University of California, Berkeley
MINUTES OF THE E -BERKELEY STEERING COMMITTEE
Meeting of February 28, 2005
Chancellor's Conference Room, California Hall
Members present: EVC and Provost Paul Gray, Chair, VC Beth Burnside, Director Jon Conhaim, Director Patricia Donnelly, Professor Ken Goldberg, Joseph Hall, Graduate Student Representative, Dean Ralph Hexter, Director Phyllis Hoffman, Director Bernard Hurley for University Librarian Tom Leonard, Associate Dean George Johnson, AVC Steve Lustig, VC Christina Maslach, CTO Tessa Michaels, Manager Sarah Nathe for VP-Designate Catherine Koshland, Director Helen Norris, Chief Administrative Officer Patrick O'Leary, Director JR Schulden, Professor Philip Stark, Acting VC William Webster.
Also attending : Consultant Katherine Mitchell, COrE, Professor Dave Messerschmitt, Engineering, Director Jud King, CSHE, AVC Robert Price, Research.
Welcome and review of minutes
Chair Paul Gray welcomed guests and committee members. He announced Katherine Mitchell would lead the committee in a "blue dot" exercise later in the agenda, to assist in defining some of the important characteristics to look for in the search for the next Associate Vice Chancellor, Information Technology and Chief Information Officer.
Paul introduced Jud King, a long-term Berkeley faculty member, the Provost for Professional Schools at Berkeley, and at UCOP the Sr. Vice President and Provost of the University. Jud has returned to Berkeley as the Director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education and has agreed to chair the review team for campus Information Technology Governance, Funding and Structure, as part of the IT Strategic Planning project.
Paul introduced Professor Dave Messerschmitt, Chair of the Academic Senate Committee on Computing and Communications (COMP), who presented the first agenda item.
The minutes were approved as presented.
Campus IT Security and Data Security (IS3)
Dave handed out a brief outline regarding security policy and related issues brought before COMP. He said that the general reaction to these presentations is there has been too much emphasis on policy and not enough on execution. He said the documents were difficult to read and understand, and that COMP would like to see more effort placed on spelling out the needed capabilities, planning, reporting, vetting and approval for handling sensitive data. There should be more emphasis on professional system administration and management, and education of users. Dave referred steering committee members to the COMP white paper, "Comments on CPHS Draft Policy on Human Subjects' Data" available on the COMP website for more detailed comments. http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~messer/Campus/COMP/
Dave said that this paper is now in the developmental stage, and would be made available campus-wide in its final version.
Dave listed the capabilities needed from campus administration, as defined by COMP:
· Security software for the major platforms
· System administration and management as recharge
· Centralized decryption registry and recovery (to protect against data loss)
· Centralized secure data repository
· Training materials and courses for users (not System Administrators)
Dave expanded on the last item on the list, saying that the training must be designed for users who are not interested in technical knowledge, and that it needs to be role-based so that people can see what it is they need in order to perform their specific duties. Dave said a single web portal for all the security information organized for users would be most helpful. He added that security policies should be coordinated with these capabilities.
Dave invited comments, and Bill Webster asked for a cost estimate of providing security software for all platforms. Dave said that this was another subject, but commented that the number of platforms on campus should be reduced to lower the cost of providing security software. He mentioned the "vanilla environment" concept, which would provide complete software packages and replace hardware more frequently for a standard setup.
Dave was asked for further definition of these packages and costs, which he was not prepared to supply. Jon Conhaim reported that he has been looking into training resources for security measures, which he finds is very costly. Ken Goldberg noted that the cost of not doing this kind of thing could be higher. Paul summarized the discussion, remarking that this is a call for stronger central support of user-oriented, secure computing, and is in conjunction with the recent call for support for instructional computing. He asked for additional comments, and Bill Webster said it would be useful to have this list prioritized, including a cost estimate. Jon offered to take these issues to the e-Berkeley Chairs meeting and come back with priorities. Paul said this would be on the next steering committee meeting agenda.
