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Constituent Reports:

Senior Staff Report
Data Chiefs Report
District Chiefs Report
AO Report
Study Chiefs Report

Scott McEwen (on phone)

CR Regional Computer Specialist -- Denver, CO

Welcome and Introductions/Agenda Review
Presented by: Donna Schiffer (Chair)

Welcome and dynamic’s of the meeting including changes.

California Water Science Center Overview
Presented by: Martin

Peter gave an overview of the CA science centers. 

California Water Science Center IT Overview
Presented by: Obstaculo
Expected Outcome: Information Exchange

• Rudy presented an overview of IT operations
• Bob Avery talked about Distributed File Systems/Active Directory.

Town Hall Meeting -
Presented by: ITAC/Center Staff

Introduction by Donna to all IT staff present
Introduction of the ITAC members and Guests

Bureau IT Perspective (30 min) - Paul Exter

• Paul provided an overview of the Bureau IT level issues
  • Enterprise Services Netowrk
  • Inspector General Report  - A copy of the report has been handed out
  • Microsoft Windows Vista – Not to be used at the USGS
  • Patch Management – Needs to be done - ongoing
  • Energy Star Compliant Devices – we are going to be required to comply.  This is not mandated at this time.
    • E Waste Recycling – how you dispose equipment such as computers.
  • ITSO Communication – the process has changed. We are no longer going to send
    memo’s from Kevin’s office straight to IT personnel.  They will now go through the Director. The format is what Jim Nicholas requested. The process has not been implemented to date.

            ITEM 2007 – The week of June 24th

Vulnerability Scanning – We are only scanned on the outside currently. The messages are going to go through the Science Center Directors.

Security Awareness Training – It’s back – need to be completed

Asset Management – is not a hot topic, but doing more planning in ’08 and implement in ’09.

Infrastructure Transformation Phase 3 (ITP3) – This has been put on the shelf.  If we do anything similar – it will be bureau based. 

Messaging –  This project started in 2002. We are not going to change to Microsoft Exchange at this point. Moving to a new messaging system would have been $ 3M.

Waivers –  There is no longer a freeze on storage.  We are trying to get the Dell Laptop rugged laptop
           
CAAST – Certification and Accreditation Automation and Streaming Team

Instant Messaging – We will only be able to use the Sametime client.

WEBEX – we are the only Bureau that allows you to go to an external webex site.

HSPD12 – Memo’s are going to start coming.  A new ID card is coming within the next year. They are putting out 181 ID creation stations across DOI.

Active Directory – WR Water is complete.  We are within 30 sites of completion across USGS.

Paul showed a report that is updated every 15 minutes via AD. (Igskahcias06/status.html)

Competitive Sourcing (10 min) - Paul Exter/Katherine Lins

• Will be moved to Tomorrow AM

Office of Water Information update (10 min) - Katherine Lins

NWIS Update (20 min) - Jeff Christman

Western Region CTO Update - Charlene Fischer

• There is a parallel structure in the WR offices.
• The Active Directory project has gone very well.
• Certification and Accreditation – Feedback is that there should have been more of a holistic approach.  It is a Management overview of your assets and should be planned for in the project plan.
• What is it costing us: Estimation of $105,000 per asset/site
• How they are going to reduce the costs: Streamlining Team, automating what they can.
• Consolidation, Rethinking how we approached the project.
• Telephony– several sites have VoIP capable systems
• Development of IT Security Policies – IT Security Steering Committee Working Group
• Upcoming: Human Resources, Encryption, It Security Awareness training and Interviws for the C&A, Training Opportunities

Communication by the GIO : Newsletters – ITSO and Need to Know

Overall, through better communications – growth in partnership

Q&A with District Staff - All

Q. Will Vista be offered on EPP?
A. Paul will check on this. 

Q. We currently surplus machines, is that going to change
A. No you can still surplus, however you are responsible to wipe the drive

Q. When are you going to start the new ITSO communication?
A. Most likely before Summer. There are several other concerns and issues that need to be resolved prior to roll out, such as emergencies. Paul will share with ITAC what he has so far.

Q. Are you talking about physical Asset Management?
A. IT Asset Management – Computers, PDA’s, printers, copies, etc…

If we would go with a Bureau Wide Enterprise system would we get a better price?
If we standardized on one product, but we already own one. SMS. We own the client; the office would have to purchase the server.

Q. When is the cut off for ITEM?
A. It is on the website: http://internal.usgs.gov/gio/ito/item/2007/

Q. Couldn’t we have just a few servers and share them?
A. Yes, however we have received pushed back. Servers could be placed regionally.

Q. When is the day coming that I can sit down at my desk with one password and do everything I have to do?  There is multiple change time/ multiple systems; we can’t write them down how do we take track of this? Can we request for a “one” password rule.
A. ITAC has made some progress on this; you can review the past ITAC minutes. Key Pass is a piece of software that will keep passwords for you. It is not that we are undermining security; we cannot mandate we can only suggest. Password security is a Federal mandate.

