action.

7. Future Meetings: the next meeting will be scheduled in late June/early July.