ITAC Meeting Expectations and Concerns

ITAC Meeting Minutes

• Tuesday Minutes

• 8:00 am -- Welcome and Introductions:

• Steve Hindall, Ohio District Chief, welcomed ITAC to the new District office.
• Carl Goodwin, Gary Mahon, Leo House and Nelson Williams did not attend.
• Steve Blanchard, the new Acting Chief Hydrologist for Information attended his first ITAC meeting.
• David Boldt represented Web Activities for Nelson Williams.
• Scott McFarlane represented NRP Activities for Leo House.
• Bob Wakelee attended the first day to give a telecommunications presentation.
• 8:15 am -- Expectations and Concerns for this ITAC Meeting

ITAC members expressed their expectations and concerns for this ITAC meeting.
The expectations and concerns were:

[Charlie Merk will type these up from the flip chart for insertion here]
• 8:45 am -- Review Agenda and Goals for this Meeting

Charlie Merk reviewed the meeting agenda and amended accordingly; the goals for the Columbus meeting were established.

• 9:00 am -- Steve Blanchard reported on the changes within the Office of Information (OI);

Detailing roles and responsibilities with OI, and the bureauwide hiring freeze. Steve presented the Office of Information organization chart and plans funding. Bill Carswell and Katherine Lins will represent WRD on Karen Siderelis. reorganization team. PUBS, ESIC and Library information groups will not be included in the first reorganization wave. Donna Scholz will probably report to Karen Siderelis in the new organization. Information systems, like NWIS and NBS-II, will remain with the discipline offices. Discipline committees like ITAC, ICOM, Safety, HR, etc. will continue to function, as usual, until told otherwise. Steve Blanchard will solicit information from ITAC members with respect to the Information Technology/Information Management. ITAC Chair will draft a memo to Karen Siderelis (with copies to Regional Directors) stating ITAC concerns including dilution of support, communications, accountability, existing field support, standards for customer support, etc. ITAC members will be tasked to communicate to Regional Directors. Karen Siderelis is meeting Central Region offices and management this week.

• 9:45 am -- Break

• 10:00 am -- Steve Hindall, District Chief in Columbus

Made his introductions and gave a briefing on the general district topics. The organization units include:

• Records, two Studies Section, Admin Section.
• 1/3 of District programs is data.
• Microbiological program and lab is the best in the Division.
• Feedlot and animal biotics program is significant.
• Large FEMA program.
• Military program.
• There are five daily sediment stations in the District.
• Information management unit is five years old.
• Includes report and computer and data requests.
• Self-directed work group has helped reduce the number of late reports to practically zero.
• The Ohio information management unit facilitates combining loosely knit organizational units and functions under a focused leadership.
• Photoshop for Graphics package is used for the reports. The graphics files are imported into Adobe Illustrator and Framemaker. Most district authors use Framemaker, the District word processing package of choice.
• There are 71 personnel including 11 students in Ohio District. Most personnel are using Origin (Greg Koltun found this package to complement the functions of SPLUS), Excel and SPLUS instead of G2. Word to Framemake is relatively painless for the most part. Most District personnel use HTML for District Web pages. District is moving away from Corel, because of conversion problems.
• Two NAWQA units in Ohio District, helped build program development and computer infrastructure.
• There is a three person field office in New Philadelphia.
• Steve introduced the Ohio computer staff:  Vance Nichols, Ron Veley and Monico Torres.
• Reports put online using pdf rather than HTML. Not all reports are put online.
• Vance Nichols, Site Administrator, reported on computer implementation topics, see their Ohio District Presentation. The powerpoint slide headings are as follows:
• USGS - WRD -- Ohio -- Columbus and New Philadelphia
• Information Management Unit
• Computer Services Staff
• HQ/District hardware
• District Hardware
• District Software
• District Policy
• Future Directions
• Convert Internal Web Pages to PC
  -- Moving from Apache to IIS server (Mike Cunningham seems to favor IIS)
• Develop Internal Official Document Archive
  -- Steve Hindall has been taking the lead to follow the archive policy. Federal Records Disposition. Especially with a focus on Email. There is a District person (part-time) who is the archivist for project work.
• Firewall
  -- Waiting for the security team to get the bugs out of the firewall prototypes.
• Continue Computer Rotation
  -- Replace a percentage (presently five to six computers for this year) of older computers every year; mixture of Dells and local supplier
• Move LRGS to Linux System (soon)
• Sun Backup CPU hardware
• The plan is to buy a Sun 450 for the corporate software to switch to in case of failure.
• Move all PCs to W2K
  -- Move NT 4.0 to Windows 2000. 60% of desktops are W2K. Waiting for information on license conversion from DIS.
  -- Have Ghost license to help in the install process.
• Other District employees voiced some interesting computer-related applications and shared some innovative ideas.
• Real-time water-quality and ground-water continuous data stations are on the Ohio web page.
• The NWISWeb page has helped reduce the work on data request significantly.