Q. Can we have a website where all the mandates are located?
We have it.
http://internal.usgs.gov/gio/security/password_management.html
                                                                                                  
Paul will list all the possible password locations and their complexity requirements and frequency.

Q. Why can’t the clock on passwords be the same?
A. Because we don’t have control over it.

Q. Does this group have any input with online training?  For example the security training or DOI learn.
A. We have addressed this issue in the past and have had some impact. You can order all training on CD’s.

Q. Is Lotus Notes going to be with us for a while?
A. Yes – at least 3 years

Q. Remote Access – is it going away?
A. What will happen by the end of summer, you will be asked to migrate away from your system and put onto the DOI system. We were to be done by January 31st. but the new system does not meet all of our requirements, and we won’t move to it until it does.

Q. Has content filtering been that bad?
A. No, we can get around it.  If you search enough most of the time you can find it.
Paul - We had a meeting with the DOI last week about turning off the filter on freeware and shareware, and they do not want us to it.

Q. How many of the people are trying to go to sites inadvertently?
A. Don’t know the numbers; however people are still trying to get to restricted sites.

Q. Someone was going to hire a web development group for USGS? Has that happened or is it happening?
A. It’s not a group to be hired, but a contract vehicle you can use to hire someone.

Q. What about the framework and the templates
A. There are templates that are mandatory and visual identity based. The idea in Georgia was to make the same look and feel for everyone.  We went to Bob Hirsh last year and Georgia was granted money to work up a framework for Water.

Q. Is there someone/or group dedicated to oversee the framework/templates? That             it is updated?
A. No, It’s not a top down thing it’s a bottom up. Howard Pearlman has the lead on WRD framework. There is a concern about this going away. The OWI has a webmaster, we had training. This puts the burden on OWI’s office to continue this training and taking the different idea’s that bubble up and maintaining it, however at this point nothing is mandatory. An inventory of the sites is coming. Water is trying to move forward.

Q. Laptops, Portable thumb drive and harddrive encryption.
A. OBM 616 – anything mobile has to be encrypted. Anything that can store data would qualify, unless it can be classified as non sensitive. The secretary has said that all the USGS information is sensitive. Your laptop will need to have an encrypted package (at rest encryption package). You probably won’t see it for at least 5 more months.

**You have a one hour time frame to report a missing machine.

Q. Who do we report it to (the missing machine)?
A. Your Bureau IT Security Officer

Q. Will it sync with your AD log on?
A. It can but it would be the USGS driven. 

LUNCH (Box Lunch)

California Water Science Center presentations and Discussion with ITAC
Presented by: Science Center Staff

Parallel processing/Clusters
Presented by: Alan Flint

This presentation is an overview on the application for Beowulf and Windows Cluster Computing to ongoing projects in the California Water Science Center.  The presentation begins with a simple discussion on parallel computing, how clusters are assembled, and how the computers communicate to make process modeling faster on multiple computers.  Several examples are presented that cover the types of computer problems that are being solved to answer hydrology questions.  These example model problems are solved by using standard serial (one computer) modeling and parallel (multiple computers) modeling with a comparison made of the increase speed using the parallel modeling.  The talk ends with questions about the need for IT support for parallel clusters.

GAMA: Challenges of sharing/managing large datasets
Presented by: Johnson

The GAMA (Ground-water Ambient Monitoring and Assessment) program has utilized a number of techniques and devices for allowing users to share large datasets.  In addition, the system is set up to allow users to copy necessary data to their laptops and work off-line.  Dual mirrored servers were implemented in San Diego and Sacramento to create the least amount of download time when accessing large files.  The GIS is built to work in any location, whether connected to Sacramento, San Diego, or locally off-line.  Other systems such as automatically downloading and uploading GAMA data from NWIS into Access, utilizing ArcIMS to serve drillers logs across the State, and loading data into an SQL server were implemented to take advantage of the systems available.  These mechanisms help to serve the data in a quick and seamless fashion that allows access by the GAMA team without sacrificing hard drive space on the mirrored filers.

Centralized storage -- Filer and storage issues in CAWSC
Presented by: Yancey

LiDAR applications in California
Presented by: Bawden

Gerald is from the Western Remote Sensing and Visualization Center.

