ACMG issues

# ACMG issues collected using Decision Web - June, 1996

Assignment: What issues under the Project and Policies categories are being worked on by your teams? Send results to the acmg mailing list.

## Organization

- Is the ACMG mailing list truly representative of who should be on the list?
- What is the purpose of ACMG, and is this the right set of people?
- What is the role of ACMG in setting policies. Which policies can be set by ACMG, the ACS, by IS, etc?
- Is User Accounts part of the commons as well as academic computing?
- Optimizing organizational process (i.e. how do we productively and constructively engage with various IS groups?
- Collaboration with other IS entities re strategic plan for IS services
- How can there be better synergy between administrative computing initiatives and academic computing initiatives?
- How can Academic Computing work within the IT Processes?
- If Academic Computing is a Practice, how does work get done in the Processes?
- What is the plan for [nitty-gritty, not high level] coordination of the Athena Computing Environment (software, support, etc)
- Should ACMG review discovery projects involving academic computing?
- Should ACMG review service and support levels for academic computing?
- Should ACMG review 'commons' issues or should there be another group formed?
- How should CWIS be reviewed by ACMG?
- Should ACMG review residential computing (measure its costs and benefits)?
- Is ACMG a team or a community?
- What are the boundaries of 'academic computing'?
- Should 'academic computing' extend into the labs and centers; i.e. Research
- How does ACMG make decisions? Should it?
- How does ACMG evaluate and analyze?
- How does ACMG relate to teams?
- What level of issues should ACMG deal with? Which should it ignore, delegate, or otherwise skip?
- Who or what parts of the IS/IT organization should review ACMG?
- What checks-and-balances should be in place to keep ACMG "on track"?
- What is the relationship of ACMG to the Competency Groups?
- Who do you go to for help when you don't know who or what will help
- How can ACMG help get rid of overload?
- How can ACMG help improvide predictability?
- How can ACMG foster smooth collaberation among the many children of IS?
- Should ACMG sign off on "The INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS" produced by the IT integration team?
- What influence does ACMG have on SIS reengineering?
- What is ACMG's work?
- What are the various roles needed to do ACMG's work?
- What do other people, teams, or organizations need to do to make ACMG work happen?
- What does ACMG need to do to make the work of other people, teams, or organizations happen?
- How can ACMG cooperate and work productively with SIPB, LCS, Medialab, and other IT organizations on campus?
- What, if any, should the formal relationship be between ACMG and other formally defined processes - Discovery, Delivery, Service, etc
- Does ACMG influence staffing on teams? Why or why not?
- Should we encourage "documented handoffs" or "continuing people" in dprojects?
- We need to spend some time doing strategic planning for Academic Computing
- Imagine ACMG was cancelled for a year -- what would we lose?
- Suppose ACMG was charged with writing a contract for an external group to "do the IS work" -- what is that contract? What would the external group be expected to provide ACMG?
- Where is academic computing going?
- How do we determine a list of projects and priorities that ACMG believes in?
- Are there other technologies that we would like to try for our meetings?
- What competencies are needed for ACMG members?
- We need to periodically review our projects and priorities
- How can ACMG avoid encouraging "crises" and reward planning?

## Communication

- What are the ways for information to be collected from users for ACMG, and distributed from ACMG to users?
- How can people join, contribute, and gain from ACMG?
- How can ACMG encourage greater participation by people who aren't the usual suspects?
- At what points in a project should ACMG get reports/be involved?
- How does ACMG mediate collecting requirements from Academic Computing customers?
- How does ACMG make and make known decisions?
- Which departments don't use computers/Athena services - why?

## Policies

- What Academic systems require privacy policy written for them?
- Privacy
- What do to about food and drink in the clusters
- Bring together policies for a networked environment - MITnet rules of use, Athena rules of use, Privacy
- What venues can we use to promote responsible use?
- Encouraging/enforcing use of our facilities so that appropriate platforms and rooms are used for appropriate purposes
- What services should be free and which should be charged (e.g. printing, Tether, etc.)
- Should MIT support slower networking technologies, such as dialup?
- We need to work out the issues involving qualifying a new workstation vendor policies, enhanced commercial use policies
- What do we know about 'best practices' in Academic Computing? Other campuses?

