Water Resources
ITAC Home Page

  Attendees:

Mike Slifer, Chair	District Chief -- Rolla, MO
Brian McCallum, Co-Chair	Data Chief, Atlanta, GA
Jessica Alvarez	Regional Computer Specialist (NR), Reston, VA
Steve Glodt	NWQL Representative Denver, CO
Joel Johnson	Data Base Management Systems, Sacramento, CA
Sonya Jones	Studies Section Chief, Austin, TX
Loren Kloft	Site Administrator, Louisville, KY
Scott McEwen	CR Computer Specialist -- Lakewood, CO
Charlie Merk	ITAC Secretary, Reston, VA
Grady Moore	District Chief, Troy, NY
Susan Trapanese	Chief, NWIS, Reston, VA
Nelson Williams	World Wide Web Development -- Raleigh, NC
Sandy Williamson	National Water Quality Assessment -- Tacoma, WA
Tom Wood	Chief DIS, Reston, VA

  Invited Presenters:

Mark Kutsko	Acting NR GIO -- Reston, VA	Unable to attend
James Brokaw	Acting CR GIO -- Denver, CO

Monday, September 9, 2002     --     ITAC travels to Montgomery District Office

Tuesday, September 10, 2002

Time

Agenda Item

8:00am

Welcome and Introductions were made by Mike Slifer, ITAC Chair, and Jymalyn Redmond, representing the Alabama District Chief:

• Introductions (All Members)
• ITAC attendees
• Three rotations expiring this calendar year:
1. Mike Slifer
2. Loren Kloft
3. Pat Vallance
• Replacements to be selected by the Regional Hydrologists by the end of October.

8:10am

Senior staff presentation:

(Sep2002.AL.22 Action Item) Mike Slifer will give a presentation to the Senior Staff Meeting in October

8:15am

All Members discussed their "Expectations and Concerns" for this ITAC Meeting

• NWIS 4.2 Upgrade
• Communications with Regional GIOs - get guidance from Jim Brokaw
• BASIS PLUS / Crystal Reports
• ITEM 2002: Division - Wide Active Directory Update
• Hardware Clearinghouse to better support needs of Districts
• HASS Support
• Security (Manpower) Issues "Web-Services", FTP", etc.
• Help Desk Tiger Team Updates - Regional GIO Perspective and Issues
• Publications
• Office of Information Futures
• New Approach for Dial-Up on NWIS-RT Services
• Site Administrator Training
• Eastern Region and Bureau Security Plans

9:00am

Mike Slifer - Action Items Review:

• Action Items discussed/reviewed (May, June, July, & August 2002):
• May2002.NY.8 -- Troy, NY Meeting (May 14-16, 2002): Charlie Merk will summarize the goals that have been accomplished since January 2001 and send to ITAC members. AI OPEN -- Charlie continues to work on the goals summarization
• May2002.NY.11 -- Troy, NY Meeting (May 14-16, 2002): ITAC members will send out the minutes to all the Lotus email abbreviations of the constituents they represent and follow-up with how the minutes effect the constituency. (Jessica Alvarez has sent her's to Charlie; an undocumented ai on Ingres training, Lotus training.
• Revisited the June, July, and August Action Items

9:30am

BREAK

10:00am

Jessica Alvarez - Home Support Policy:

Background:   Should WRD provide a policy to guide Districts on how to approach "home" user support? Several SAs have asked if such a policy exist. The number of people working from home is quickly increasing and SAs feel it will be hard to provide support for users specially when it involves trying to get their personal computers to work:

10:30am

Charlie Merk - presented the proposed changes to the Charter, discussion ensued:

• Regional GIO(s) attend as a rotational ex-officio member
• Regional GIO may attend ITAC when ITAC meets in their Region
• Suggest modification ...recommendations to the WRD Senior Staff and the Bureau Geographic Information Officer
• Drop AIS Chief As member
• Suggest that the words be dropped "during the Bureau's evolution"
• Change Division to Discipline and not Program
• Change meeting frequency to Monthly rather than Quarterly

11:00am

Jim Brokaw (Acting CR GIO) - Regional Sessions at ITEM 2002:   Active Directory Update (Department wide):

• Microsoft Office Licensing was the topic to be discussed at a recent meeting in Denver attended by the CR GIO and the CTO.