---

• 11:00 am -- Town Meeting -- Brief presentations were given for AIS, DIS, NWIS:

1. Isabelle Halley reported on AIS status. The Bureau has decided to centralize BASIS PLUS starting in October 2001, but if the deadline is not met, AIS may have to be used next fiscal year. AIS version 7.3 will be sent out next pay period to include minor bug fixes and a few accommodations to some additional users from other USGS Divisions.

  Will the new system be more friendly than AIS is to WRD project chiefs?
 Hopefully. (check)

  Is there going to be a cost per seat ($750 per seat is the rumor) for the new admin system?
  Unknown.

2. Tom Wood presented the DIS Program Office Update -- Status Presentation

  Framemaker vs Word question?
  Final report preparation cannot be accomplished by Word. Framemaker is the corporate solution (UNIX-based) for the water-discipline reports per Greg Allord. Each USGS Division is setting its own policy for reports preparation. (6)

  Adobe has a slight pre-flight program: do you feel that this is enough?
  Greg Allord indicated that his solution is a universal solution. (8)

  Can Framemaker templates for WRD reports be updated?
  Greg Allord's shop now is responsible for Framemaker templates rather than DIS. (in addition to Word tags -- should be ready this fiscal year.)

  A problem:  Not many printers accept Frame files.
  CAPP is moving to a PDF solution. Madison will provide pre-flight server-based software for pubs. (7)

  Records Disposition question:  Ohio is wondering if DIS is working with the Bureau on a mechanism for defining official records definition.
  Ellen Findley, APS, has been working on the records disposition issue and developed a draft of a policy and the policy has been distributed for review. (check)

3. Alan Lumb presented the status and plans of the NWIS version 4 split release.
   (Alan Lumb's presentation follows):

• Core NWIS
Port to DG
Release 2 for fixes
Release 3 to attribute sitefile & GWSI
Port to Sun
Release 3_2 graphics patch
Release 4_1 to attribute QWDATA
Release 4_2 to attribute ADAPS

• NWISWeb
Local version being tested in 4 Districts
Need better performance for national system

• AWUDS
Beta test - Feb/Mar - Relase and training in April
• LRGS
New release being tested and enhanced
• Help, Web Pages, Training

  Regarding status of the NAWQA Biological data warehouse . is this available to the Ohio District and the public? (3)
  Ohio has 94 and 97 NAWQA study units . all current data has been pulled from NWIS and is available on the NAWQA public web site. BIOTDB data was loaded into the warehouse in the last few weeks; but not available to the public. The algae data will be made available to the public this spring.

  Are you pleased with the NWISWeb? (4)
  General response is that the data is available and can be found easily. Novice users have some trouble finding the data(navigation). A map interface often is requested.

  Will Unix version of SPLUS need to be installed in the District?
  Yes.

  Is tkg2 the replacement solution to the graphics issue?
  Yes. Performance is still an issue. Probably will not be THE long term solution. (5)

• 11:30 am -- ITAC members and District employees participated in the town meeting, questions and answers session.

