Date: September 18, 1997

Attending: Martha Cafferky, Mark Fitzsimmons, David Howell, Keith Kennedy, Roger Lawson, Rebecca Martin, Lauck Parke, Joe Patlak, David Punia, Geetha Ramanathan, Patrick Russell, and Deborah Shenk

 

Discussions:

-- The group discussed group/writing assignments.

-- The group re-formatted its report outline: Executive Summary followed by Vision for IT at UVM followed by Making IT Work. We’ll mention briefly that IT’s mission is to support the University’s mission rather than create a separate section for mission, and assessment will be incorporated into Making IT Work.

-- We discussed how best to use our time with President Ramaley on Oct. 2.

In preparation for the meeting, we will give her, by Sept. 30, the report outline and bulleted information highlighting our current thinking (decisions and dilemmas) about Making IT Work elements: leadership, budgeting, improving IT coherence and collaboration, building and maintaining IT skills, and supporting the IT infrastructure.

At the meeting, we hope she will talk about her expectations for us and for technology and give her reactions to the Making IT Work ideas we are discussing.

-- Discussion turned to the possibility of providing and paying for computers centrally as we do telephone services. The idea of standards and central support for word processing, spreadsheet, Web, and e-mail applications has wide support in the group, which is wrestling with various funding options. Joe and Martha are developing budget models. Martha suggested that we use $300K in current base budget funds for a pilot project that would test the centralized computing concept.

Reported by Deborah Shenk