The topic involved into a discussion of pushing out Active Directory to the Bureaus. No architecture design or funding is being provided by the Department. This thought is similar to the Lighthouse Project and to the way that BLM deployed the Active Directory. BLM has a strong Active Directory architecture group.

Jim referred to the SAIC report on Department Windows Active Directory analysis. (In FY02, there were no funds to deploy Active Directory Bureau-Wide; per discussion by the GIO Leadership Team.)

• There currently are two views for deploying Active Directory:
1. Department-wide approach (highly centralized)
2. WRD District deployment
• ITEM 2002 training sessions being handled IN ONE TRACK include:
• Centralized Active Directory
• Local Active Directory

noon

LUNCH

1:00pm

Katherine Lins - ITAC Letters Status:

• Letter 1:   Communications.

Karen Siderelis values ITAC. --- Karen probably will not reply formally; but she assumes that ITAC has an open door invitation to communicate with her.

(Sep2002.AL.3 Action Item) Alice Dilandro (OI Head Secretary)   will send a copy of the communications letter to the Regional GIOs as well as the ITAC Chair and Jessica Alvarez. Done 9-12-02

• Letter 2:   Critical Technology Support (dated 8/16/02).

RE:   Funding proposal for Critical Information Technology Support. -- Katherine Lins directed Karen Siderelis to Tom Wood regarding the help desk functions, including expanding the use of Lotus email abbreviations.

Jim Brokaw suggests that Katherine Lins pursue a formal response to this critical information technology support letter. This will benefit communications with the Regional GIOs and others in the Bureau. Katherine Lins will set up a meeting with Karen Siderelis, Kevin Gallagher, Jim Brokow and Tom Wood to follow-up on this letter.

1:30pm

Katherine Lins - HASS Status:

• Senior Staff recently agreed that the WRD Technical Offices would be responsible for the HASS programs.

The plan is that the Office of Information would maintain the top level (HASS) page through which the user requests the software. WRD technical office would be responsible to communicate the level of support. Meeting with Michele Crouse, Jim Slack, Arlen Arbaugh and Lorna Schmid was held and it was agreed that this plan would be documented and brought to the WRD Senior Staff. A letter will be needed for communicating to the Districts, cooperators, and to other users. Science support functions will be the focus of a WRD review and will be commissioned by the Associate Director for Water. This will include HASS.

• Issues:
1. Adequate support on models
2. Posting on the web be current version.

(Sep2002.AL.4 Action Item)   Jessica Alvarez will supply copies of cooperator written comments and feedback regarding HASS to Katherine Lins. Other ITAC members are invited to submit written information.

2:00pm

Susan Trapanese - NWIS Future Plans:

• Critical Activities:

  • Susan reported on NWIS critical activities for getting NWIS 4.2 installed/deployed, a critical patch released for UTC in January 2003 and then to get NWIS-RT and NWISWeb integrated in NatWeb.

  Getting "Off the Treadmill" activities (NWIS Future Architecture and Process)

  Includes approximately 15 major categories of activities. NWIS Executive Steering Committee (ESC) has made an initial prioritization of the activities that NWIS teams should work on first. NWIS ESC will communicate these the list of activities to the NWIS User Groups for their input/feedback. Example activities are negotiating priorities and interdisciplinary functions, system development practices, informational architecture, NWIS staff mentoring program, etc.

  • Brian McCallum indicates that his cooperator is complaining that the NWISWeb's availability is less than desirable.

  Comment from Susan Trapanese:   NATWEB and NWIS-RT will ensure that the real-time web pages stay up and running when a District server is down; such as Sun Solaris upgrade, NWIS 4.2 upgrade, etc. The Districts will phase in as soon as late Spring 2003.

  • Nelson Williams asked about NWIS release strategies of one-year or six months. That is, adjust NWIS scope based on a release schedule.

