Water Resources Division ITAC Home Page

Data Chief Constituents Report, March 7, 2003

Dear Data Chiefs,

Please find the minutes of the last ITAC meeting that occurred February 11-13th in San Juan, PR located at the following URL:   /cpac/minutes/030211PR_agenda.html

Some information that pertains especially to the work of Data Sections include:

• The Caribbean District has a unique kiosk at the Caribbean National Forest which allows the user to get to NWISWeb. More information on this can be found on the CR District webpage.
• The Tennessee, South Carolina, and Alabama Districts are in some financial trouble and possibly looking for details and/or to relocate some personnel. Please contact our colleagues in those offices.
• Two items related to the enterprise agreement for Microsoft software (and the increasing costs being passed down to Districts):
1. Classification of "scientific laptops", meaning ones primarily used as field laptops to communicate with field equipment. By keeping these types of laptops and not loaded with MS Office, etc. means that total licenses can be kept to a minimum when the USGS is required to "true up" the actual numbers of licenses with Microsoft.
2. There is a push from the Bureau to start considering one computer per person (again to keep licensing costs down). This would mean that all personnel, but especially field personnel, might want to start considering docking stations instead of one desktop and one laptop.
• There is a push to start centralizing FTP servers in the Bureau to limit security issues, therefore, if anyone is currently using FTP to provide data to cooperators or others, you need to reply back to me so the information can be collected and given to the folks at the Bureau.
• All employees need to archive their email to limit disk size on the Lotus servers. Please make sure your folks do so.
• Another large issue that ITAC is dealing with is the implementation of Active Directory, which would allow any USGS employee to log on anywhere in the DOI network. It is inevitable that this implementation occurs, but the issue is how it is implemented--local servers or centralized servers. Please see the minutes for ITAC's recommendation.

ITAC also recommended that Districts begin moving their district web pages and web applications to the NatWeb system.

Susan Trapanese (NWIS Chief) said that following the 4.3 patch and NWIS-RT implementation, the NWIS team is taking a hiatus from development to study future directions.

IMPORTANT:   Bugs, development needs, and other issues with NWIS, NWISWeb, and NWIS-RT need to be sent primarily through the user groups so that they can each be prioritized according to available resources. I would appreciate to be cc'd as your Data Chief rep on ITAC so I can forward to the group as well.

ITAC will have conference calls monthly until our next official meeting in October in Rapid City, SD. There is still discussion about a possible meeting in June somewhere in the ER-N.

Let me know if you have any questions,

Brian

Brian E. McCallum, Assistant District Chief, Georgia District
U.S. Geological Survey 3039 Amwiler Road, Suite 130
Atlanta, GA 30360
P: 770.903.9127
F: 770.903.9199