Questions raised:
How should we establish storage solution for power users?
How do we manage the growing data volume
How do we share/collaborate with other USGS research groups
How do we begin to distribute the data
How do we archive
Archive vs. near-storage vs. online

Comments:

• This is not a discipline or regional issue it is a higher issue to be addressed.
• From a GIO perspective – The survey need to recognize the storage needs, and develop an infrastructure to support it.
• You have to have a local and a distributive solution.  The GIO and counterpart need to develop a strategy to do it.
• Google is working on a storage solution to compete with the network storage vendors

Review questions from CAWSC -
Presented by: All

Questions were reviewed and completed

Facility Tour
Presented by: Rudy

Thank you Rudy and staff for your hospitality

Competitive Sourcing
Presented by: Linda Leek
Expected outcome: Information update

The Green plan is a Business Strategy Review – look at our present state through the future state.  The review was scheduled to complete in April 2007. The USGS is just starting to put together their plan. 2006 Fair inventory and support IT resources of the science.  We will develop a report that will go to Karen Siderelis and a briefing to the ELT.

To date

• A steering committee was formed n October 2006.
• It was given to Linda and Ellen to co-lead
• They are working with Grant Thorton (contractor)
• They created a team of 11 members of Federal Employees and 3 contractors
• First conference Call on Feb 23, 2007
• First Face to Face is starting today
• They will be looking for input for the vision and support for the science.

Q. How long do you plan for the process to take?
A. We were asked to be completed by the end of April.  But they are going to have to ask for an extension.

Q. Will there be data calls to the Regions? Levels of the staff/training needs?
A. That is a question we are going to have to work on this week during the meeting. In the past other groups have done surveys.  We will figure out how we can least impact everyone to complete this study.

Q. The first step is to predict the IT of the future. How far into the future?  Are we looking at just the USGS?
A. We will have to assess what we have in our Bureau and we will have to predict where we want to be in 3 – 5 years.  What will influence this is what is going on currently internally. There are also influences coming from the department, such as enterprise services. We will need to incorporate this into our plan.

Q. The science plan is very general, and in the IT arena.  What does it mean from discipline to discipline differs greatly.
A. Competitive sourcing is a tool it may or may not be part of our plan. We can use competitive sourcing, reengineering, or as is.  There are a number of efforts in the Bureau trying to move the science plan along and we will be gathering the information from them. We will try to identify where we can and cannot meet the needs of the Bureau.  If we find that we are short information and data we will ask for the study to be extended.

Q. Jess Weaver - There is a lot of misunderstanding about the competitive sourcing. Send a response to the SA community.
A. Jess will call Linda next week so you can develop a communication to go out to the SA community.  We have not been given any mandate of what we have to come up with for the end product.

Q. Are you being asked to identity the number of FTE’s you expect IT to perform its service in the future?
A.I am not sure we can do that down to that level.  I’m sure we can give feedback on additional needs.  If the effort is more then we have, that is another challenge we need to identify.

Q. You will write the report, submit to the CS team and they will make the decision.
A. I was told that we would be briefing the ELT.  It may go to that team and they could come back and give comment.

Q. Will you be presenting at ITEM?
A. Yes we will be given a presentation at ITEM 2007.  The first step is that it has to go through Karen to the ELT. ITEM is only one communication link.

Q. Have you discussed the strengths and weakness of centralized IT support?
A. We have not discussed it yet, however we are aware. There have only been 4 conference calls.  To this point they were bringing the team up to speed of the current IT structure.

ArcIMS Applications

• Mojave Ground-water ArcIMS demo - Chris Stamos/Kelly Mcpherson
• San Bernardino ArcIMS application demo - Danskin

Collaborative Communication Update
Presented by: Patty Damon
Expected outcome: Information update

• Lotus notes mail server consolidation progress
• Updates on following issues: phones, Blackberry, other PDAs for Lotus email, WebEx, and MS Exchange

Pilot server site conversion – this was done, they are aware of the problems.  We now have the authorization to upgrade.

The Outlook client will be added to the new servers will talk natively to domino when they upgrade them. It will be a secure client and will be up to the SA on which email client they will use.

Q. If you are going to offer both clients are you going to offer a validated conversion process?
A. Because you will still be using the domino backend there will be no conversion.

Q. Are you going to be Pilot testing this?
A. Yes

Webex
We are doing a technical evaluatioin of different web conferencing tools.
We stuck with 71 concurrent sessions
Q. Have we made the decision that web conferencing would have to support mac’s?
A. Until we get all the products evaluated first and it can be one of the evaluation factors

They will be doing testing for performance.

Q. Do we have to C&A webex?
A. No – because there is no data saved on their server.

Software for the Treo’s 700p, Sprint 6700 and team mobile Dash will be supported on the new servers to download email. This will be “Good” Technology.

Q. You will be testing in March, do you have a target date for the rest of the Survey?
A. Most likely April

GSIT-All will be the target audience when it is announced.

BREAK

Enterprise Architecture Plans (via WebEx/phone)
Presented by: Hedy Rossmeissl
Expected outcome: Information exchange

The EA team at the Department is involved in numerous activities. Most are a top down focus.