  Susan indicated:   that she will keep this on the front burner when she has discussions with the major stakeholders.

  • Jessica Alvarez wanted to know the status of the data call to the Regional Hydrologist regarding the current NWIS 4.2 release.

  Susan indicated:   that the NWIS FAQ pages were updated. Susan also indicated that many of the NWIS release issues were related to the Sun Solaris OS upgrade.

  • Jessica Alvarez commented that contingency plans for supporting backups of dial-up telemetry data remains an issue. Cooperators use and like this method. Forty percent of sites in Northeast Region are dial-up. Districts such as Michigan and Wisconsin are 100% dial-up. Two way communications using the dial-up is important to some cooperators. Auto poll by phone is important to other cooperators. ITAC discussed GOES telemetry issues, such as random transmissions, four-hour transmissions, etc.
  • Jessica Alvarez suggests that NWIS assist in developing an approach to include this telemetry in the real-time systems so that AFS could mirror this non-GOES telemetry data.

  Susan indicated:   that she needs to keep the NWIS-RT and NWISWeb teams focused on first release of NWIS-RT which was scoped for satellite/GOES telemetered sites only.

  • Brian McCallum asked about postponing an NWIS installation if a hurricane or storm is forecast. If there is a storm, a District can contact GS-W NWIS Install to request a postponement of the NWIS 4.2 release.

  (Sep2002.AL.5 Action Item)   NWIS-RT will brainstorm strategies and issues related to the non-GOES telemetry - this is the AFS idea sent to NWIS-RT from Jessie. Susan Trapanese will ask the team to add this to their agenda when they meet with the NatWeb team at their first meeting in 2003 (1st quarter) and report back to NWIS.

3:15 pm

BREAK

3:30pm

Katherine Lins - Publications:

Districts are paying for printing their reports. So why are publications policies and standards needed for color, graphics, tic marks, etc. Seems like the author and the District are losing control of what the report looks like. Template approach seems like a method to standardize and restrict. "We are restricing color." cited from the PIG letter.

4:00pm

Site Administrator Training:

• Jessica Alvarez suggests local training such Windows, Active Direcory, etc. There is a balance between MSCE training and local training resources and then Jessica would like to communicate this to the Site Administrators.

(Sep2002.AL.7 Action Item)   Jessica Alvarez will send out her suggestions on site administrator training and ask ITAC members and Regional Computer Specialists for feedback. The audience is Site Administrators.

(Sep2002.AL.8 Action Item)   As part of staff development plans/planning, NWIS will work with the Regional Computer Specialists and Joel Johnson to develop a list of needed Computer Training for Water Database Administrators. -- the audience is intended for District Chiefs and Managers. The product would be an Office of Information memo???

(Sep2002.AL.9 Action Item)   Nelson Williams will find the NWIS Data Base Administrator Duties document and send this to the ITAC members.

• Nelson Williams suggests that ITEM trainers be prepared and keep on their time schedules.
• Sandy Williamson suggests that ITEM cyber seminars be selected based on attendees evaluations and presented afterwards rather than simultaneous which is complicated to do and each audience loses a little.

4:15pm

McEwen - SLEDS Status / follow-up (carryover from July Cyber Meeting):

• Dan Gooding, CVO, reported on the status of Simple SLEDS. Visual accumulation tube is being beta tested by Missouri. Bill set up a test database for Missouri.
• Scott McEwen asks for a test environment to be set up in the other two Districts now.
• Dan Gooding will set up the testing environment in Kentucky and Iowa (in addition to Missouri) in three weeks. A few other "bells and whistles" are being added right now. Volatile Organic tests will be added to simple SLEDS next. About $10K maintenance per year is required.

(Sep2002.AL.10 Action Item)   Scott McEwen will seek SLEDS programmer salary maintenance funds for FY03 and FY04 from the OSW and OGW.

(Sep2002.AL.11 Action Item)   Loren Kloft will contact Dan Hippe and Tim Miller to locate additional funding and possibly take responsibility for the direction of SLEDS to some office rather than the Office of Surface Water.