  ## Projects

- Recommending a microcomputer for students
- Intel-based machines in clusters - is there a way we can do this successfully?
- Addressing the needs of departments for machines that can run Mac and/or Windows software
- Determining levels of support that will be needed for Linux.
- Providing new services with cost recovery (e.g. color printing, disk quota for cash, printing directly to Graphic Arts)
- Infrastructure to support the changing pattern of use (e.g. images)
- Future use of the clusters (i.e. cluster survey results, Window/Linux machines, etc)
- Should we re-examine the need for kiosks for e-mail?
- What makes an Athena platform?
- Alternative OS environments (Windows, Mac) on Athena
- The Athena software set - possible ports/directions for change. Cost/benefits, etc. Staffing needed
- What should we do about/with AFS?
- AFS future - how will Transarc be able to supply us with a product, and what are the options?
- DCE, AFS, etc
- Platform qualification requirements - i.e. who's our next RFP invitee?
- How to get students in dorms to use client applications like Eudora rather than telnet to Athena
- How do we leverage our investment in dorm and ILG networking for academic use?
- Providing users with the ability to run long, unattended jobs
- How can we support mobile computers for faculty and students?
- Fall Readiness - any special issues this year?
- More keyserved or site licensed software, as many students/professors are using personal computers.
- Thinking out how the user account registration process should work (e.g., preregistration via the Web)
- What Athena or Athena-like functionality exists on alternative OS (e.g. Windows, Mac)?
- Recommending a workstation for students
- What support should ACMG provide for mobile computing?
- Should we plan to phase out public Athena Workstations?
- Given 2 gig drives for $600 dollars, 100 Meg "floppies" for $35, why do we think 12.5 meg central storage makes sense?
- With inexpensive CDROM technology, should we be investigating the Athena CDROM for distribution?
- How do we qualify a platform? What measures, and what reports?
- what are the "core services"? how do we add to them or remove some?
- How much effort and what products do we want to provide on pc/mac?
- KRB5? Should we use it?
- How do we do contingency planning and risk assessment?
- Should ACMG do disaster planning?
- What collaborative work products and technologies are worth investing in?
- Are there any MIT desktops that are common to the Office and Academic practices?
- How can we offer an Athena workstation that students can purchase?
- What new infrastructure is needed for future academic projects?
- IS space and facilities requirements needed to support Academic Computing? What activities and teams are associated with them?
- How do we as an organization attract and retain the level and quality of staff required?
- Whither the Distributed Library Initiative?
- How do we extend the IT component for AC beyond IS? Buy-in of non_IS IT folks?
- Can we continue to afford Athena in its present incarnation?
- How should ACMG evaluate and respond to new technology?
- How should ACMG go about removing programs/systems? Why?
- What parts of Athena should be unbundled? Why?
- What 3rd party parts should we buy? Why?
- How should ACMG evaluate and decide buy vs. build?
- How does ACMG "work smarter, not harder"?
- What is the price of security? What is the price of insecurity?
- What is the price of privacy? What is the price of nonprivacy?
- Outsourcing the network to an ISP
- Imagine the university in ten years - what willl Athena (client/server computing) look like?
- What is computer aided learning? What does it have to do with Athena?
- What is computer aided teaching? What does it have to do with Athena?
- Is the web really important? What would it mean to take it seriously?
- Athena services and non-academic use
- What product planning should we be doing?
- How can we encourage use of technology instead of face-to-face meetings?
- How can we encourage better use of face-to-face meetings?
- Are there other groups that would benefit from these technologies?
- How can we share technologies?
- What if we only discussed issues after using DecisionWeb--What else would we need in DW?
- What do users really want to do? Can we do small prototype testing or other checks?

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  Last modified 4/12/98