Mike Slifer indicated that the Ohio town meeting was well attended and was one of the best town meetings. There were many questions about publications. Steve Blanchard indicated that Greg Allord attend at least the first day of each ITAC meeting.

Isabelle Halley Suggested that a memo be sent to the District Employees describing the town meeting and its purpose and inviting the District employees to parts of the meeting that interest them.

---

• 12:00 noon -- LUNCH
• 1:00 pm -- ITAC Town Meeting discussions resulted in action items and critique from earlier discussions with the district employees.
• 2:00 pm -- Scott McEwen and Greg Allord (Topic: Proposed Supported Computer Environment for USGS Publications Professionals) discussed the draft to communicate the publishing plans and activities. Including the District issues concerning software publishing, rationale, analysis, conclusions, "what's on the horizon", etc.

  Scott McEwen summarizes -- "Framemaker needs to be supported for the basic data report and for USGS authors who write reports. Word with tags and Frame template will catch tools that authors are using. Frame and In-design rather than Pagemaker, etc. seems to be the "way to go" for page layout." In-design works on plug-ins and shows a lot of promise.

  Greg Allord presented two issues:

  Issue 1.  Greg Allord indicated that there will be a font procurement in a few weeks for 12,000 users for $50K. Mac, Windows and (Windows converted to Unix) will need the fonts for the Visual Identity. The issue is how to provide user support for the installation/implementation and maintenance. Tom Wood indicated that the NT TAC is ready to support this effort.

  DIS Program Office, Tony Bouret -- The deadline is for DIS Program and NT TAC to prepare the necessary instructions for font deployment by February 15. Tony Bouret will be the lead on the deployment. Phil Redmond is the CAPP contact. A memo will be sent out by the Office of Information.

  Issue 2.  Greg Allord indicated that the web standards for reports meet the 508 accessability requirement date of June 22. The next procurement for publications would be Acrobat. Acrobot costs $252 per license. A quantity buy would be $52 per license.

  MOTION:  CAPP proposal for recommended report minimum storage on the web. Adopt that the index HTML page include the search engine will contain the Abstract, TOC, list of illustrations, title, author, date, etc. Adopt that the remainder of report will be served in PDF.

  The ITAC can vote this motion up or down; or table the proposal to next meeting.
  Motion is accepted unanimously.

  Greg will prepare a one page document to describe how to prepare the recommended report minimum storage on the web.

  Greg Allord will present a Cyber Seminar on the Publishing Software Issues for USGS Professionals.

  Sandy Williamson, Greg Shank, Scott McEwen, and Greg Allord will check on whether there is a USGS server that is used to download PDFs in accordance with the intent of the preceding proposal.

  Greg Shank will get with Terry Reinitz to determine what compels WRD to upgrade to Frame 6. Book features, HTML and Word interfaces are supposed to be better. Statistics for test runs are needed.

  Scott McEwen suggested that this issue "Proposed supported Computer Environment for USGS Publications Professionals" be on the May meeting.

  Merritt Blalock, who will retire at the end of February, but will return in the summer to make scripts compatible with the NWIS Version 4.

  The WRD goal is that formatted versions of the citable Annual Data Reports with authorship will be stored on the web -- but so that a limited number of copies can be printed with additional print copies on demand. Greg Allord has an action item from the Senior Staff meeting last week to produce a copy of this policy.

• 3:00 pm -- BREAK

• 3:15 pm -- Sandy Williamson presented their "Infrastructure for Serving Maps in the District Office".
  Topics included:
1. Gateway to the Earth
2. Atlas
3. EROS Data Center
4. Enviromapper for NWIS

Sandy powerpoint presentation here on Infrastructure for Serving Maps ....

ITAC members should send comments on this presentation to Sandy.

• 3:45 pm -- Next topic was a discussion on Graphics software, presented by Alan Lumb and Greg Allord; the issue being:  What has been done and what has not been done?  When?
  • Tkg2
  • SPlus
  • DISLIN

  TWO CAPP Help desk people were added to the SPLUS help group. Replacement for DISPLA will be a combination of tkg2 (Aquith, Gibbons and others), SPLUS (Lorens) and DISLIN. NWIS Graphics web page and help group is available. David has trained Will Asquith on packaging the software. Alan noted that ADAPS users say that tkg2 is slow and SPLUS is even slower.

