Computing & Information Services

Computing Policy Committee Meeting
March 27, 2009
4:00 – 5:00 pm, ETC 309

Present: Chris Deiss, Jim Fix, Dena Hutto for Vickie Hanawalt, Christine Morita-McVey, Kathryn Oleson, Marty Ringle, Jon Rivenburg, Robert Slifkin, Peter Steinberger, Kjersten Whittington

Absent: Alex Botero-Lowery, Lily Copenagle, Michael Gottesman, Ed McFarlane, Darrin Pufall, Sonia Sabnis

Jim Fix called the meeting to order at 4:10 pm.

  1. After two typos were corrected the committee approved the January 16, 2009 minutes.
  2. Marty Ringle reported on the strategic technology planning interviews and surveys that CIS is currently undertaking.   Approximately 90% of faculty and about 75% of administrative staff have been interviewed thus far.  Marty will interview the senior officers of the college in the coming weeks.  Student focus group meetings have been conducted and the alumni office is collecting information from alumni.  Marty anticipates providing the CPC with preliminary results of the planning exercise at the April CPC meeting.  At the September CPC meeting, Marty will bring the final results from the review of the data collected.
  3. Marty began by outlining two issues involved in integrating campus email and calendaring with handheld mobile devices. The first of these issues is how to provide an integrated email and calendaring system for Reed’s community members. The second issue is that increasing numbers of administrative staff, faculty and students are using mobile devices such as smart phones for calendaring, email and web use.  These community members want to easily synchronize their handheld devices with campus email and calendaring systems.  Marty described two options that address both of these issues.
     
    One option is to use a cloud computing resource, such as Google applications for education.  There are several advantages if Reed were to move all email and calendaring to this system, including easy online access, integrated email and calendaring applications, and the use of Google’s existing infrastructure. Google would also provide spam filtering.  However, outsourcing to Google raises confidentiality issues.  Another drawback of this choice is that in a network outage, Reed would not be able to continue with on-campus only email and calendaring. Additionally, CIS would not be able to fix problems and could also have difficulty building additional applications since this is not open-source software.  While Google is currently offering these applications to higher education institutions at little or no cost, future costs are uncertain.  Some other colleges and universities have moved all their community members to this package, though most have just moved their students.

    CIS is currently running a test instance of Zimbra, another option that would integrate handheld devices, email and calendaring.  Zimbra is an in-house application so data would remain on campus. While Zimbra is open source, CIS would probably  use a commercial version with enhancements, maintenance and support purchased from the company.

    In response to Peter Steinberger’s question, Marty explained that when email and calendaring systems are integrated, "calendar events" could be included in emails and, by clicking on them, recipients could accept or decline an event and, if accepted, have it automatically added to his/her personal calendar.  In response to Jim’s question, Marty noted that the earliest transition to either solution would be next fall.  Marty offered to conduct a live demonstration at the next CPC meeting.
  4. Marty noted that computing requests were filled this year but that next year CIS will have a 5% budget reduction.  As a result, Marty expects that in the 09/10 year CIS will not be able to meet all the computing requests.
Jim adjourned the meeting at 5 pm. 

The next CPC meeting will be Friday, April 10th from 4 to 5 pm in ETC 309.