ITAC -- Cyber Meeting
March 26, 2003 -- 11:00 pm

ITAC membership email abbreviation:   GS-W ITAC

Attendees:

The following attendees/invitees have indicated by:   1) "accepted" (for attending), 2) "declined" (for unable to attend), 3) "alternate" (for delegating an alternate), or 4) "no response" (for did not respond to meeting invitation):

ITAC News:

• March 7, 2003 Information

Agenda items:

• Discussion of "consolidating FTP server" group put together by Mary Jo Baedecker, which includes Harry House and Brian McCallum and other.
• Regarding the IT Freeze -- Katherine.
• Previous agenda item from Puerto Rico meeting:

Feb2003.PR.15

Person(s) Assigned:   Jessie Alvarez Issue:   Future meetings and/or conference calls Description of Action Item:   Jessie will prepare an issues/solutions presentation for the February ITAC conference call. Status of AI/Comment:

• Outstanding action items review.

Discussion Notes:

1. Discussion of "consolidating FTP server" group put together by Mary Jo Baedecker, which includes Harry House and Brian McCallum and other.
2. Regarding the IT Freeze: Katherine.
• BPA will be in place by end of April
• Web Site will be in place by end of May
 
3. Outstanding action items review.
• Feb2003.PR.1 -- In progress. Frank Andreani is working on this. Jessica will followup on this.
• Feb2003.PR.4 -- No progress as of 3/26/2003. Katherine suggests capturing the pros and cons of this action item . but this action item may not be worth the time investment. Jessica suggests that the District Chiefs would like to see this cost information.
• Feb2003.PR.5 -- In progress. Friday April 4 is due date. Greg reported Brian Reese, Jackie Cole, Nathan Booth and others are being contacted. The question to address is: "Which is the best DBMS running under ARC DE? " Another question is "We need to look at the real cost of running this software."
• Feb2003.PR.6 -- COMPLETED. The issue of the action item is to determine the definition of an Enterprise Computer System, from which ITAC could determine a true up cost. SQL and MOM (database equipment) Paul wrote the MOM draft. (Jessie will provide document -- place it here). Paul also reported the Enterprise Computer Systems costs. (Jessie will provide document -- place it here).

Tom Wood noted that Security costs were not included in the original per FTE estimates that DIS emailed out last November. To include the security costs may double the per FTE costs. WRD should not cost recover for WRD Security personnel salary costs; such as McNally's salary. Bob Hirsch would like to cost recover based on Program costs rather than number FTE.

• Feb2003.PR.7 -- COMPLETE.
• Feb2003.PR.8 -- IN PROGRESS. Combine numbers 8 and 11. Lorna, Tom, Garry and Jessie will draft a plan for consolidating ftp servers project.
• Feb2003.PR.9 -- PENDING -- DEPENDS ON PREVIOUS ACTION ITEM.
• Feb2003.PR.10 -- SUPERSEDED.
• Feb2003.PR.11 -- COMBINED WITH 8 ABOVE.
• Feb2003.PR.12 -- PENDING, this information is working on costs and maintainance.
• Feb2003.PR.13 -- COMPLETE. DOI MACROMEDIA CONTRACT (CWG) WAS SIGNED, but price savings were not that substantial.

Discussion:   Greg Allord wants to see a comparison (industry) between GoLive and Dreamweaver and other packages to see which packages will integrate the best. Sandy Williamson suggests that this comparison is unnecessary, but Sandy will provide a search of the web for industry comparisons. David Boldt, Terry Reinitz and Lorna Schmid will comment on the comparisons. Sonja indicated that most of the web designers are using Dreamweaver already and Dreamweaver is preferred by many web designers.

• Feb2003.PR.14 -- PENDING, Sandy Williamson will follow up on this action item with Alan.
• Feb2003.PR.15 -- COMPLETED. June 10-12 ITAC meeting is now in Pennsylvania.
• Feb2003.PR.16 -- PENDING, Bureau is providing a new training management system. Grady Moore will report back on the Bureau Training Management System at a the next ITAC cyber meeting. Katherine Lins will give Grady Moore some contacts for his interaction.
• Feb2003.PR.17 -- COMPLETED.
• Feb2003.PR.18 -- COMPLETED. Sonja, Sandy, Margaret, Katherine, Steve, Brian, Susan, Tom
  Pending: Joel, Moore/Horak to ER only, Debra
• Feb2003.PR.19 -- PENDING.
• Feb2003.PR.20 -- Completed.
• Feb2003.PR.22 -- Completed put link to letter here)
• Feb2003.PR.23 -- PENDING.
• Feb2003.PR.25 -- PENDING.
• Feb2003.PR.26 -- Superceded.
• Feb2003.PR.27 -- Superceded. This relates to questions such as "Are we moving to a future state to standardize data elements across USGS? " Katherine reported that NWIS is looking into date/time issues.
• Jan2002.Cyber.2 --


• Jan2002.Cyber.5 --


• Sep2002.AL.8 -- 3/26/03, Still pending/work in progress.


• Sep2002.AL.20 --
  
• Jul2002.Cyber.2 --
  
• Jul2002.Cyber.3 --
  
• Jul2002.Cyber.4 --
  
• Jan2002.NV.1 --
  
• Jan2002.NV.2 --
  
• Jan2002.NV.6 --

Discussion:

• Feb2003.PR.6 continuation and moved to a new AI Mar2003.Cyber.1
  -- Person: Tom Wood
  Issue: Comparisons of Web Deisign Packages. --- Greg Allord wants to see a comparison (industry) between GoLive and Dreamweaver and other packages to see which packages will integrate the best. Sandy Williamson suggests that this comparison is unnecessary, but Sandy will provide a search of the web for industry comparisons. David Boldt, Terry Reinitz and Lorna Schmid will comment on the comparisons.

  4/18/03 update - in progress -- since grep was not at the 4/18 Cyber meeting, Nelson will take the initiative to have a couple of district folks write-up evaluations on GoLive and Dreamweaver to provide a justification and a matrix that can be sent to the districts as an evaluation for these web design tools. -- new action item Apr2003.Cyber.7 -- Nelson -- will contact Howard Perlman (Atlanta, GA) and John Parks (Puerto Rico) to evaluate these two web design packages and to provide Nelson (ITAC) with a write-up that can be sent to the districts. Sandy Williamson volunteered funding for 1 days work for John and Howard.

• Agenda item for next face-to-face meeting:

• Training Management System -- Grady Moore -- Report out. Advocate for user testing.
• Assignment for summarizing ITAC minutes for constituents