Water Resources Division ITAC Home Page

Hello,

Following is a summary of issues discussed at the May 14-16 ITAC meeting in Troy, NY. I was hoping to have this summary ready earlier but since I was out of the office most of June, I was not able to address some of the unanswered questions until now.

In addition to meeting every 3 to 4 months, ITAC is now holding monthly conference calls. Please feel free to contact me with any concerns you would like ITAC to address.

More info on these topics can be found at:   /usgs/itac/minutes/020516NY_minutes.html

• NWIS is evaluating an Australian product called Hydrotasmania.
• Competitive sourcing guidelines, A-76, are being revamped to incorporate FAR principles. Federal Computer Week-- "...A-76 focuses primarily on low cost,... FAR-based rules are intended to help government gauge the overall quality of bids,..."
• Depending on database size, the NWIS 4.2 migration could take from 1 to 4 days. CA (huge db, worse case scenario) took 4 days. GA took one day.
• Data retrieval is slower in NWIS 4.2. "Some programs have taken a performance hit which may not be fixed before the 4.2 release."
• Significant rounding issues exist with OUTWAT, do not use it, use nwts2rdb instead.
• Instead of continuing to use AIS to get "Unix user ID" for new employees, Districts can now start using the Lotus "Employee ID". This field was NOT populated with the old WRD Unix ID number for existing employees. The advantage of using it for new employees is that it is guaranteed to be unique for each USGS new person.
• Steve Blanchard will inform GIOLT that NT_TAC will support local implementation of AD at each District Office.
• NT TAC is making good progress on local AD guidelines.
• Although some WAN and Security personnel have moved to the Bureau, continue to contact these people as you previously have. WRD is still funding them through FY03.
• GIPO is expected to move from WRD OI to Bureau GIO, soon.
• ITAC reviewed the Bureau's Information Architecture Tiger Team's recommendations and found that the charter for the proposed "Enterprise Architecture Steering Committee" does not represent "the field" (District's and their field offices) appropriately. ITAC's recommendations were taken back to the EA Tiger Team who agreed to modify the charter.
• MD has ported dial-up programs from DG to Solaris and has developed a Web interface for users to manage configuration of these scripts.
• ITAC prioritized OI's funding initiatives. Support of Sun and NT Tac among highest priorities.
• ITAC addressed the following concerns through letters.
• District's need to run AIS in parallel to BASIS+ until it proves successful.
• "SLEDS" program is still not meeting the needs of Districts with sediment labs.
• Communication to/from Bureau causing confusion- suggestions for improvement.
• Draining of the Office of Information Resources.
• The Bureau plans to replace the xtna program used by Districts with a new Bureau wide web-based TNA interface. The pilots that were schedule for January have been cancelled until further notice. Even when the Bureau web based TNA is available to all, there is no guarantee it will be fully integrated within BASIS+

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Jessica Alvarez
Northeastern Regional Computer Specialist, WRD, USGS
433 National Center, 12201 Sunrise Valley Dr., Reston, VA 20192
Office: 703-648-5816, FAX 703-648-4850, ealv@usgs.gov