UT Admins,

    The first Academic Advisory Committee meeting that I attended was held
on January 22, 1997.  The meeting agenda and information was sent to me
late and I only received it on the morning of the day of the meeting so I
was unable to supply any information to this group about the meeting or get
any input from you for the meeting.  Below is a summary of what happened at
the meeting.

    The next meeting is on March 5, 1997 and will likely cover various ways
of dealing with large mailing lists (with Listserv(TM) or majordomo or
shared folders or web or netnews) and what to do with faculty/staff
UTORDial users (they seem to be tying up lines for long periods).

Emile LeBlanc
[log in to unmask]
978-3950

(I will be out of town during the week of February 17, so I won't be
answering any email until after that.)

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	       Report on Academic Advisory Committee meeting

1. Response to the Report of the Technical Audit Subcommittee -- Revised Draft

    The Academic Advisory Committee, in June of 1996, struck a Technical
Audit Subcommittee to review (with the advice of external experts)
computing at the University.  The AcAC reviewed the contents of the report
by the subcommittee which had made several (44) recommendations.  The AcAC
suggested that the Computer Management Board consider the following five
items as high priority:

1) campus backbone upgrade
2) improved network security
3) funds for computing infrastructure renewal
4) support for academic LAN administrators
5) support for cluster computing

(the first two items and the last three items are considered to be of equal
priority with the first two of higher priority than the last three).

There is a large cost associated with the first and third items, the other
three are more modest.

Also there will be a request to the Computer Management Board to increase
funding to relieve saturation of the off-campus network connection.


2.  Report of the Electronic Collaborative Communication Subcommittee

    The Electronic Collaborative Communication Subcommittee submitted a
draft report to AcAC.  The report summarized the current state of
electronic collaboration technology with recommendations for future
directions at the University.  Currently we use mailing lists (Listserv(TM)
and majordomo), netnews and Web-based communication.  The report made the
following recommendations which were debated:

1) After comparison of the alternative technologies for electronic
collaborative communication we recommend moving to IMAP shared mailbox
technology with support provided in the base budgets of UTC and the
Information Commons.

2) We recommend that the existing Listserv(TM) be maintained, but not
enhanced.  Since there is no base budget for a Listserv(TM) we recommend
its costs be recovered from users.

3) We recommend a pilot for class collaboration for September 1997 using
IMAP shared folder technology.

4) If the pilot is evaluated as a success, we recommend production
deployment of shared mailboxes by September 1998.

The first topic was discussed vigourously and for a long while, mainly for
two reasons; firstly, it wasn't clear that mailing lists couldn't be scaled
up to accommodate demand and secondly, the inconvenience to users and extra
load on utoronto.ca if people were required to check for email in a "shared
folder" on a specific machine were large concerns.  This discussion took so
long that the it was decided to hold another meeting to finish the topic.

3. Subcommittee to Review Cost-Recovery for Dial-In Access -- Membership

It seems that the UTORDial lines are often full and it was suspected that
this was due to faculty and staff tying up the lines because they don't
have to pay for connect time.  This will be discussed more fully next
time.  I sent an email to the Chairman of this subcommittee asking for more
relevant comparison information but I have not heard back from him yet.

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