4:30pm

Nelson Williams - Bureau Web Redesign:

1. Background:
• Ken Lanfear asked Nelson to take on the redesign of the Bureau's web pages.
• Ken stated that the Gateway to the Earth effort was in real danger of losing funding, and a redesigned Bureau web suite was need to facilitate the incorporation of their products to date, and to show concrete progress by their effort.
• Nelson took on the challenge.
• Nelson used interviews with users whose comments reflected issues regarding the current web design.
• Nelson asked the Enterprise Web Team to state their goals for a redesigned suite of web pages. They said their goals were to define ownership of the web suite, to determine a process for updates, and to identify the final review authority for new content. Not one member of the Enterprise Web Team identified helping people find content as a goal.
• Nelson asked the Enterprise Web Team for programming and graphics help. Every person on the team said they were unable to help at this time.
2. The current Bureau Web Page prototype, which was finished in late July, is currently out for user testing:
• Contractor Technical Review
• Contractor organization and aesthetics review
• Kiosk Review in a mall near an LL Bean Store/comments are being collected here by a questionnaire.
• The Design is being well received - Karen Siderelis indicated that the design is "elegant." Approval is imminent, pending receipt of review comments.
3. Nelson Williams presented an overview of Bureau Web Page Redesign:
• Heading:   rotates through five art products
• Five Most Recent News Releases dynamically displayed.
• Features may be put in by the Director's Office. An update mechanism for this has not yet been determined.
• Footnote is Disclamers, Legal Stuff, etc.
• Mpas:   list comes from 5-year program planning review topics.
• Products:   lifted directly from current Bureau "products" web page.
• Science:   Comes from Discipline Web Pages.
• Data:   Comes from Discipline Web Pages.
• Ask USGS:   No changes were made.
• A-Z Index:   Product of Enterprise Web Page. This is a Thesaurus.
• Quick Links:   APS exercise produced a list of the top 15-20 most popular "page hits" Bureau web servers.pages in the Bureau.
• Search Engine:   Developed by the Gateway to the Earth

5:00pm

ADJOURN for the day

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

8:00am

Kevin Gallagher - IT Security Agenda:

• Presentation on the ELT
• Karen Siderelis, Geographic Information Officer (dated September 5, 2002) --- { insert presentation here ]
• Kevin Gallagher, Bureau CTO presented the subject topic:

Network Security Project initiated to respond to the Cobell Case. Kevin is pitching a project management approach to monitoring Bureau security rather than responding to the current crisis management approach. The special Master fired IBM last week because the judge was not satisfied with IBM's work.

• Reference:
  1. USGS NETWORK SECURITY PLAN
  2. Attachment 1, Sample Guiding Principles
  3. Network Security Project Plan (spreadsheet)

TOWN MEETING with the Alabama District

8:30am

District Introductions and Presentations:

• "Alabama District Program Review FY 2002" presentation by Athena Clark, Alababa District Chief.
• Status of the computer activities in Alabama presentation by Lori Crabtree, Alabama and Tennessee District Site Administrator.
• Lori discussed challenges supporting a remote office. Lori uses Timbuktu rather than LAN Desk for remote control -- much faster.
• Leroy Pearman reported that they will move over to the new NWISWeb software in the next thirty days, because the new software is so fast. Tujscaloosa is running a Windows 2000 server and Montgomery is running Windows NT on its two servers.

9:00am

District Employees Town Meeting, brief presentation by the Chiefs of:

• DIS (Tom Wood)
• NWIS (Susan Trapanese)

Susan provided information on:

• NWIS 4.2 Release
• NWIS 4.2 Patch for UTC
• State Water-Use Data System
• NWIS-RT due out next Spring or Summer
• AIS (Mindy Lanza) -- The decision was rescinded when the WRD Senior Staff, during their July meeting, decided to shut down AIS as October 1, 2002. AIS is no longer operational, except for TNA.
• Handheld Overview (Charlie Merk)

11:30am

ITAC and District Employees Town Meeting -- Questions and Answers

• There are relatively few computer problems and computer issues in Alabama.
• District Questions aned Comments:

1. Humbert Zappia (Montgomery District Employee):   Alabama needs large scale scanning and plotting capabilities.
2. Humbert Zappia (Montgomery District Employee):   Will rdb stay around for awhile.

