Information Technology Planning Board Summary
April 29, 2008

ITPB Attendees:  Christine Borgman, Alfonso Cardenas, Russel Caflisch, Jim Davis, Michael Goldstein, Bill Jepson, Sam Morabito, Marilyn Raphael, Andrew Royer, David Snow.  Guests:  Gerard Au, Lindy Cloud, Carmela Cunningham, Bernard Lee, Larry Loeher, Sean Pine, Nick Reddingius, Terry Ryan, Kent Wada, Don Worth, Libbie Stephenson.

Agenda Item 1:  Approval of Summary

The February 22, 2008 meeting summary was approved as presented.

Agenda Item 2:  Report from CCLE/Intellectual Property Working Group

Terry Ryan presented an update of the CCLE/Intellectual Property working group’s February report.  She gave a brief history of the CCLE and said that funding through the CITI process is for 18 months. 

The working group will focus on five areas during the next year:

• Intellectual property – A full-time “Property Advisor/Assistant” will be hired to focus on intellectual property.  The group is currently defining the job responsibilities.
• Open coursework – The ITPB identified (at the 2007 retreat) a need for a record of instruction to be preserved for a specific length of time.  Issues to consider include: material-retention guidelines, access controls, ownership of course materials, and intellectual property rights.
• Classrooms – A long-range plan should be developed for expanding IT capabilities in classrooms, but several questions are a matter of debate, including who owns classrooms.
• Assessments – CITI requires an assessment of CCLE progress before follow-on funding is awarded.  It was agreed that there should be an annual report to the ITPB and sponsors on CCLE progress.
• Relationship to the ITPB – The group is seeking ways to continue the relationship.  It was suggested that the Faculty Committee on Educational Technology chair should be an ITPB member and the CCLE POG should be available to the ITPB as resources.

Jim Davis addressed campus investment in the CCLE and funding requirements after the first 18 months.  He said the investment in CCLE must be viewed from the campus viewpoint and that the CCLE should be used as a research collaboration tool as well as an instruction tool.  Long-term funding will be an issue that will return to ITPB.  Possible funding sources would be general funds (through the CITI process), academic units paying for shares of CCLE development and implementation, and IEI funds.  Results will determine next steps to be taken.  The level of campus use must be assessed and a clearer picture of this cannot be obtained until June of 2009.  Currently there are 320 courses on the CCLE system.  A key issue for CITI leadership will be how much the campus is actually using CCLE and its impact.

Agenda Item 3:  Report from the Security Working Group

Jim Davis reported on the Security Working Group’s findings.  The ITPB Security Workgroup made several recommendations on the protection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Protected Health Information (PHI) used by individuals. These recommendations frame a set of next steps that will require the involvement of campus and university counsel, risk management and audit. 

Recommendations:

• The approach for a campus-wide policy should encourage responsible behavior – in both individuals and departments - to protect Personally Identifiable Information and Protected Health Information. 
• Establishment of a “safe harbor” incentive for those who perform due diligence.  This model would offer legal protection for those who perform according to university security standards.
• Exploration of an “insurance” model to provide safe harbor indemnifying units from financial consequences if they perform with due diligence.  Note:  UCLA Policy 420 already assigns the financial responsibility for a breach or loss of PII/PHI to the organizational unit in which the breach occurs.
• That a campus-wide policy detail a basic standard that would apply to all staff and faculty.  This standard should specifically refer to “any PII/PHI data on any machine or device (personally owned, university owned, portable, desktop, etc.).”
• That individual units can strengthen the policy locally as appropriate.
• That additional technical and administrative solutions will depend on the situation and evolving technology.
• That the development and implementation of a protocol should include key faculty, staff and support committees; involvement of the Academic Senate was specifically requested.
• That the recently formed IT Compliance Coordinators will play a key role in keeping individual units informed of security requirements.

