At the urging of the School Council, the informational resources committee (IRC) was revived in January 2000, after being dormant for almost two years. Dr. Fazal Ahmad and Dr. Coralie Carraway convened the first meeting on January 10th, where Arun Malhotra was chosen to serve as the committee chairman.

Since then, the IRC has been meeting at regular intervals. We have adopted a mission statement that states:

The IRC represents the views of the faculty regarding information technology issues in the medical school. This committee will offer guidance for IT projects to meet the computing, communications (email, teleconferencing, etc.), research, and educational needs of the faculty. This committee will gather relevant information regarding IT issues & report results of our analyses and interpretation of this information to the School Council and Administration.

We see an important role of our committee to act as an interface between the medical school faculty and Medical Network Services, which provides informational technology (IT) services on campus. To get more information on IT needs and problems on campus, we have had meetings with representatives from Medical Network Services and the Calder Library (a major IT customer on campus). Meetings with the Medical Network Services will be held on a regular basis, to highlight problem areas and develop IT policies.

An extensive survey on IT & network issues is being assembled, and will be mailed out to all faculty in the Medical School in the next few weeks. Survey results, and input from Medical Network Services, will be used to develop a list of priorities for IT & network improvements on campus.

Arun Malhotra, Chair