   What is expected development direction for the interface between SPLUS and NWIS?
   A script retrieves data from NWIS using SQL. Next, the process is to develop code; for example, David Lorens, to build the routines/programs using the S Programming Language.

   Is Mathsoft onboard for assistance for SPLUS?
   Mathsoft was slow on delivery, but inhouse experitise is coming up to speed.

• 4:15 pm -- Bob Wakelee presented his view on "Publications and Telecommunications:   Telecommunications support for publishing activities". Some specific topics included:

  1. Status of VBNS.
  2. Cost to make Madison a gateway? Other public web-intensive sites.
  3. Telecommunications Future Plans.
  4. Remote Field Offices Telecommunications.

  Bob Wakelee presented following powerpoint presentation including the USGS WRD Network MCIW Progress Map. WRDnet Status

• 5:00 pm -- Adjourn for the Day
• Wednesday Minutes

• 8:00 am -- Recap previous day action items and review agenda (Merk)

Charlie gave a recap of the previous day's action items followed by a review of todays agenda items; the agenda was amended accordingly.

• 8:30 am -- Review Action Items from Previous Meetings

Action Items were reviewed from previous CPAC meetings.

• 9:00 am NWIS Status and Plans (Lumb)

Alan Lumb gave a briefing and status on the upcoming releases of NWIS as well other issues. Reference NWIS Status.

  Alan Lumb will send a memo to Site Administrators and the Water-Use Project Leaders on the hardware and software requirements for AWUDS and SWUDS in the next two weeks. Other water-use data management isssues will need to be addressed also. Loren Kloft and Greg Shank will review the draft for Alan before he sends the memo. Alan Lumb also will make sure that the AWUDS web page is updated.

ITAC discussion revolved around budget issues / resource issues for NWIS and NWISWeb and how to prioritize enhancements in a zero-sum budget situation -- or worse.

Discussion on minimum data elements for the STORET-NWIS interface. Charlie Peters and Glen Patterson serve on the EPA-USGS Committee that discusses this topic. Charlie and Glenn are keeping Terry Schertz up to date. Should Janice get Terry Schertz and John Briggs become involved with the EPA-USGS committee meetings on the STORET-NWIS interface?

  Mike Slifer ITAC will develop a list of items that could be funded if there are end of year funds from Bob Hirsch.

• 10:00 am -- BREAK
• 10:15 am -- External Review of NWIS (Mike Slifer and Alan Lumb)

Mike Slifer and Alan Lumb reported on their action item on the externaleview of NWIS. First meeting of the ITAC subgroup was held in December in Reston. Second meeting for final deliverables is scheduled for March 12 and 13; but Mike Slifer is not available. The AMS contractors will be at the March 12 and 13 meeting. Alan Lumb will send the AMS deliverable this week by email to the ITAC NWIS External Review Team. At the next ITAC meeting, the Action Plan for NWIS based on the NWIS External Review will be presented. One AMS document is a process improvement document. Integration will be established as an NWIS project management office. More funds would be needed for additional analysis on the AMS contract. Future tasks that could be accomplished by the AMS contractor if funds were available are further coaching of the NWIS staff, NWIS futures, design documentation for Java classes and the EPA-STORET interface. Mark Nilles suggested that the AMS contractors brief the Senior Staff. Steve Blanchard suggested that the ITAC NWIS External Review Team brief the Senior Staff or a subset of the Senior Staff. One AMS suggestion is that a Senior Level Advisory Committee will be identified to advise with the NWIS management.

• 11:15 am -- David Boldt gave a presentation on NATWEB.

