Minutes of the meeting held 25th Feb 2002 10.15. Present: Owen Altkins, Paul Waites, Julie Lord, Lora Evans, Richard Firn (Chair), Ian Jennings. Cake: Carrot
ICDB 02/01 Apologies for absence. None
ICDB 02/03 Committee terms of reference. These had been prepared by RDF and IJ and were accepted by Resources Committee. They were noted.
ICDB 02/03 IT strategy/plan. These had been prepared in haste by IJ and RDF for the HoD for submission to the University. It was agreed that the ICDB would reconsider and extend the plan at a future meeting. (Click here to view Strategy Plan).
ICDB 02/04 Email communication to students. It was agreed that all emails to students would be sent only to UoY accounts and that students would be told that they should not set up forwarding to other accounts. This should not inconvenience the students in the next academic year as they would be able to access UoY email via their web browsers directly from anywhere. This policy will be passed on those teaching IT in the term one module (140).
ICDB 02/05 Web accessibility. It was agreed that the "top layer" (i.e those controlled by Lorna Evans) of departmental web pages would be checked for compliance by Lorna Evans before the start of the next academic year.
The committee agreed that compliance of all "official" pages produced by those within the Dept of Biology would eventually be made compliant once web page generation software becomes capable of producing compliant pages.
The committee agreed to discuss at a future meeting the overall departmental ploicy with regards to web pages - consistency, location, etc.. IJ informed the committee that a departmental web server would be available quite soon and that some web content may be moved to that server from the central one.
ICDB 02/06 Web space for project students. The committee agreed:
(i) that projects which aimed to produce web content for general access should have server space allocated to them at the time of planning/awarding the project. All staff offering such projects must gain approval from Paul Waites before the project is awarded.
(ii) that projects aimed at web page generation should allocate some resources to the departmental IT budget to cover costs of providing and manging web space.
(iii) that Paul Waites would decide when material related to student-designed web pages should be declared redundant and he should manage such redundancy.
ICDB 02/07 Time management software. The committee agreed that IJ, PW and RDF should meet with NP to discuss the needs of all users and report back to the committee with recommendations. The committee noted that the existing system relies on Excel methodologies and was devised by LE and JL consequently it was not designed for managing staff time.
ICDB 02/08 Upgrading policy for PCs. The committee noted the secret Jenning Rules which were cunning devised to ensure a fair use of the limited budget. As part of the process of setting a future budget (at the next meeting) such rules will reconsidered by the committee. There was some concern that the IT needs of the new facilities coming on stream might place unplanned demands on the current budget and this matter needs to be resolved.
Richard Firn 25/02/02