At the University Council on Technology meeting of October 24, Ilee Rhimes, Chief Information Officer and Interim Vice-President for Business and Finance requested that UCT establish an ad-hoc subcommittee to to make recommendations on the procedure to be followed in conducting a review of the Networking and Information Systems Study (NISS) and the Academic Computing Study (ACS).

Those nominated to the subcommittee were Cathy Bakes, James Boyd, Lowell Croskey, Paul Farrell, Terry Kuhn, Mike Lee, Roberta Sikula, and Don Tolliver. Dewitt Latimer, Bruce Petryshak and Greg Seibert were added as resource persons.

The subcommittee was charged, in particular, with considering:

1. Whether a facilitator would enhance the process?
2. Whether one or two committees should be formed?
3. What the composition of the committee or committees should be?

The committee was further charged to report back to UCT with recommendations on these matters and others at the meeting of UCT on Friday 21 November.

The subcommittee met at 3:30pm on Wednesday 5 November. Present were Cathy Bakes, James Boyd, Lowell Croskey, Paul Farrell, Terry Kuhn, Mike Lee, Roberta Sikula, Dewitt Latimer, Greg Seibert and Steve Tapp.

After some discussion at the meeting and subsequent e-mail exchanges the committee decided to recommend as follows.

1. That the process of reviewing the Networking and Information Systems Study (NISS) and the Academic Computing Study (ACS) was a straightforward one requiring
   1. the determination of what recommendations had been implemented and the impact and degree of success of the implementation
   2. the determination of what recommendations were still outstanding and whether these were still appropriate given developments since the studies.

2. Therefore a facilitator was not required.

3. That, since the ultimate aim is to produce a unified report and furthermore many of the issues in the two reports are common, that one committee should be formed to review both reports. This committee might divide into working groups to review aspects of the two reports, but the final report should be a single document.

4. That the committee should also consider other reports, specifically the Distance Learning Policy Recommendations, and also the Intra Building Wiring Report and the Telecommunications Study Report.

5. That the committee should also be charged with enumerating and accumulating source material on other initiatives embarked on since the NISS and ACS studies, including those completed or in progress, and also on other initiatives planned for the immediate future. In all these cases, the committee should review the current status, the commitments made, and the project completion date and outcomes.
   Such initiatives include:

   Project	Status
   Backbone Fiber Update - Phase I	Completed
   Backbone Fiber Update - Phase II	Awarding Contract
   ResNet	Completed by 1/98
   Intra-building Wiring- Phase I & II	Design Just Beginning
   Music and Speech Wiring	Awarding Contract
   Science Research Building Wiring	Design Just Beginning
   Additional Vtel Systems (9)	Completed by 9/98
   Telephone Switch	Completed by 9/99
   All Campus Card Projects	Completed by 9/98
   Campus Backbone Router Upgrade	Completed by 1/98
   Moulton Hall Technology - Phase I	In Progress

6. That the committee should be formed primarily of members of UCT with some members from the previous studies to provide experience and expertise.

7. Since the process is primarily one of review, the objectives could be accomplished by a committee without the necessity of formal focus groups or a survey, although informal focus groups might be convened to aid in areas where the committee did not have sufficient expertise. There was no consensus on the issue of whether surveys should be conducted both during the review and during the production of the integrated plan or only at one time. One suggestion is that there should be a concise survey as part of the review and a more comprehensive survey as part of the production of the integrated plan.

8. There was strong feeling that consideration should be given to shortening the timeline for the review so that completion would be in late February or March 1998.

Although recommendations for the integrated plan were technically outside the charge of the subcommittee, considerable discussion also took place on that issue. The vast majority of committee felt that the timetable for the integrated plan should also be accelerated. There was also some feelings that the integrated plan could be accomplished without the aid of a facilitator.