The NATWEB group is led by Lorna Schmid and includes as me'bers Dan Winkless, David Boldt, Greg Senko, and Greg Shank. The goal of NATWEB was inspired by a hurricane event that left sever al District Web sites inoperable during and after the event. The plan is to have NATWEB modules in Reston, Menlo, Tucson, Arizona(University site), and Sioux Falls (future). If DOINET goes down, the Arizona site would be available. One major issue is data synchronization. NWIS-RT, AFS, the Sun Server, the WWW server and a LRGS in Reston (and in locations of the other modules) will provide the ability to process NWIS for District real-time systems that may be down. NATWEB is the first such synchronized geographically-distributed redundant system over a WAN. Andrew File System (from Carnegie Melon) goal is to provide an NFS like system with enhancements; such as enhanced caching, enhanced security (Kerberos: content is safer from hackers), enhanced access control for files and directories (ACLs), and enhanced mirroring. Each module costs about $100K. All four sites have 450s, OS.s; one site has a 250. NATWEB production begins in the Spring-NWISWeb replication will be a function of the 4_1 phased release. Maintenance and user support for Districts will be provided by David Boldt and Dan Winkless. Lorna was looking for an additional FTE with the appropriate expertise to help Districts move onto the NATWEB system. NATWEB would be able to serve the District web pages. NATWEB would be able to backup the NWIS Real-time processing, which would be a manual switchover, when necessary.

• 12:00 noon LUNCH
• 1:00 pm -- Tom Wood presented DIS topics that included: SPLUS, CHASIS, and Others

S-Plus Support Activities Presentation

Scott McEwen indicated that WRD should support SPLUS as the corporate graphics package and SAS as the statistics package. We don.t want to change packages everytime the hardware changes. Some universities use SPLUS and some students know SPLUS. Tom Wood is looking for ITAC members comments/advice on a multi-year SPLUS maintenance agreement rather than a single year maintenance agreement.

Scott McEwen suggested that two WRD employees, Sarah Ryker and Dave Meuller, teach a two-day SPLUS course at District locations. The pilot course would be in the Colorado District in April. The online SPLUS course is not well accepted. The corporate name for Mathsoft has been changed to Insightful. SPLUS has a Bureau-wide license. There are about 250 licenses in WRD for SAS.

CHASIS support is not available now that Chuck O.Hara is not available. There is a recommendation to develop a simple WRD computer hardware and software inventory. Several suggestions were discussed.

  Greg Shank, Loren Kloft, Scott McFarlane, and Gary Neverdon will develop a CHASIS inventory replacement.

  Tom Wood will send out a memo to the Districts to give WRD employees an overview of the various graphics and statistics packages and their uses in WRD.

Mike Slifer presented the revised "ITAC CHARTER", followed by a review and discussion. To change the committee name, the membership representation in the Bureau.

A motion was proposed to make several changes to the ITAC Charter. The motion was approved unanimously.

A motion is to meet face-to-face twice a year and meet via conference calls on a monthy basis and via conference call when needed. Motion is accepted unanimously.

• 1:30 pm -- ITAC Presentation to Senior Staff (Slifer and Blanchard)

Steve Blanchard reported on Carl Goodwin's Briefing to the Senior Staff on Jan 25.
See ITAC Presentation to Senior Staff.

Page 8.  The action item is to develop a clearinghouse web page for the field computer activities; hardware, software and field functions. Charlie will get back to Senior Staff in 9 months.

Page 14.  Regarding real-time activities. Steve Blanchard will forward documentation from ITAC to Wanda Meeks, Chair of HRMC meeting, regarding the field support has previous 7 X 24 overtime policies.

Page 23.  TITAC strategic change. Invite Karen to an ITAC meeting. Make Karen known of the ITAC members.

Page 25.  TDIS High-priority needs: if funding is increased this year and DIS leaves to another Division next year. Security is very important and Districts need priority on security.

• 2:15 pm -- FY2001 ITAC goals were presented by Mike Slifer.

Isabelle asked if an additional goal should be to answer the question; "How could ITAC better influence Bureau goals?" Mike Slifer and Scott indicated that ITAC is working this questions through communications directly to Karen Siderelis.

The following are revised ITAC Goals for FY 2001 developed and agreed upon by ITAC.

