DIS Program Office Direction (Tom Wood) -- Questions:

:	Does mainstream software include the packages on the Goal One list? Refer to the Goal One Document
:	DIS will go as far down the list as it can.
:	Regarding review of DIS performed several years, would you get a copy of that and review it?
:	Yes.

Comment:  Please err on the side of over communications.


Comment:  Concern about NT-TAC and SUN-TAC going away with the reorganization.


Comment:  NWIS relies on DIS Program Office, NT-TAC and SUN-TAC for consistent configurations.
Concerned about how these functions will be supported.


Comment:  Is DIS open to have WRD LINUX support come out of the closet?
Can Ernie Dreyer, David Boldt, Scott McFarlane join forces and be established as a LINUX-TAC?

Action Item 12:  Alan Lumb and Tom Wood will put together a group to look at Linux/LRGS issues including Installation, Backup and Security support. Group will be comprised of Ernie Dreyer, David Boldt, Greg Shank and others.

 Wednesday, May 17

• 8:15 AM -- Goal One Document
• Handout from Tom Wood -- a few slides on Tom's transparencies
• Handout from Tom Wood -- Table 2000. Computations on Determining Support for Corporate Software for FY 2000
• The following discussions occurred:
• Discussion of complexity of process for determining support of WRD corporate software.
• Discussion of weighting factors.
• Discussion of clustering and then weighting the clusters.
• Suggestion to build a table to with descriptions of support and which show the sources of support for the WRD corporate software: National Support, list of District support/contacts, list of Contractor support, etc.
• Prioritizing tool should not be the end all to determine the funding strategies.

Action Item 13:  Tom will lead the evaluation of FY 2001 funding for HW/SW support at August meeting; create of software by end of June. CPAC members will give cluster feedback. (Tom Wood)

Action Item 14:   All CPAC members will look at the numbers tonight and look for big PROBLEMS and CPAC will review tomorrow morning at the CPAC meeting. (CPAC)

Action Item 15:  Alan & Tom will develop narrative description of each package. (Alan Lumb and Tom Wood)

 

• NWIS Data Base Manager Task Description and Position Description Issues.

• This agenda item has some roots in Baltimore CPAC Meeting (Action Item #5).
• OLD Related Documentation:  2/15/2000 Preliminary Draft Policy & Procedures for the Management and Archival Storage of Data Collected for Hydrologic Investigations, USGS, Oregon District -- not ready for release, by Richard Hollway and Colleen Babcock.
• Other helpful information:  Position Description Archive (http://wwwrcamnl.wr.usgs.gov/uo/adm/pds.html)



• Specific Ones of Interest are:   - Hydrologic Technician GS-1316-09 (GW DBA asst, + ...) (http://wwwrcamnl.wr.usgs.gov/uo/adm/pds/1316_09.001) and Hydrologic Technician GS-1316-11 (Quality Assurance, ADAPS DBA) (http://wwwrcamnl.wr.usgs.gov/uo/adm/pds/1316_11.004)



• Also reference Response from Nelson Williams, 5/10/2000 email.
  
  
• As well as Nelson William's DRAFT Policy and Procedures for the Management and Archival Storage of Hydrologic Data, U.S. Geological Survey, 5/10/2000.



• And Sandy Williamson's Data Archives & Records Committee, 5/11/2000.
• Discussion:
Discussion of related documents - place here Oregon document has good information; very specific to Oregon District. Includes information on hydrologic investigations database management, but not basic data program. Information management team duties and quality control tasks are included and is very useful. (in the Northeastern/Western Workshop, which is six years old).

SA, DBA, project chiefs, discipline specialist, etc are all involved in task. Nelson modified document and this document can be found on this CPAC meeting's agenda on the web page. Categories of tasks are included in Nelson's new document. There are about 35 NWIS tasks in this new document. See Appendix B of Nelson's document. The objective is to build a document that has useful information that Districts can use right away.

North Carolina has a document that is similar to the Oregon document. This document is three years old.

