ITANA Conference Call Minutes, August 7, 2008

*Attendees*

Jim Phelps, University of Wisconsin (chair)
Jeremiah Adams, University of Colorado-Boulder
Marina Arseniev, University of California-Irvine
Tom Barton, University of Chicago
Mike Daley, University of Michigan
Leo De Sousa, British Columbia Institute of Technology
Hebert Dies-Flores, University of California-Berkeley
Michael Enstrom, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Mike Fary, University of Chicago
Duffy Gillman, University of Arizona
Paul Hobson, Cardiff University
Klara Jelinkova, Duke University
Steve Olshansky, Internet2
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)

*Action Items*

Jim Phelps and Jeremiah Adams will discuss the potential Face2Face in Boulder (piggy-backing on the CSG meeting January 7-9 2009).

Paul Hobson will send documentation about the JISC/ArchiMate project to the email list.

Mike Fary and Klara Jelinkova will develop examples of what a "5" response would look like on the data management survey question scale of 1-10.

ITANA members are asked to provide comments and suggestions on the data management survey by editing the Word document (with Track Changes turned on) and sending it to Klara Jelinkova and Mike Fury. Comments should be sent by August 14.

*Agenda*

1. Roll Call
2. Agenda Bash
3. Accept minutes of last call
4. Future Face 2 Face Survey - Jim
5. ArchiMate - Paul Hobson
a.http://www.archimate.org/
b.http://www.via-nova-architectura.org/magazine/magazine/enterprise-architecture-development-and-mode.html
6. Data Management Survey - Mike Fary, Klara Jelinkova
7. Data Management Survey DRAFT

*Future Face2Face Meetings*

Following up on the concept of a Face2Face prior to the next CSG meeting, Jeremiah Adams has reserved space at the University of Colorado-Boulder January 6, 2009 (the Tuesday prior to the CSG meeting). Should this ITANA meeting take place, his department will provide the room, as well as breakfast and lunch, for up to 60 people. Jeremiah and Jim will discuss this.

Jim Phelps talked with Ann West about a survey of ITANA constituents to determine which other organizations they belong to, as a way to determine the best place to piggy-back a F2F.

*ArchiMate*

Paul Hobson from Cardiff University provided an overview of ArchiMate. Paul just completed a two-day training program on this enterprise architecture modeling language.

According to the website (archimate.org), ArchiMate is The Open Group's open and independent modeling language for enterprise architecture, supported by different tool vendors and consulting firms. ArchiMate provides instruments to support enterprise architects in describing, analyzing and visualizing the relationships among business domains in an unambiguous way. ArchiMate offers a common language for describing the construction and operation of business processes, organizational structures, information flows, IT systems, and technical infrastructure.

The training that Paul attended was partly on ArchiMate and partly on BiZZdesign Architect, a software tool provided by BiZZdesign, a company that helps organizations analyze, improve and redesign processes.

Cardiff is one of three universities - the others are Kings College of London and Liverpool John Moores University - conducing a 12-month project funded by JISC. The project is intended to find ways to simplify EA modeling. JISC plans to publish case studies based on the work done by these three universities. AI Paul has some documentation about the JISC project and will send it to the email list.

Each institution involved it this project will use ArchiMate in different areas of the university. For example, Cardiff is focusing on internal administrative functions, which has many challenges in terms of reducing cost and complexity.

This is not intended to be a centralized modeling process. The idea is to provide tools that can be used by those who are not full-time architects to generate a common architecture map. For example, some of those attending the Cardiff training were not from an IT background. Cardiff plans to have someone become responsible for each part of the architecture and anticipates as many as 40-45 people involved.

Besides modeling processes, ArchiMate also allows impact analysis and roadmap analysis. For example, an institution planning to change its customer management tool can put that into the model and see visualizations of the impact on the rest of the system. Cardiff believes this will be particularly useful for those involved in project and program management.

*Data Management Survey*

Mike Fury and Klara Jelinkova reported on the draft of the data management survey that was distributed to the email list. The survey covers nine aspects of data management and is intended to provide an overview of the landscape of data management. It will also include some sort of open-ended questions where respondents can provide comments.

Respondents will be asked to rank each aspect on a scale of 1 to 10. The survey instrument will include examples of what a "1" response means and what a "10" response means. It was suggested that the survey also include a description of a "5" response. AI Mike and Klara will work on that.

The draft survey that was distributed is mostly complete, although the "Document management or Content management" section still needs some work. Once the ITANA group provides feedback, the survey instrument will be distributed to the EDUCAUSE data management constituent group. AI ITANA members are asked to provide comments and suggestions on the survey by editing the Word document (with Track Changes turned on) and sending it to Klara and Mike.

*Next Call, Thursday, August 21, 2008, 2:00 p.m. EDT*