Discussion:

• Discussion revolved around the issues of blanket indemnification.  UCLA is self-insured, which raises some questions as to the IT security-related insurance incentive.
• It was pointed out that it is not possible to make a blanket statement of coverage – and that there cannot be a blanket promise to indemnify.
• Point was made that the idea of “cyberinsurance” was not just to pay for a breach, but rather a tool wherein the insurance industry would set the standard for due diligence.
• The chair said that Campus Counsel should be consulted before the next meeting.
• The essential question to the ITPB is to consider  legal and financial ramifications, along with setting standards and incentives for due diligence in protecting information.
• It was also agreed that careful and thorough communication of IT security requirements must occur.

 

Agenda Item 4:  Report from the Computational Cyberinfrastructure Working Group

Jim Davis reported  recommendations of the Computational Cyberinfrastructure Working Group in place of Warren Mori. 

Recommendations:

• The campus needs to establish the most effective business model for data centers.  The group asked for ITPB guidance on how to put fiscal models together to ensure funding.  There is a need to secure campus funding to leverage grant funding for the campus computational infrastructure.
• There is a need to expose the hidden costs related to the campus computational cyberinfrastructure, and the campus needs to make efficient use of scarce resources including:
• Power/cooling – The big cost of clusters is power – not processors
• Unused computational cycles
• Space - Computational clusters that are not appropriately housed have shortened lifecycles. 
• Technical staff – Technologists with high performance computing expertise can optimize code, which uses less power and throughput.
• The campus needs a pipeline to larger national resources.
• The campus should continue investment in the Grid, which provides a queuing system for shared clusters and would provide a link to future UC-wide data centers.
• The campus should put together computational clusters, which would provide more capacity than if clusters are maintained separately.  The data center cluster hosting model includes a hierarchy of node types.
• Condominium – clusters larger than 96 modes that have close to 100 percent utilization and are optimized for a single purpose
• Shared – smaller clusters that have a lower average utilization and can be accommodated in a homogeneous environment
• General purpose – clusters for researchers with no access to high performance computing resources, who have shorter run times, require a smaller number of CPUs per run, and can be linked to shared cluster resources
• Special purpose – clusters less than 96 nodes that have close to 100 percent utilization and are optimized for a single purpose
• The campus should adopt principles for campus cyberinfrastructure:
• UCLA must be a leader in order to ensure grant competitiveness
• Campus should limit stand-alone systems
• Campus should limit unused cycles
• Should make efficient use of resources
• Should adhere to standard configurations
• Should increase visibility to the campus
• The campus should position itself to participate in the UC Data Center Concept
• UC is looking at regional data centers connected via a Grid
• Goal is to take advantage of economy of scale (at the UC level) and to make efficient use of resources

Agenda Item 5:  Report from Research and Educational Data Management Working Group

Christine Borgman presented the revised draft of the February 2008 Research and Educational Data Management Report.  Her report focused more on the educational data management component, as the research component had been addressed extensively at a prior ITPB meeting.  She restated that long-term campus goal to identify, establish, and maintain best practices in data management and curation.  The overriding recommendation of the committee is that UCLA should take a proactive, leadership role in the management of research and educational data, and that the campus should be aligned with state, national, and international policies.  The Working Group will be finalizing their draft report shortly.

Campus Issues

• Studying and assessing student progress and learning presents challenges for privacy and confidentiality. State and federal oversight/regulations may increase. Use of course management data must be balanced with concerns for ethics, privacy, and regulation.
• The use of mobile and multi-functional devices by students has increased.
• Platforms for creating, using, sharing and publishing course materials need to adapt to a fluid technological environment capable of being accessed by students and faculty at all levels of technological sophistication and socio-economic background.
• The Open Textbook movement is gaining ground, which suggests a move and toward open courseware/materials. Ownership of faculty-created course materials is already addressed by UC Copyright Policy.
• Departments and disciplines handle faculty-generated course material at the department level at UCLA, which includes storing multiple versions of materials for the same course. UCLA has multiple courseware management systems; some are maintained by department staff and some by faculty members.
• As the Common Cooperative Learning Environment (CCLE) is deployed on campus, educational data management issues must be addressed.