Action Item 16:   The next step is for Nelson to develop a product by mid-June to that includes a bulleted list of specific NWIS database management duties that could be used in a position description. One or two paragraphs of background would be in the preface. Alan Lumb will provide NWIS comments to Nelson Williams. All CPAC members will review by mid-July. Mark Nilles will pass this document for comments to the Discipline Offices by August 1. (Nelson Williams, Alan Lumb, & Mark Nilles)

 

• Model Refreshment - Mark Nilles

Mark reported on the discipline office plans for modeling refreshment. That included a presentation by Mark plus some time for discussion on the role of CPAC in this activity. Examples of model refreshment activities by the WRD Discipline Offices were presented.
Model Refreshment Presentation  by Mark Nilles, 5/17/2000.

Action Item 17:  Mark will see that table of model refreshment efforts will get wide distribution. (Mark Nilles)

Action Item 18:  Lew to bring proposal to next meeting to "fix" HASS/discipline offices interaction. (Lew Wade)

 

• Data and Records Archiving Committee

• ARCHIVAL
• Scope of WRD archival topic is an issue.
1. Archiving:

Completed Projects - paper and electronic (directory structure)
Station data records
Model inputs, outputs, etc.
Correspondence - internal and external
NWIS - Original record, unit values, ratings, etc.
       NAWQA
       Biological data
       Geophysical
AIS

2. Backups:

Portable Computers

SOME DOABLE PIECES

Proposal:  That CPAC take ownership of completing these 2 items.
Proposed lead:  Linda Geiger
CPAC Liaison:  Loren Kloft

1. )  NWIS - Assemble existing policy and procedures that pertain to archiving original record and unit values that are part of NWIS. Write/review policy and procedures and distribute to NWIS DBAs and SAs.
1. What, exactly, is original record in NWIS? What specific files need to be backed up, in what format, with what meta data, and what frequency? Assume CD-ROM/DVD is THE media. Local copy and off-site copy.
2. Ditto for unit values. Uncompressed ASCII.
3. Ditto for GW & QW
2. )  Compile district approaches for archiving completed projects.
• Minnesota and Indiana have District archival plans. NAWQA has provided outstanding work on archival. Bill Kirby has prepared OSW memo on data archival.

Action Item 19:  Loren will form a working group and develop a "charge" for data archival for August meeting. (Loren Kloft)

 

• NWIS Status and Plans

Action Item 20:   Scott will get a CRACD NWIS "Top 10" list of enhancements to the SW, WQ and GWSI NWIS user groups by the end of June. (Scott McEwen)

Discussion about Tom Wood and Alan Lumb developing a contingency plan for the DISSPLA COTS replacement options. Refer to Alan Lumb's DISSPLA graphics replacement slides.

With DISSPLA replacements options being considered, Scott McEwen feels that there will be considerable disruptions to the tasks of WRD hydrologic technicians.

Motion. Scott McEwen wants a motion that the goal for graphics replacement is to have the WRD technicians not be disrupted in their abilities to produce graphs for surface-water, ground-water and water-quality graphs. Motion accepted unanimously. Motion to put DISSPLA back into the option set. Two opposed.

The motion encourages that NWIS staff keep working on DISSPLA graphics replacements in NWIS. Discussion of option to buy and pay for DISSPLA from Computer Associates. Discussion of hope for the GINO options for library calls.

Discussion of the use of the S-PLUS instead of TKG2 because S-PLUS is the WRD corporate.

Discussion of the DISSPLA applications in the District. GINO should be looked at regardless for this reason. If no drop-in DISSPLA look alike is available, the Districts will have to port their DISSPLA programs.

Alan Lumb will present status of NWIS graphics tasks for DISSPLA call replacements.

Discussion of resources to accomplish the graphics replacement tasks.

Action Item 21:  Alan will report back by email on the status of GINO to replace the NWIS DISSPLA calls. A list of the NWIS DISSPLA calls will be attached. (Alan Lumb)

NWISWeb graphics should be the same engine that is used for NWIS graphics.