Scott McEwen: YES

3. Humbert Zappia (Montgomery District Employee):   Will emacs and other text editors stay around for awhile?

Scott McEwen: YES

4. Humbert Zappia (Montgomery District Employee):   Are there any other script tools?

Scott McEwen: It is tough to find a script tool that runs on all environments.

5. James Pearman (Montgomery District Employee):   Comments that NWIS RATPLOT works very well, once he learned how to use it.
6. Brian Atkins (Montgomery District Employee):   Is S-Plus the graphics package of choice now that G2 is going away.

Scott McEwen: Says that the packageare almost as good as SAS.

7. James Robinson (Montgomery District Employee):   Regarding Piper Plot - have distortion problems been solved?

(Sep2002.AL.12 Action Item)   Tom Wood will check on this and get back to Mr. Robinson. Also, check with Kingsbury in Tennessee.

Noon

LUNCH

1:00pm

ITAC and District Employees Town Meeting -- Questions and Answers continued

9. SW-STAT is very weak - buttons are awkward - plotting resolution is weak. Needed for low-flow report. Wants plots good enough so plot does not have to be blown up. Uses Alan Lumb's WDM program. Some one must have something better than this software.

(Sep2002.AL.13 Action Item)   Scott McEwen will ensure that Kate Flynn follow up on this issue.

10. Lamath: Questions about connection for laptop on VPN. Lori Crabtree will get with Lamath on VPN and the AT&T Global Dialer.
• Reference Karen Siderelis memo/email dated June 14, 2002, Subject: Announcement of New VPN Secured Remote Access Services
• Other HASS issues are being addressed by Katherine Lins and the Senior Staff.
• Lori Crabtree: Alabama District needs training on how to take a graphic from a third-party software into a third-party report software.

Scott McEwen:   referred Alabama (and Tennessee) to Keith Kirk, Western Region Report Specialist for advice on this important topic. Keith reported on this at Pubs 2000.

• Zappiah: Does this include getting data from NWIS to a third-party software graphics package?

Lucky Sultz, Kalispel, Montana has developed a package named ts2rdb -- Lucky is teaching this topic in an advanced NWIS course. QW Switchyard is a program for moving discrete water-quality data into third-party software.

• There is a training course QW Toolbox is a training course for NWIS discrete data. (February QW Toolbox course set up for Mississippi).
• There is a switchyard course by Jon Scott, Oklahoma District.
• Many Alabama District project personnel (Robinson) suggest a software clearinghouse for exporting NWIS data and import the NWIS data into third-party graphics and other application software packages.

2:00pm

Transition of Water Discipline to BASIS+/shut-down of AIS

• Branch of Financial Management: John Walbert (Telecon)
• Office of Administrative Services: Ed Norris, Sandy Martin, Ron O'Neal
• WRD Branch of Administrative Services: Isabelle Halley, Mindy Lanza

Crystal Reports - ITAC would like to learn more about the need for Crystal Reports, and how, exactly to advise Site Administrators on what is needed (software, licenses, cost, purchase source) to run these reports.

ITAC would like to add more to what Scott McEwen has learned to his site: http://wwwrcolka.cr.usgs.gov/uo/comp/basis.html#Crystal

The Bureau is trying to do away with the FTP Process by the end of December. Ed and Sandy will send files to the WRD server and directory. Now, using FFS, You will pick an option from the menu and you will hit CNTL-D. You can view and print the reports from your profile. Reports will stay available for seven years.

Background from Scott McFarlaine, WRD, Boulder Colorado:   There is a program that other Divisions apparently use on the mainframe (usgsffs.nbc.gov) called Control D that our AO is trying to get access to. I think this is how reports are requested rather than the automatic reports that get put into our AIS directories. Could this be an alternative to Crystal Reports? I believe it just requires the 3270 emulator and a way to print locally. Melanie Estep (CR Research Admin in Boulder) says she prefers Control D (I believe she must have come from another division) over the way we do it now with the canned reports.