• Goal 1. -- Produce FUTCOM
-- To include subheadings:

• Inventory (CHASIS Replacement)
• NWIS Architecture
• AIS Architecture
• Etc.
• Goal 2. -- Evaluate and Provide input to Chief, Office of Information, and Senior Staff on the IT/IM reorganization.
• Goal 3. -- Provide Senior Staff with a list of priority needs for funding, if funding would become available (June 1 and August 15.)
• Goal 4. -- Develop recommendations for Field Computer Hardware and Software.
• Goal 5. -- Complete External NIWS Review and present results to Senior Staff.
• Goal 6. -- Finalize and distribute complete archive recommendations.
• 3:00 pm -- BREAK
• 4:00 pm -- Scott McEwen presented FUTCOM charters and thoughts on computer oriented strategic direction. Scott would like some ideas/recommendations for staffing the FUTCOM analysis report preparation.
  (The FUTCOM charter goes here)

  One suggestion is to answer the following questions:

  • What do we support now?
  • What are the alternatives? or
  • What are the alternatives with potential?):

  Content ideas follow:

  • Servers:
  • NT
  • UNIX
  • WRD Custom Applications
  • COTS (support SAS, SPLUS, ESRI, Ingres, Framemaker, Adobe?)
    • GIS
    • Pubs
    • Data Analysis
  • Who is going to work on FUTCOM?
  • A combination of WOTSC staff and funding District personnel.
  • Suggested personnel and OI team leaders in parenthesis are:

  Applications Development (Jim Slack) - Kate Flynn, HASS - David Boldt - Phil Redmond (XML, Java, Visual Basic, etc) - Peter Schweitzer (XML, Java, Visual Basic, etc) - Ernie Dreyer (XML, Java, Visual Basic, etc) - Jeff Christman (XML, Java, Visual Basic, etc)		Pubs (Greg Allord): - Greg Allord - Phil Redmond - Terry Reinitz<
  Unix (Tom Wood)		(Solaris and Linux): - Hollway - Sun Tac
  Network (Tom Wood) - Bob Wakelee - DIS		Graphics (Tom Wood) - Joyce Williamson - NWIS Staff
  SPLUS Help - Sarah Ryker		Web(Alan Lumb) - NWISWeb staff
  NWIS (Alan Lumb) - and DataBase (Isabelle Halley) - AMS contractors - NWIS Staff		GIS - Curtis Price - Boyce Blank - Al Ray - Bob Pierce - Jennifer Sieverling
  NT (Tom Wood) - Sam Martinez - NT_TAC		Field Computer (Charlie Merk) - Charlie Merk - Burl Goree - Field Computer Interest Group
  Personnel (Scott McEwen) - National - District

  One suggestion is to organize the FUTCOM by answering specific questions and/or providing options; such as:

  • DBMS Options and Decisions?
  • McAffee vs Norton?
  • To support IIS in addition to Apache?

  Another suggestion from Isabelle Halley is to identify existing environment, and identify what the Bureau impact will be and then look at some future requirements that will effect the existing environment in the next two years. An example organization for the report sections follow:

  • Hardware and Software
  • Current Support

  Pros and Cons:

  • Goals: Two Year Mark
  • Goals: Four Year Mark
  • PC Desktop - Replace every three years
  • Servers - Upgrade every two years and replace every four years.
  • DBMS - Current: All have Ingres, a matrix to show use of other DBMS; such as NWQL, Wisconsin District uses ORACLE

  Then list Pros and Cons current for these products and then Goals for Two year and Four year.

  Recommendations:

  • Mike Slifer would like to see a FUTCOM for the District Chief and Site Administrator audiences: A document that would answer the following questions in terms of the timeframe of the next two years. What is the best estimate of what hardware and software that will be supported nationally? And what is the associated budget estimates for these hardware and software environments?

  Another suggestion:  Best tools for the top n WRD business practices. Mark Nilles suggests that the FUTCOM report discuss WRD current and future business practices. The top twenty WRD business practices would be listed. How we do these business practices now and how we expect to do these functions in the future.