• NWIS Field Computer Software

• What is the platform for the filed computer software?
• Frank Crenshaw's field computer software runs on a laptop.
• Burl wants to use CE OS.
• Discharge Measurement Recorder - Sutron won the contract. Running on Windows CE good rugged field device.
• Nelson wants to know who the student Hatan to contact in NWIS? Implementation Team. Burl Goree in Louisiana District.
• Will there be a National STORET? Alan Lumb's answer is that there is central STORET warehouse, but the States are not required to update the data into the warehouse from their local STORET data base.
• Real-Time Data Acquisition for non-DCP Telemetry

There are at least 10 Districts that have non-DCPS telemetry gaging stations. North Carolina has over 100 land line stations and has plans to develop cell phone telemetry for ground-water well data. Also refer to Cathy Hill's memo of 4/14/2000, on Statistics of Data-Collection with a reply requested by 5/31/2000.

CPAC thinks there is a need for some action to be taken by CPAC.

Action Item 22:   (Scott McEwen) will draft a memo by August 1 from CPAC to OSW suggesting that there needs to be a plan for non-DCP real-time data acquisition software. The next step is to suggest that OSW take the lead and get a group from some of these States together and make recommendations for software support.

 

• SECURITY
• CPAC Presentation outline, by Mike McNally, 4/29/2000
• Security Survey Draft, 5/3/2000 by Mike McNally
• Security Presentation by Mike McNally.
• For $700 per router, you get a firewall on a router.
• Bob Wakelee has the money in his budget for all WRD routers. Maintenance cost is not included in Bob Wakelee's budget.
• Suggestion is to have WAN group help in this task. Sweney, Morris and one more are on the group.
• Haggling over the security to be applied on the routers in a District will be the issue; not the work to install the security software on the routers.
• About 10 WRD sites are involved in the firewall project tests.
• CPAC endorses a National implementation for WRD security.

Action Item 23:   Mike McNally and Loren Kloft will prepare information about WRD security plans for WRD District Chiefs and Site Administrators.   (Tom Wood)

 

• RDBMS

AIS and NWIS met with Oracle and discussed issues related to the migration of these two applications from Ingres to Oracle. Those discussions have resulted in a proposal from Oracle consulting services. The proposal is on a time and material basis in accordance with the Oracle GSA schedule. The scope is basically to assist NWIS and AIS in assessing the tasks and options to migrate the data bases and applications to an Oracle architecture, to test whether the AIS Open Road application will operate against the Oracle database environment, and develop a test data model to evaluate the NWIS application architecture. The cost estimate valid thru April 22 is $202K and the period of performance would be 4 months. NWIS is not seeking funds at this time for this effort.

Kathy at NWQL requires four to eight times as much time to administer Oracle over Ingres.

The next step is to provide closure on the Oracle agenda items. There is no real advantage in going to Oracle; also going to Oracle would produce significant costs. It is anticipated that the Bureau will be driving the RDBMS issue.

Action Item 24:  Alan Lumb will develop a short wrap-up document for the CPAC web page on the ORACLE RDBMS issue.

 

• Year 2000 Funds for Lotus Implementation Desktops
  (Also see Lotus Desktop Replacement notice - Y2K Lotus Desktop Replacement Data Call for WRD Sites, from Tom Wood and others, 5/22/2000.)

• Moving away from x desktops.
• Donna Sholz hasn't decided about laptops for desktops yet for this procurement.
• Some WRD offices would like to get rid of the 75 mhz laptop and old xterm or DG and replacing with a laptop.

