At the last IRC meeting, Michael Elliott, CIO for the Medical Campus and Christopher Bogue, the new Director of Network Services, came and spoke to us about the plans for free email to all faculty & staff at the Medical School.
A number of issues regarding email implementation, pricing reductions, security, web access, etc. were discussed. Mike and Chris outlined the plans at Medical Network Services to offer free email to everyone on the Medical Campus starting later this summer. The current email charge in individual network access fees will be removed at that time, and a choice of either exchange based or POP/IMAP based email service will be offered.
Network services will shoulder much of the cost of this service (in terms of manpower, servers, etc.), with the Dean's office providing the rest. The committee was assured that email security and confidentiality will be maintained, and that Network Services will try their best to ensure reliability and rapid access.
Several of the many independent email servers on campus were represented at the meeting, and they all appeared satisfied with the plans for this centralized system.
Mike Elliott and Chris Bogue informed the committee that Network Services was going to pay for a campus-wide site license for all Microsoft OS & Office products, and that negotiations for such a license were nearly complete. This will allow every one on campus to install MS products on their computers (PCs and Macs) at minimal cost. Issues regarding installation, availability of media (CDs), copies for personal use, etc. was discussed. Several members stressed that steps should be taken so that software installation/upgrades on this license does not require an expensive & time consuming "site visit" by MNS staff for each computer.
Issues regarding current efforts to have a "uniform" look and feel for all campus web sites were also discussed briefly. It was suggested that email or bulletin board groups be setup so that the faculty who actually run many of these sites remain appraised of web policy decisions. It was also stressed that network services needs to improve their communications with the faculty by regular mailings and/or an improved web presence.