• Thursday Minutes

• 8:00 am -- Real-time Data Acquisition from Non-GOES Telemetered Gages (McEwen)

Scott indicated that the OSW has no funding for a committee to address the problem. Scott recruited David Owens from Wisconsin to provide a writeup to describe the procedures available for non-GOES telemetry; including (1) data processing (plus enhancements and maintenance), (2) computer-backup support for a District in case of a hydrologic event and (3) documentation for user support.

Jim Mangus, Ohio District, joined the discussion and provided a handout "The Ohio Storms Program:  A Brief History." Ohio is committed to Handar equipment (rather than Sutron). See the following attachment:   Ohio Storms Program presented to ITAC.

Scott suggested that the future effort on this topic is to ask WRD field personnel to write tip sheets and participate in an informal network for user support.

• 8:30 AM -- Field Computer Activities (Merk)

Charlie Merk gave an update on the Field Computer activities, focusing on the planned training for handheld notebook workshop at the NTC in March 2001. Reference Charlie's presentation

Another goal of the field computer project is to build and maintain a clearinghouse for portable computing software.

• 9:00 AM -- SEDCALC/CONCALC (McEwen and Koltun)

The first release data of CONCALC, renamed Graphical Constituent Loading Analysis System (GCLAS), is the end of February. This release has been delayed because of the need for some critical bug fixes. There is a version of CONCALC/GCLAS on the HASS web page.

Scott McEwen presented the status on SEDCALC and CONCALC. Greg Koltun, Ohio District, gave a presentation on the background, status and plans for the sediment data processing activities. Next Greg Koltun demonstrated the GCLAS features.

John Grey, OSW, will send out an announcement of this product to the field. Mike Eberle, Ohio District, is working on the online help documentation. Greg Koltun is submitting a proposal to support GCLAS. USGS employees will need training to use GCLAS. Tom McKallip provided a training class in California last week. Installation instruction are available on the HASS web page. Java Virtual Machine - Java-2 needs to be installed for GCLAS -- this should be available in the RPM format. The District Site Administrator will need to install GCLAS. A paper on GCLAS will be given at FISC this month -- this paper should serve as a description of the GCLAS functionality for the Districts. The time savings in computing sediment records is expected to be significant. Reference the GCLAS URL: http://hassrvares.er.usgs.gov/gclas.html

Related Documentation:  Refer to the GCLAS URL above for a brief overview document, in a Portable Document Format (PDF) (108K); as well as installation instructions for NT and UNIX. Also the pdf file follows for the pre-published paper entitled GCLAS:   "A Graphical Statistical Loading Analysis System" by T.E.McKallip, Hydrologist, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia;
G.F. Koltun, Hydrologist, U.S. Geological Survey, Columbus, Ohio; J. R. Gray, Hydrologist, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia; G. D. Glysson, Hydrologist, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia

Tom Wood and Jim Slack will see to it that the Java Virtual Machine will be included in the RPM release and that the HASS GCLAS installation instruction are updated and available.

• 10:00 am Accessibility for the Disabled to USGS Web Pages (Loren Kloft)

Lorna Schmid joined ITAC via telephone for this discussion.

Nelson Williams and Loren Kloft are the ITAC liaisons along with Lorna Schmid, who developed documentation describing WRD recommendations for the Districts regarding web accessibility for the disabled.

Loren Kloft and Lorna Schmid addressed the issue of accessibility for the disabled with regards to USGS web pages, which extends beyond our online reports to include all web pages.

Lorna Schmid reported that Amy Berger is preparing a fact sheet describing USGS web accessibility for the disabled. Amy Berger and Phil Redmond are working together to make recommendations on Adobe's distiller.

Reference Loren's Web Accessibility write-up and Section 508 document

Loren Kloft, Nelson Williams, David Boldt and Lorna Schmid will work together to help the Office of Information send out an email early next week to the Districts regarding accessibility issues and guidelines.

• 10:30 PM -- FUTCOM Discussion (Continued)

FUTCOM Report Purpose:

1. Today's Reality
2. Options with pros and cons
3. Recommendations

FUTCOM Audience:  Discussion followed to answer the question: "Who is the audience?"