 

Recommendations and Priorities:

The Working Group recommends that the campus should:

• Address education/teaching materials as sharable community resources. 
• Develop an institutional response to the trends of higher education regarding educational materials developed for and about students.  Should incorporate campus policies for oversight and management in line with state and federal regulations (e.g., FERPA)
• Set multiple strategies for common goals related to data access and curation for research and education.
• Identify responsibilities for management of faculty-generated teaching materials and for student records
• Clarify assumptions regarding technology to be able to:
• provide access to students with diverse mobile devices through distributed wireless and campus facilities
• support faculty development of learning objects and course delivery within GIS, medical, engineering, architecture, statistical, other multi-media and textual applications
• support long-term curation, revision and preservation of educational data including creation and manipulation of metadata

 

Recommended specific actions:

• Identify current practices
• Survey best practices on campus
• Survey best practices elsewhere
• Establish / enhance services
• Develop and maintain a website
• Establish and maintain education and referral services

Recommended immediate campus actions:

• Assign staffing resources for a best practices survey and for the development and maintenance of a website dedicated to data management issues.
• Determine campus responsibilities for
• Education and referral on data management plans
• Creation and curation of data resources
• Continue this subcommittee for another year to pursue these recommendations, provided that some staff support is available to do so.

Discussion focused on student use and expectations of data.  Students think of data as being “portable,” and carry flash drives and phones with texting abilities.  They rely more on labs and laptops that they borrow from CLICC.

Agenda Item 6:  Report from Wireless Working Group

Jim Davis presented the Wireless Working Group recommendations, which he said are still a “work in progress.” 

Following the January 2008 ITPB charge to do a field assessment to determine access point locations and costs to provide wireless coverage for a variety of locations suggested by students, the working group made the following recommendations – pending “further review and refinement.”

• Be responsive to student needs as much as possible and to:
• Proceed with the assessments and implementation of the general open and other areas on the student list.
• Support  recommendations for wireless in general assignment classrooms by the Faculty Committee on Education Technology (FCET).
• Proceed with a preliminary assessment of costs to deploy wireless in the Center for Health Sciences.
• Review the School of Medicine wireless initiative as a potential TIER (Technology Infrastructure for Education and Research) initiative.
• Plan for the next major iteration of wireless technology with a focus on institutional objectives.
• Undertake an environmental scan that includes input from other ITPB workgroups, realistic projections of technology trends and lifecycles through the Next Generation Network team, and information gathering about campus interest in wireless trends and comparisons with other institutions.
• Have the Office of Information Technology and Administration organize focus groups with areas such as the Medical Center, General Services, Transportation Services, Inventory Operations, the UCLA Police Department, Student Affairs, Libraries and Housing to develop a campus perspective on future directions for wireless.
• Have the Next Generation Network team review emerging technologies and implementation trends and provide recommendations on the technical deployment and operating models.

Discussion:

• It was pointed out that general assignment classrooms do not have wireless coverage.  There are many faculty and different disciplines using these classrooms and there is not agreement among instructors about wireless access for students.
• Future wireless on campus should coverage to support “mobility” for students. 
• It was determined that a paper survey is not a useful method to determine wireless needs. 
• There is concern about students being able to print from various locations on campus (using wireless).

 

Agenda Item 7:  Process for Working Group Recommendation Prioritization.

Alfonso Cardenas and Christine Borgman asked that all working groups convene and determine their final conclusions to be presented at the next meeting.  Each group should abstract and list the recommendations and conclusions with prioritization in one page. Each group is to recommend whether to continue as a working group as constituted or with adjustments, or not. The board will prioritize all groups’ recommendations at the next meeting.  All members are asked to read the reports and recommendations and be ready to make recommendations at the next meeting.
 
Meeting adjourned at 4:03 p.m.