Stu – The Technical Reference Model Status this refers to the acceptable technology for doing our work, points to a preferred technology
The DOI is focused on the enterprise wide and cross cutting. The concept is valid and the DOI focuses on the Enterprise wide.  There are new policies that are coming out. We need to look at and refine the USGS waiver process.

Q. Could you share with ITAC on why we should be interested in EA.  What are the good things and the bad things? 
A. Trying to look at the activities we are engaged in.  We are trying to understand in a holistic point of view and look in that and see what we can do to have better collaboration efforts. Identify opportunities to do a better job. Maximize our opportunities. The negatives are that it takes time to complete this, more resources.

<Paul> Here is an area for ITAC to assist.  The TRM process is broken. We could use the TRM to put together the consistency piece so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when I need to do something. However when it comes down to it, it is the offices decision.

Enterprise Services Network (ESN) Service Upgrades (via WebEx/phone)
Presented by: Paul Exter/Charlene Fischer
Expected outcome: Information exchange

The USGS Network – it was a network we created ourselves. Has been found through DOI testing to be venerable. The move to ESN. The move to ESN is supported by our GIO G3 team. The G3 team we have is the smartest team we have at the USGS.

High bandwidth
Alternate Path Routing
Redundant Hardware
Dynamic Failover and re-routing
Connection to Internet 2  - mainly from the University campus offices

What is ESN – DOI Enterprise Network
Enhanced Security
24X7 Operations and Monitoring
DOI Intranet
Cost Sharing
Verizon Business – DOI contractor

OLD – 13 wide area networks and 33 major internet access points
The VPX is the center of communication
The above stemmed ESN

ESN unified Internet and Intranet access - gets rid of the VPX, increases security and provides a cost savings.

USGS has been involved with DOI from the outset
USGS objectives/mission at all meetings

If your site goes down they should be using the 24/7 line for assistance

OIG report has it in the report that the USGS is not using ESN. USGS management has agreed to ESN. 

You are going to start seeing emails re: the circuit moves.  They are starting in the Southeast by July 7, 2007.

88 sites will get higher bandwidths out of 190 sites
There will not be “hot cuts” for the most part.  The new circuit will be installed first and then the old one cut off the next day

Q. What has worked well and not worked well?
A. They only had one problem – backend work that Verizon needed to do.  The Backend work is now being done prior to cutting a site. The Albuquerque site went very well.

Q. Is there any concern with the responsiveness of Verizon over a holiday?
A. No they have a tier 2 engineer on site.

Impacts

• Cost – Bob Wakelee is the lead for Water. The percentage for all USGS is about ½ million dollars – about 30% increase.(Paul will get the number)
• It’s not us – The NOSC is not USGS employees – however G3 will still be involved in the process.  It is not USGS running the network it is contracted out.  We will be able to monitor the system but not make any changes.
• Failover – to be tested. It may not work, but we will make sure at every migration.  We will go back to Verizon and show them what is not working. Dynamic failover
• Security – We don’t know the impact yet because we are not there
• Carrier Redundancy – Verizon is the backbone carrier and the other is Sprint

ESN has installed secure hardware at satellite downlink site to support satellite connected istes using FTS 2001 Tachyon service.

This will be presented at ITEM 2007

Q. CA WSC does network and security FTE and asking if they need that person when we cut over to ESN?
A. Not an easy question to answer. There should be plenty of work on a local basis.

Q. Why has there not been a Webex or communication plan to the IT people?
A. There has been a couple of memos – they have done a presentation of the basics to a few SA’s.

Paul will coordinate with someone to do a Webex for ESN

Q. Are you going to be able to get the same performance in the office as you can at home?
A. It depends on where you are located. Sometime Comcast offers download speeds that are faster. Yes sometimes home may be faster. The backbone is as fast, and the slowest link. If the office wants to have a faster speed there would be a cost.

Q. What is the factor of cost to get cable speed in our office?
A. T-1 would be $500 –$600. 2-4 times the amount.

Q. How many sites are we putting onto Juniper Sites?
A. We have not looked at this yet.

Mobile Computing Update
Presented by: Burl Goree
Expected outcome: Information exchange

There are 5 different field forms, 4 are out for distribution and the 5th is still in development.

Q. Are you working with the SWUG group? Are you working to integrate with what they are doing?
A. Yes – there is overlaps in the groups with the NWIS groups.

Overview of handheld applications (MONKES, APES)
Presented by: Steve Predmore
Expected outcome: Information exchange

We received an overview of the MONKES/MONKES2 and APES information for the handhelds.
MONKES and MONKE2 are for handhelds and APES runs on tablet PC’s.

Wes presented a demo on the ca.water.usgs.gov/sandiego/wells

ADJOURN

8:00 am
to
5:00 pm

Internal ITAC WRD discussion
Presented by: ITAC Members