Craig Lant, Campus IT Security Officer gave an update on the increase in security activity as a result of SB1386. He said Security and Network Services (IST-SNS) has developed a relationship with McAfee, a vendor of hardware and software scanning solutions. They have been doing specific scans to look for non-compliance with the campus minimum security standards. Craig said that the Campus Information Security Committee (CISC) is writing a policy change regarding how to handle notifying the department security contact in the departments where scans reveal IP addresses with security problems. The network scans will be performed on highly sophisticated equipment, and will be used to gauge the current situation regarding vulnerabilities on campus.
Craig mentioned several other activities regarding security such as: 1) a pilot using a "box" that can take action when it finds a problem, 2) end-user software that can detect a problem and guide the user to a site where they can download appropriate security software, 3) an on-line training quiz to inform people about basic security measures, 4) security training curricula developed for specific groups, and a 5) "security-net" group that meets regularly to discuss security issues.
Helen Norris noted that the Data Stewardship Council is working with CCS and SNS to develop a comprehensive list of restricted data. She said that DSC hopes to bring the Data Management and Use Policy back to the steering committee for final approval.
Update on Information Technology Strategic Planning
Paul said the strategic planning process has now been going on over the past year, and referred to the handout provided by Katherine Mitchell showing the planning phases that have been completed. Paul commented that he finds the definition of the IT Guiding Principles very useful, and noted that the first three Critical Issues identified in Spring 2004 are being prioritized during Phase 3 of the process. A review committee has been formed to address Critical Issue #4, IT Governance, Funding and Structure. Jud King will chair the committee, with the help of Jay Stowsky, former Assoc. Dean of the business school and now at the Graduate School of Public Policy. The committee, composed principally of external members, will study how campus manages IT in the areas of enterprise, instructional, research and departmental administrative computing, and report on their findings by the end of July. Paul expressed his appreciation to Jud King for his chairmanship of this project. Beth Burnside recommended that the CIO at UCLA be invited to serve on the committee, since they have been addressing many of the same issues.
Katherine Mitchell presented a progress report on the IT Critical Issues 1-3, as outlined on the handout she prepared under the Phase 3 heading.
Dave Messerschmitt added that data stewardship includes how to preserve data over time for future generations of scientists, to protect it from deterioration and to maintain access regardless of changes in technology.
What knowledge, skills, and abilities do we want in an IST leader?
Paul introduced the next topic, saying that in light of Jack McCredie's retirement he thought it would be useful to participate in a process to define some of the characteristics the committee would wish to find in Jack's successor. Katherine Mitchell had set up an exercise for dot-voting, having attended a meeting of the Chairs of IT Committees who made the suggestion that such information be gathered from the steering committee. Katherine used the list of IT Guiding Principles for UC Berkeley as the basis for the exercise, asking members to consider which principle they would most like to see move forward under the new leadership, and answer two questions regarding the principle on post-it notes:
(1) What do we need in a leader to advance this principle?
(2) What does campus need to do to advance the principle?
A brief discussion period was held by each group of those selecting the same principle, and Katherine said she would summarize the responses as background information for the AVC-IT & CIO search committee.
e-Berkeley Symposium Program
Jon Conhaim handed out an invitation to steering committee members for the e-Berkeley Symposium from Christina Maslach, and a draft version of the symposium program, titled "From Information Overload to Information Rich: Teaching and Critical Thinking in the Point-and-Click Age". The symposium will be held on May 12, 2005, at the Clark Kerr Campus. It is being held the same week as the Chancellor's Inauguration on May 15 th , and in advance of the inaugural symposium on May 14 th , titled "Frontiers of Education". Jon said that preparatory work in the form of discussions with faculty on computing and teaching had been done, and he gave an overview of the program outline. The symposium will be co-sponsored by the Academic Senate and the Library.
EBSC Meeting Assessment
Jon also handed out an EBSC Meeting Assessment, for steering committee members to provide information on how they rate today's meeting, and suggestions for improvement to future meetings. The information will be provided to the e-Berkeley Committee of Chairs for their use in creating meeting agendas.
Announcements
Helen Norris provided a BFS upgrade status report as of February 2005. She pointed out that the Peoplesoft 8.8 implementation date has been moved to September 2005, due to the importance of releasing a "quality product to campus with minimal disruption". This timeline includes additional testing in order to increase efficiency at the time of the upgrade. Helen said that classroom and web-based training is being planned for the upgrade.
The meeting was adjourned at noon.
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Next Meetings
June 28, 2005 meeting was cancelled.