This is the "new" means to have FFS reports printed, since AIS/BAMS will no longer be able to send them to our AIS ffs reports area in a few more weeks. In contrast, Crystal Reports provides canned or user-developed reports not available in the FFS reports suite. See if this info helps with Control-D: http://wwwrcolka.cr.usgs.gov/uo/comp/basis.html#FFSprint

Question:   Sandy Williamson: Can reports go into Excel directly?

No. After thirty days, the reports are archived live on disk on the NBC Amdahl. There is no Amdahl charge for accessing the reports. You can view and print the report. There is a plan to output the report on the web. The retrieval criteria is a function of your user profile which is created for each user by the Office of Administrative Services. The Bureau plans to develop reports using ORACLE Discoverer to produce web-based outputs and ad-hoc reports. Many users in the Bureau currently use Crystral Reports to develop their ad-hoc reports. Isabelle indicated that many WRD administrative users will want to produce their own ad-hoc reports. All the WRD admin officers went to BASIS training recently and learned how to view or print FFS reports. Jim Brokaw just bought high-speed printers per office. Manual intervention by the Office of Administrative Services is required to get electronic copies of the reports whenever there is a retransmission required. Jim Brokaw suggests that the AO's reports on how it works and evaluate what other reports are needed.

A remote printer needs to be set up to comunicate with Mainframe.

• John Walbert indicated that Crystal Reports can provide ad-hoc reports using Discoverer. The Oracle Data Base is supported by NBC as is the FFS database.
• Sonja Jones and Brian McCallum validated the above information with their admin officers.

Background:   Control-D Viewing and Printing FFS Reports.

Reference:

• Scott McEwen is trying to keep the "Info for SAs" link relatively up-to-date. SA Info for BASIS+ and FFS http://wwwrcolka.cr.usgs.gov/uo/comp/basis.html Scott McEwen - (303) 445-4617, Central Region Computer Specialist, Denver, CO
• Comments from Mindy Lanza

3:00pm

BREAK

3:15pm

All ITAC Members - Discussion of Town Meeting & Issues

• Re: Training project personnel in graphics and data manipulations tools packages.
• Loren Kloft indicated that there used to be a DIS2 for Scientists.
• Maybe a Cyber Seminar would fill in for the data manipulation and graphics training.
• Mike Slifer suggests that this needs to be a focus of the Employee Development Program; needs of the Districts must be identified and put into EDNA.
• The attendance of the Alabama Town meeting was very high - higher than most ITAC District Town Meetings.

(Sep2002.AL.14 Action Item)   Tom Wood will post in the next DIS Newsletter information about the RAS and the VPN

• Sonya Jones asks about tkg2 status. --- Tom Wood and Susan Trapanese indicated that tkg2 maintenance would be funded but enhancements would not be funded.
• ITEM 2002 - Jim Brokaw:

• Regarding the ITEM 2002 Town Meeting for the three Regional Geographic Information Office Town Hall Meetings. Jim reported that an agenda has not been prepared. The Central Region probably will focus on how the Security issues effect the Central Region and solicit ideas about services needed in the Central Region that are not being performed right now. Jessie Alvarez indicated that the Eastern Region town meeting might be different in that the Eastern Region interacts with the Bureau, Headquarters and the Eastern Region.
• Jim solicited from ITAC ideas on the agenda.
• ITAC suggestions included the following:
• Request support
• Complaints
• Share Solutions
• HELP Desks Issues
• IT Staff and Responsibilities
• Timeframe for the ITEM 2002 Regional Town Meeting is now shorter than the three hours originally planned. Kevin Gallagher wanted to take some of this time for a Security Briefing by Karen Siderelis.

4:00pm

Slifer discussion:

• Review of Past ITAC Goals

(Sep2002.AL.15 Action Item)   Brian McCallum will rewrite the ITAC goals with an iteration of review by ITAC members by October 1.