Nebraska:	Buy the CPUs - Districts are grateful for the CPUs and could buy or gather the monitors.
North Carolina:	Slowest CPU is 400 mhz with 256 RAM - no new desktops needed.
Pennsylvania:	has 60 XTerms and would like to beef up its servers instead.
Arizona:	DI-1 for $70K to buy desktops.
Kentucky:	Loren is a fan of Thin Clients, and would like to buy more Thin Stars. National watch group required.
Research:	Users didn't need to all go to MS Windows. Popping Lotus Notes for researchers.
Hawaii:	Mix of equipment. Getting off DGs. Field offices are two persons typically. One machine usually. Problems with networks and machines themselves are old. One PC so that they can have a card reader. One terminal for simplicity of SA. Every outer island office will have the existing PC and one newer PC. PCs and Thin Star clients in District office. Two DGs left. Pubs unit has Macs.
NWQL:	240 - 260 desktops running NTs and Windows 95. StarLims needs Oracle run time on Client.
Nilles in Denver:	Trend is for frequent travelers to just have a laptop as a desktop. Docking stations setup is expensive.
FL, Tallahassee:	going toward PC desktops. 10 old PCs need to be replaced.
FL, Tampa:	15 XTerms, 50 Pentiums 100 -700 mhz (30 to be replace) 3 DGs.
FL, Miami:	Some need to be replaced. 10 XTerms plus 5 others.

• Licenses issues need to be considered; such as Reflections.
• Pentium III is overkill.
• Would be nice to get the desktop replacement decisions ASAP so Districts can make additional end of year purchases, if the District has a surplus.

Action Item 25:  CPAC members to send comments by May 24 to Tom Wood on the technical specs for the desktop replacements.

 Thursday, May 18

• GOAL ONE DOCUMENTATION - Revisit
• AWUDS
• DCP Vendor Packages
• SLEDS
• DODEC
• CONCALC
• Cluster SWUDS and DECODES
• Cluster the Utilities into one category (about 18 categories, such as ZIP and WINZIP utilities)

Premise is that WRD does not have enough money to support all the packages that WRD needs to support.

GOAL ONE Document Matrix has been developed to rank software packages and support. Tom Wood needs to look at the matrix and provide a rational approach and put the approach into practice for the next fiscal year.

Discussion about drafting a simpler plan to provide enough information to document funding needs for the District personnel and others who provide software and user support for corporate WRD software. This would essentially compliment the GOAL ONE Documentation. This would be a proposal that would allow CPAC members to provide feedback to Tom Wood.

This proposals would include clustering of utilities and new tabular format, showing types and funding support.

A table format is suggested as the following:

Package	Framemaker	Sutron
Funded Help	DIS - $1,000	X
	PUBS - $5,000
Unfunded Help	SuperMan PA District	?
Contractor Help	OASIS - 75%	Sutron $0
Packaging	DIS	X
NEWS Group
... A Web Page will be developed. The web page could be sorted in various ways, such as by package, by system, category of user or by source of support.

Rewrite Action 13 as:  Tom Wood will develop a proposal for a Fiscal Year 2001 funding for HW/SW support to bring back to the August CPAC meeting. Proposal will be sent out two weeks before the meeting.

Brainstorm on Constituent Issues.

• Data Archival
• Hardware/Software selection Process
• Backups for Landline based data acquisition
• Increase network bandwidth!
• Field computer software development
• Stick to NWIS, DIS, AIS issues -- not all SW/HW issues
• Reliable overall data delivery systems
• Training for commercial and inhouse developed software system
• NWIS/STORET problem
• Implement SPLUS (fully)
• Project front end for AIS
• Training for new packages
• Concern over "Centralization/Control" direction
• Resistance to Lotus Notes
• Policy on use of encryptions - given Windows 2000 capability (this is a Lotus Notes issue also)
• Change Control Process: for deciding what when to change, such as RDBMS
• Alternative Work Place Issues Policies - (Noted that the Division repeats Bureau Policy - Division has given a policy that Cost Center Chiefs can alter this policy)
• More interdivisional interaction - the role of the CPAC in the new USGS
• Explore and investigate new technologies
• Publications Hardware and Software
• USGS Dissemination of other peoples data
• Quality of data
• Objective approach to platform issues (Web service: Apache vs. IIS)
• Seed Money
• SLEDS ; Sediment laboratory software

 

• Hardware and Software Selection

Discussion led by Lew Wade regarding the process of evaluating and selecting the Bureau/Division hardware and software infrastructure.

