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ITANA Meeting Minutes - 7-January-2009

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Attending

Jim Phelps, University of Wisconsin-Madison (chair)
Marina Arseniev, University of California Irvine
Dave Bantz, University of Alaska
Tom Barton, University of Chicago
Geoff Boushey, University of California Berkeley
Michael Daley, University of Michigan
Shelly Farren, McGill University
Keith Hazelton, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Christian Johansen, Penn State University
R.L. "Bob" Morgan, University of Washington
Piet Niederhausen, Georgetown University
Rich Stevenson, University of Maryland University College
Ann West, Internet2/EDUCAUSE
Eric Westfall, Indiana University
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)

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Action Items

(AI) Piet, Jim, Eric, Keith and Tom will identify campuses with operating workflow management systems, develop a common set of interview questions, talk with the identified campuses and write-up the results.

(AI) Jim will put out a call on the ITANA list and/or CIO list searching for appropriate institutions regarding the workflow item above. In addition, (AI) Tom will bring this up at appropriate locales at the CSG meeting. (AI) Keith will set up a call time for the gang of five.

(AI) Marina, Piet, and Rich volunteered to work on this. UW-Madison's IT Architecture group voted to volunteer Scott Fullerton to this group, as well. The first agenda item for this group is to develop a focused scoping statement about tools, repositories and frameworks - definitions and goals in each area.

(AI) Jim will contact Shel Wagner (UC-Berkeley) about joining a future ITANA call and discussing what he will be writing about for EDUCAUSE in the area of cloud computing.

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Agenda Building

While agendas are developed ahead of time, Jim encouraged members to speak up at the beginning of calls if they have additions or have urgent issues to discuss or on which to gain feedback.

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Minutes

Minutes from last call approved.

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Mellon RIT Program

There was discussion about the announcement from the Mellon Foundation that they are closing the RIT program, which has funded many initiatives, including some of the Kuali projects. It was emphasized that 1) Mellon has met or is meeting all current commitments and 2) the original model was that funded projects would become self-sustaining at some point.

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Planning for 2010

The working group held a wide-ranging discussion about work accomplished in 2009, as well as work in progress and items of interest for 2010. A "future agenda" list is generally part of each agenda and is on the wiki (https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/itana/Conference+Calls).
The enterprise workflow and survey items continue. What other items are of interest?

• Enterprise Architecture Frameworks - #2 on the future agenda, which is: what are people using, what has been the experience, what are the pros and cons of systems?

• EA Tools

• Repositories

• Defining business roles and roles used for security purposes. Are there general best practices?

• Enterprise workflow - it would be good to have a deliverable from this work. Perhaps a best practices document? It might be useful to do case studies of workflow efforts on campuses. There was a question about whether there is another group that is more tightly focused on workflow with which ITANA might partner (like the data working group from a year or so ago). There is the Workflow Management Coalition that was identified in an earlier call.

After discussion about various approaches to the workflow management issue, the decision was to document some real-life experiences at campuses that have workflow systems (ideally systems that cross administrative boundaries) up and running. (AI) Piet, Jim, Eric, Keith and Tom volunteered to identify such campuses, develop a common set of interview questions, talk with the identified campuses and write-up the results. (AI) Jim will put out a call on the ITANA list and/or CIO list searching for appropriate institutions. (AI) Tom will bring this up at appropriate locales at the CSG meeting. (AI) Keith will set up a call time for the gang of five.

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EA Frameworks, Tools and Repositories

There was a discussion about deliverables in these areas. One idea is to do a review and assessment of what is in use, what's working well and how sustainable such initiatives have been. For example, at the last F2F, several people stood up and said they were spinning up architecture groups. It would be interesting to know how those efforts are going.

This might be accomplished in a similar way to the workflow discussion above - identity institutions active in this area, develop a set of questions, and do some documentation.

One first need is to develop specific definitions of what we mean by "repository" and "tools." When we ask about "frameworks," what are we looking for?

(AI) Marina, Piet, and Rich volunteered to work on this. UW-Madison's IT Architecture group voted to volunteer Scott Fullerton to this group, as well. The first agenda item is to develop a focused scoping statement about tools, repositories and frameworks - definitions and goals in each area.

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Cloud Computing

There was a discussion about cloud computing and the potential impact this type of outsourcing of resources will have on architects. Tom mentioned that an EDUCAUSE publication has designated cloud computing as a focus area this year, with columns from Shel Wagner at UC Berkeley. (AI) Jim will contact Shel Wagner about joining a future ITANA call.

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Mobile Computing

There was a discussion about the increased prevalence of mobile devices and what that will mean for enterprise architects. There is some evidence that departments and professors are building mobile applications. Stanford has developed an application that people can use to track their enrollment/adds/drops. MIT started a project, handed off to CSG, called iMobile U intended to provide an infrastructure layer to help make applications more mobile-friendly. Penn State has seen a lot of interest in mobile apps and now has a developer working on this full-time. This is an area that will bear watching and discussing.

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Next Meeting - Thursday, January 21 - 2 p.m. EST / 1 p.m. CST / 11 a.m. PST