The Goals are long term -- The bullets are short term

• Approving Goals for FY02
• Annual Report
• ITEM Accomplishments since last report to the Senior Staff
• Brainstorms of new accomplishments
• Active Directory Structure: Advantages and Disadvantages / Funding Charter Changes
• Ernie Dreyer's Letter to ??
• Priorities for Year-End Funding
• The Four Letters
• ITAC Funding Priorities -- Top four priorities:
1. NT-TAC
2. SUN-TAC
1 and 2 ARE PREPAID for FY2003
3. DRGS $25k
4. DIALER MODEM
• Communications

4:30pm

S. Williamson, Jessie Alvarez - USGS Information Architecture Report from WRD representatives:

Since the last report to ITAC:   Architecture Team will now include one member appointed from each Associate Directors and two members appointed from each Regional Director and one member from APS. Chief Technology Officer / Chief Architect Officer, Chief Security Officer and Geographic Information Officer are now voting members.

5:00pm

ADJOURN for the day

Thursday, September 12, 2002

8:00am

DIS Program Office Status -- Tom Wood presented the new Office of Information and the Distributed Information System Organization Charts

• { insert Tom's ppt here }
• Grady Moore asked:   Who would be performing Carlyn West's role regarding non-Standard Joint Funding Agreements and the International Boundary Agreements assistance for the WRD Districts?

(Sep2002.AL.16 Action Item) Tom - will find out the answer to the question: What is the status and who will be performing Carlyn West's role regarding non-Standard Joint Funding Agreements and the International Boundary Agreements assistance for the District?

• Brian McCallum indicated that WRD Data Chiefs need to know who to send the Month-end Water Conditions data to under the proposed DIS office restructuring. Previously Krishna Sarma was the contact.

There was a discussion about the role of the WRD Regional Computer Specialists. They will be working primarily on NWIS issues. FY02 funds are available from Bob Hirsch for continuing DIS Computer Support Team Contractor Support. There was discussion about the changing role of the DIS Program Office including HASS, Water Web Pages, Application Support, etc

(Sep2002.AL.17 Action Item)   Tom - will put together a DIS Organization Chart showing the DIS personnel and their functions who work from the field units, such as NT TAC, SUN TAC, Security Teams, etc. Including the personnel who now work for the GIO Office but continue to have functions that matrix to the DIS Program Office.

8:20am

Mike Slifer thanked the Alabama Support Staff - including Jymalyn Redmond, the Administrative Office, and the Kristin Justice for their help and hospitality.

(Sep2002.AL.18 Action Item)   Charlie Merk - will prepare the paperwork for star awards for the Alabama Support Staff for their ITAC meeting preparation and work.

8:30am

Jessica Alvarez - presented the Eastern Region IT Plans

Eastern Region Information Technology Plans - The ER IT group which Jessica Alvarez is a part of has just prepared the very first draft of the ER IT information plan. Jesica presented this plan to ITAC and discussed with ITAC so she can get some feed back from the group.

9:00am

Continuation of discussion with Kevin Gallagher, Bureau Chief Technology Officer.

• Pickup up to Slide 26 Phase 1:   Project Plan

9:30am

Wrapup

• Thanks to Loren, Pat and Mike for their ITAC work as they depart.
• Scott has suggested Rapid City, South Dakota for January 28-30, 2003.
• Nelson suggested that Charlie Merk be replaced as ITAC Executive Secretary.
• Mike Slifer - Determine date and location of next meeting.
• Agenda for next meeting
• Next Cyber Conference Call agenda item - Friday, October 18, 2002.
• Change ITAC conference calls to Friday, November 15 and Friday, December 13, 2002.
• Please submit additional agenda items (including background information) 1 month in advance.

10:15am

BREAK

10:30am

Jessica Alvarez - Wireless LAN Security

Wireless LAN Security - does WRD need a policy? Should we be using it? Should WRD require that SAs check if access to LAN is not available from outside of the building (no more than 6 feet from the building?)

11:30am

Meeting ADJOURN