Information Technology Planning Board (ITPB)
Meeting Summary
June 5, 2007

ITPB Attendees:  Kathryn Atchison, Elizabeth Bjork, Christine Borgman, Alfonso Cardenas, Mitch Creem, Jim Davis, Daniel Fabbri, Xue Hua, Bill Jepson, Kathleen Komar, Sam Morabito, Alan Robinson, Judith Smith, Charles Taylor.  Guests:  Carmela Cunningham, Larry Loeher, Nick Reddingius, Terry Ryan (for Gary Strong), Marsha Smith, Don Worth

The meeting was called to order at 2:30 p.m. by ITPB Chair Alfonso Cardenas, who welcomed Judith Smith as a new member of the ITPB.

Alfonso Cardenas reported that the revised recommendations of the ITPB TIF subgroup were voted on through email and approved:  11 members in favor, 1 against, 2 abstentions.  He then sent  these  recommendations to EVC Scott Waugh and to Academic Senate Chair Vivek Shetty as the official ITPB response to the TIF Academic Senate resolution of February 2007, which was sent to the ITPB and CIO Jim Davis. Jim Davis is presenting the approved recommendations to the Academic Senate on June 6, 2007. Subsequently,   ITPB leadership including Jim Davis will meet with EVC Waugh and Academic Senate Chair Vivek Shetty for decision-making.  The members of the TIF subgroup (Elizabeth Bjork, Alfonso Cardenas, Jim Davis, Kathy Komar, Sam Morabito, Mike Schill, Mike Schilling, and Adrienne Lavine) were thanked for their contribution.

Agenda Item 1:  May 2007 Meeting Summary

The meeting summary for the May 1, 2007 meeting was approved as corrected.

Agenda Item 2:  Scholarly Interaction Overview

Christine Borgman presented an overview of the final report from the Scholarly Interaction Subgroup to lay out issues to be discussed at the July 16 ITPB retreat.  Specific report topics are: 

• data archiving/institutional repositories
• electronic access to scholarly material
• use of IT to create a sense of community among faculty in disparate disciplines and to facilitate collaboration
• use of IT in research and teaching. 

The ITPB is seeking a balanced approach between scholarship, intellectual property issues, open access, and other issues affecting teaching and learning.  Achieving privacy and security without restricting open access is a key point. 

Repositories are being constructed at universities in the U.S. and Europe at a rapid pace, with the goal of capturing the work of university faculty, scholars, and students. They are an essential component of open access infrastructure.  UC is ahead of many other institutions by building a repository for the UC system.  UCLA must stay involved in UC efforts, both to leverage the UC investments and to avoid duplication of effort.  Faculty need to be better informed about the availability of these services to host their scholarly products.       

Discussion Points

• Some faculty are concerned about their publication and retention rights to work that is placed in data archives or institutional repositories.  Kathryn Atchison noted that the library and Academic Senate conducted a survey of faculty and that their responses were “somewhat negative.”  She said faculty expressed worry that the university might make using the repository mandatory and that they might be giving up their intellectual property rights to their material.  She’ll provide the report to the ITPB as background preparation materials for the retreat.

• Intellectual property issues are critical to establishing database repositories; a change of attitude has to occur among faculty to make this happen.  Intellectual property will be part of the retreat discussion.  Intellectual property issues related to outsourcing also come into play, specifically through itunes, google and peer to peer.  The library has sponsored forums on intellectual property, open access and other requirements.  Terry Ryan will share results with ITPB as retreat background materials.

• The Privacy and Data Protection Board is especially concerned about the balance of open access and security.  While security of personal records is essential, scholarly content must be widely available and accessible.

Action:  The Scholarly Interaction Report will be discussed as part of the ITPB strategic planning at the July 16 retreat.

Agenda Item 3:  Information Technology Guidance Committee (ITGC) Long Range Planning Document

Jim Davis presented an overview of the ITGC Long Range Planning Documentation and the request that each campus review the document and provide input.  The ITPB will draft UCLA’s response at the July retreat.  As part of a larger study to advise the UC Regents’ alignment of functions, IT and processes, the ITGC specifically addresses the UC-wide planning and recommends strategic directions for IT investments and to leverage system-wide efforts to reduce costs, improve effectiveness and support innovation.    The ITGC Long Range Planning document addresses:

• Research and scholarship
• Teaching, learning and student experience
• University-wide business and administrative systems

Jim Davis said the report recommendations are very broad and in most cases not actionable. As a result of much discussion they may be directionally correct but this will need to be verified. The research strategies are probably the most well developed, while teaching and learning strategies are not so strongly stated. The administrative side is the least well-developed.  The ITGC planning is being given significant weight at UCOP.  The ITPB retreat should plan to look at networking, research, teaching and learning and administrative systems from a UCLA standpoint. Jim believes that UCLA can provide useful input to the ITGC effort especially with the work we have done with CCLE and the Grid. The work on the Grid is serving as model.

