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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