Council members
attending: Agee, Barbour, Behrman, Casey, Craig, Denning (chair),
Finkelstein, Gillotte, Herberg, Hill, Hubbs, Hughes, Hutchison,
Kaul, Keene, Lanasa, Martin, Nakles, Perry, Rosenzweig, Sevon, Wood,
Wray. (Council members absent: Anderson, Casey, Grotophorst,
Jamison, Pullen, Segerson, Weinberger, Zoltek)
Maria Dwonecki represented Zoltek. Pullen was present for a short time.
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(1) Joy
Hughes gave a detailed presentation of the capabilities of the new
systems offered by SCT, the company that is providing Banner to
GMU. Banner will be used for access to administrative
databases via intranet. Banner offers a basic set of web products
including "Web for X" (for various X) and Campus Pipeline,
a portal tightly linked to WebCT. They will soon offer Luminus which
extends the base functionality by permiting considerable customization
of personal web pages using a portal
model. GMU has not yet decided whether to move to Luminus.
Hughes will
form a content management group to advise on the prescribed content
for personal portals, tools to help various groups tag and register
their pages so that they can be
automatically served to portals, tools for content management, balance
between GMU "brand" and user-selected materials, and more.
This group will have to look at system details as part of
answering such questions. One or more related project groups will
be needed to carry out the implementation of the content management
group's framework.
Joy promised to distribute a set of detailed notes about the new systems and their capabilities.
She distributed information about Luminus and also about U-Portal, an open system portal standard proposed for universities.
(2) Each of
the five subgroup chairs presented a brief summary of their findings:
functionality (Agee), identity (Finkelstein), open sharing (Rosenzweig),
commerce and workflow (Sevon), and
authentication (Hutchison for Anderson). Highlights of the discussion:
- The proposed systems supporting customized portals would enable the functionality proposed in the functionality subgroup's report.
- A commitment to customized portals answers many of the questions raised about external and internal web raised in the identity subgroup report. Now the important issues are functionality and cntent management.
- The sharing subgroup focused on actions that can be taken quickly without much cost and they encourage us to implement those aspects soon.
Denning said
that he will chair a writing group consisting of the five subgroup
chairs to put the existing subgroup reports into a more coherent
framework, with a target to deliver the report by
the end of the semester if possible.
(3) Joe Hutchison introduced a new project for the TC about the LAN infrastructure architecture for ITU suppoted systems. He wants to create four workgroups. He asks that the TC members either volunteer for one of the subgroups or recruit another person from their immediate area to serve on a subgroup.