Discussion Points:

• The aggregated money being spent on IT across the system is large, but there are several different strategies, opportunities, challenges, and requirements across the campuses. Bringing them together is a Herculean task and there are very different ideas on how to move forward. It was stressed how very difficult it is and will be to collect any savings from a systems standpoint. 

• A question was  raised about whether research is included in the numbers in the ITGC report.  It was not clear but Jim Davis believed that equipment/facilities/services purchases from grants that could tagged as IT were included. The suggestion was made that research funding should be stripped out because people who have grants will not do what the ITGC mandates – they’ll do what they want but there was not discussion.

• Jim Davis reported that in his opinion that the ITGC vision on the Grid is missing data preservation, intellectual property issues, how to position to work with Washington, how to set up the grand challenges to get the big grant money, how to make this attractive to faculty, and how to develop so that faculty retain ownership of their material.

• Although there are assurances that new systems will pay for themselves, generally the individual units don’t know how to get the savings from system-wide services.  New systems require new expertise, people, training and significant resources to implement.  There is concern that UC can mandate strategies and either force campuses to participate or extract money from campuses to implement their strategies.  Can UCOP mandate a course of action whether or not the campus has the money to implement it? 

• The ITGC’s vision is to standardize where it makes sense the business and administrative systems across the UC system.  This presents major obstacles not only in that the various business and administrative systems vary from campus to campus, but also in that the campuses are in different places in terms of their respective IT plans.  The idea of a 10-campus platform requires a great amount of capital and would affect all business processes.  A possible alternative strategy is to use the synergy from four to five campuses to move them in the same direction and implement a standardized system, and then to convert the other campuses.  

Action:  Discussion of ITGC report will be a main focus of the retreat, with the goal of making a recommendation to the ITGC.  Dan Greenstein, Vice Provost – UCOP Academic Information and Strategic Services, and or Kris Hafner, Vice President Information Technology, UCOP, will be invited to participate at the ITPB retreat.

Agenda Item 4:  TIER Fund Use Principles and Design Criteria

Marsha Smith presented the recommendations on TIER fund-use principles and network design criteria for 2006-07 aggregated TIER projects.   The ITPB was generally supportive of the fund-use principles.  Discussion focused on concerns about the maintenance of equipment purchased with TIER funds (see Criteria #8 TIER Aggregated Network Projects Document).

Discussion Points:

• There was concern that if TIER funds are allocated for maintenance, the funds could easily be used up for maintenance rather than funding for other TIER projects.
• The theory is that if individual units are responsible for maintenance, they will plan better for the maintenance expense in their proposal for funds and in defining their equipment needs in their initial investment request.
• The agreement was that maintenance of TIER equipment should be a cost of the participating unit and a mechanism to ensure equipment is being maintained is needed.

Action:  The ITPB endorsed the Fund Use Principles and Design Criteria document with the change to indicate that departments getting TIER funding must maintain equipment to appropriate levels.

Closing Announcements:

Marsha Smith will retire from UCLA at the end of June.  Alfonso Cardenas expressed appreciation for Marsha’s many years of leadership and contributions to the goals of the ITPB.  He also thanked Brian Copenhaver and Charles Taylor who will retire from the ITPB after several three-year terms of service. He asked ITPB members to nominate faculty for these two seats.

Elizabeth Bjork announced that as the new Academic Senate vice chair, Michael Goldstein will take her place on the ITPB for the next academic year.  Alfonso Cardenas suggested that both Elizabeth Bjork and Michael Goldstein should try to attend the July retreat.

Daniel Fabbri, the Undergraduate Student Representative, will leave UCLA to attend the University of Michigan in the fall; Alfonso Cardenas asked that a new undergraduate student be appointed to the ITPB as soon as possible.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:37 p.m.