• Senior Staff, District Chiefs, ITAC, Section Chiefs, Site Administrators
• FUTCOM Proposal --

Step 1:  "Think Tank" Group

Objective:
1. Generate Fresh ideas
2. Identify our unresolved controversies

Prioritize (a) and (b) above.

Deliverable:

Prioritized list of issues requiring further research into options and recommendations.
Personnel:

Area	Think Tank'er
GIS	Curtis Price or Al Ray
Database	Steve Brady
Pubs	Phil Redmon
SA	Loren Kloft or Paul Exter or Nelson Williams
Field Computer	Burl Goree or Ernest Dreyer
Hydro/Analyst	Sarah Ryder
Web	Sandy Williamson or Eliza Graffy or Nelson Williams
Modeler	Kate Flynn or Roland Viger
Telecommunications	Mark Sweney

Step 2:  Authors/Experts

• SUN TAC
• NT TAC
• RCSer's
• NWIS Staff
• AIS Staff
• Jon Scott, etc.

Step 3:  Reviewers

• Group above -- Cross Review
• ITAC
• Etc.

Step 4:  Distribute final FUTCOM report and ACT

-- Proposed Outline follows:


	Current State	USAGE Support	Expertise	Business Priorities	Recommendations _______________  2-year   |   4-year	Goal	Future Business Practice
Hardware - server - desktop - field
Software - pubs - GIS - Analysis
Database

Comments on the FUTCOM discussion follows:

• Alan Lumb indicated that NWIS. needs must be addressed and the AMS contract deliverables/NWIS comments be considered as major input with respect to the architecture issues.
• Steve Blanchard indicated that the FUTCOM report must keep in perspective the Bureau reorganization impacts and issues.
• Sandy Williamson noted that Merritt Blalock is planning to retire and Greg McHendrie is working almost fulltime on Lotus Notes.
• Tom Wood commented that the Think Tank.ers would be coming up with questions. The IT professionals then would address these issues.
• Barry Hill commented that IT industry trends should be considered.
• Loren Kloft suggested using the ITAC conference calls be a vehicle for the continuing FUTCOM discussions.
• Mike Slifer encouraged ITAC members to come up with ideas on ITAC members.
• 11:00 am -- ITAC wrap-up session included the following discussions:

  ITAC members will submit their ideas and comments on the ITAC FUTCOM report via email to the group GS-W ITAC in one month.

  The first ITAC conference call will be set up to discuss the FUTCOM report. Friday, March 23 is the planned date for the ITAC conference call at 1-3 PM EST. 1 hour scheduled to discuss FUTCOM and ½ hour for other items. The Bridge, White Board and Cyber Seminar will be reserved by Sandy Williamson.

  The second ITAC conference call is scheduled for Friday, April 20 at 1-3 PM EST. The Bridge, White Board and Cyber Seminar will be reserved by Sandy Williamson.

  Mike Slifer will validate the dates for the next ITAC meeting with the Tennessee District Chief. The next ITAC meeting is scheduled for May 1-3, 2001. Charlie Merk will help the logistics with the Tennessee District contacts.

  Mike Slifer will follow up on the ITAC membership rotations with the Regional Hydrologists.

  Mike Slifer and Charlie Merk will review and distribute the action items to the ITAC members next week.

  ITAC members-- Steve Blanchard distributed the OI/DIS increased funding and field support prioritizaiton worksheet. ITAC members should prioritize and give comments to Steve Blanchard and Tom Wood by next Friday, 2/9/01.

Mike Slifer led a discussion of the draft agenda for next ITAC. One full day will be devoted to FUTCOM and NWIS Review Team.

• FUTCOM
• NWIS REVIEW : NWIS Action Plan

Regarding OI Funding: The task is to prioritize Wish List for End of Year Request for Steve Blanchard to give to Bob Hirsch.

• 11:30 AM -- ITAC ADJOURNED for this meeting -- leaves Ohio District Office.