Discussion of how WRD/CPAC can influence the decision making process.

 

• Where is the support for the infrastructure going to come from when DIS is moved to OPS?

Action Item 26:  Critical to get GIO to the next CPAC meeting after she comes on Board. (Lew Wade)

 

• Discussion of POP Issue

This discussion is to work through the WRD representatives on the Lotus Implementation Team, Graig McHendrie and Jim Bettendorf.

• 10 Reasons to Keep POP -- Nelson Williams & Scott McEwen
1. Other client software is more intuitive. On other mail readers, one can change display options and save window geometry & characteristics. If these features are available in Lotus, they are either difficult to find or difficult to use.
2. Other client software is more efficient (i.e. less memory and disk intensive), making it more suitable for older desktops/laptops. This problem results in hardware costs, just for this one application.
3. Allows use by other computing platforms, including Macs, Suns, etc. Again, this problem results in hardware costs, just for this one application.
4. Allows for use of text-based client software/interface. Again, this problem results in hardware costs, just for this one application.
5. Ability to use standard UNIX commands on e-mail folders or files. Lotus Notes does not allow one to "grep" for text in subject line or content. There seems to be no straight-forward way to search content.
6. Keep POP until Lotus lives up to promised client and Web improvements.
7. POPping mail offsite (home) is much more efficient than replication or the browser interface. Allows easier productivity while working offline.

(GUYS - I QUESTION THIS ONE. CAN YOU PROVIDE MORE INFO TO CONTRAST POP EFFICIENCIES FROM LOTUS REPLICATION?)
8. E-mail sent from the Lotus client to a non-Lotus reader may (will) be malformed. Lotus headers are very badly malformed when read by non-Notes-based readers. This is a problem for people with whom we cooperate.
9. More complete/secure virus scanning.
10. Higher confidence in back-ups of POPped e-mail. Some Lotus servers are not being backed up routinely.
11. The case has not been made as to why users must use the Lotus Notes interface to read their e-mail, thus causing user resentment.

CPAC wants to get Graig McHendrie on the phone to find out his opinion on turning off the POP on the Lotus Issues.

Graig McHendrie -- WRD long-term goal is to run WINTEL applications on the desktop/laptops. This movement from POP should be a matter of timing.

Information Chiefs, Donna Scholz, and Gloria Stiltner will be meeting to discuss the POP issues and the timing issues.

Action Item 27:   Lew Wade, Graig McHendrie, Tom Wood, Loren Kloft, Scott McFarlane, and Greg Shank) will have a teleconference next week (week of May 22) to discuss the LOTUS Notes POP issues.

 

• Emerging Technologies

There is a need for a WRD process to develop a priority list of emerging technologies and support staff that would be of interest to WRD. Some comments include looking outward, benchmarking, being proactive, NT-TAC works on this.

Action Item 28:   Sandy Williamson will lead the effort to pick out two emerging technologies and present a case for this at the August meeting.

 

• Seed Money

Discussion on seed money. Use DIS mechanism in place. Refer to previous discussions on CPAC Goal One Document.

 

• NWIS note to SA's on AWUDS and SWUDS requirements

Action Item 29:   Sandy Williamson NWIS note to SA's on AWUDS and SWUDS requirements (Action Item 5 from Columbia meeting).

 

• Action Item Review -- Minnesota Meeting
1. Merge Action Item number 15 into action item number 13
2. Action Item number 19. -- Form a working group and develop a "charge" plus some work draft product for data archival for August meeting.

 

• Agenda Items for Next Meeting

1 hour	Goal One Document
1 hour	Constituent Issues - continue discussion to select goals for the next fiscal year
1/2 hour	Proposal from Lew Wade to "fix" HASS/Discipline office interaction.
1/2 hour	Action 19. Data Archival charge
1 hour	Action 28. Emerging Technologies - Sandy Williamson