Don Tolliver welcomed everyone and called the meeting to order at 3:15.

Don started the meeting by introducing "zUiversity.com" stating that for the past several weeks there has been negotiating going on in the Alumni Association, primarily the Alumni Board considering an e-commerce site for the Alumni Association.

Alumni has signed a letter of intent with zUniversity.com for e-commerce with approximately five months to look at the potential and draw up a contract for the Alumni Association only. However, there is a good chance the University may want to go along with this as well as there is no risk to the Alumni Association or the University. If everything goes to plan a three year contract would be signed.

A handout was distributed showing which Universities have signed letters of intent. This group acts as an agent linking buyers and sellers offering preferential prices and services with various businesses. The revenues generated at the site and shared with the vendor with the alumni association or the university. Once we sign they develop contracts with various businesses then students and the alumni can use the e-commerce shopping mall and a University focused site. The alumni Association would gain a revenue stream, an opportunity to develop a data warehouse and information regarding the purchasing habits of their members. A handout was distributed showing what the home page would look like with the icon to be clicked on.

Any questions or issues should be emailed to Don Tolliver and will be forwarded to the people looking at this.

III. Draft report of the subcommittee to review the Networking and Information Systems and Academic Computing ACS/NISS Draft Report

Copies of ACS/NISS Review were distributed and because of new members to the Council Paul Farrell presented some background information.

In February 1999 the UCT discussed the issue of the integrated plan. A subcommittee was created to review the status of the ACT/NISS recommendations and report back to Council by the April meeting with an interim report. The committee consisted of Cathy Bakes, Ray Craig, Alan Evans, Paul Farrell, Alice Iden and Roberta Sikula with additions being left to add others as necessary. Rosemary Du Mont, Bruce Petryshak, Greg Seibert and Judy Hirshmann were resource people for this committee. The subcommittee was charged to submit an interim report for the March meeting and a draft for the April meeting. This did not happen because of other issues.

The committee met regularly breaking into subcommittees considering various parts of its charge. A web site was opened and two meetings were held for anyone who wanted to comment.

Today’s handout is an Executive Summary which summarizes some of the things that happened during the last four or five years. This is still a draft report and one of the major things the committee wishes to obtain today is what the council as a whole considers the important issues and developments over that period.

Comments are as follows:

We formally adopt what the tremendous investment the university has made in the networking and technology and the classroom infrastructure and realize that this has to be recognized as a utility and expand by saying we have a wonderful research vehicle.

There needs to be a direct link to the UCT home page from somewhere formal.

There are inaccuracies in terms of dates and who had responsibility for what and what title.

There needs to be an introduction at the beginning and a conclusion at the end.

Put a charge and composition of the committee and the methodology used.

Paul Farrell stated what he thinks the subcommittee is trying to get out what the summary conveys. Corrections were asked for where wrong and asked if this conveys that.

Management organization policies on planning - the main idea is to convey how much change has there has been.

To convey the council has established but has not fully embraced the role in being consulted on things like prioritization of initiatives in the Information Systems.

There hasn’t been an integrated process for Strategic Planning for technology.

Don Tolliver suggested that each paragraph should be studied individually then email comments to Paul Farrell.

Paul asked for issues that are still outstanding to identify those that need to be addressed by an integrated plan. All the successes and positives developments that have not been addressed. There needs to be a balance between the positives and the negatives.

It was asked if there were going to be any major developments within the next month because there needs to be a time freeze because this report cannot be constantly revised for each meeting.

The Microsoft Agreement and Technology Challenge funding were mentioned as positives.

Paul stated that he would like to formally ratify the report by the December meeting but be actually finalized before that.

The reference to Dell contract and now null and void. Dells plan now the same to anyone in Ohio.

Training is still a major issue for staff. Progress has been made with training and attendance high in technology training.

What is still missing is we are going to expand the funds to train people in specialized tasks.

The last sentence on page five needs to be softened changing to substantial or major purchases.