October Minutes

ITAC MEETING MINUTES
October 16, 2008

Attendees: Darryl McGraw, Vass Johnson, Gloria McNeill, Reginald Brown, Frieda Artis

Wake County: Sean Fiene, Lib Wanner

Due to work schedules, Niamh Darcy, Sondra Chaffee, Shannon Tufts, John Killebrew and Robert Michaud could not attend the meeting.

The meeting began at 9:05 a.m.

Lib Wanner welcomed everyone to the meeting and ensured that all members received the proper documents and presentation to accompany the meeting.

New IS Department Enterprise Technology Roadmap

Lib Wanner discussed the work done by Dan Edwards, IT Manager for Strategic Planning, on the lifecycle of key hardware and software used by the department. The information is presented as a roadmap for enterprise technology elements with the dual purpose of being a decision-making and communications tool for IS staff members and a communications tool for use with user departments. Lib indicated that Dan worked with members of the IS Management Team and all IS staff members in developing the roadmap.

Lib referred to the PowerPoint presentation that was provided to ITAC members in advance of the meeting to guide the discussion in addition to the roadmap and glossary documents.

Lib reminded the group that she had presented the prototype for the roadmap to them last spring and it was based on a tool used by Toyota that she had seen as part of her membership last year in the Corporate Executive Board. Lib indicated that after reviewing the draft with IS staff members it became apparent that much more needed to be included on the roadmap than previously thought and time was spent fleshing out the various components. Lib reviewed the components as follows: Desktop & Laptop Productivity Software, Desktop & Laptop System Software and Server Operating Systems and Enterprise Databases. She also reviewed the glossary of terms.

Lib then asked ITAC members for input on specific items on the roadmap. Lib asked the group for their thoughts on a possible time frame for going to Vista if at all. Darryl McGraw stated that Wake Tech is looking to implement it in 2010 and Vass Johnson indicated that Wake County Public Schools was on about the same time schedule. Lib indicated that her team was still investigating it with the thought of a possible upgrade in 2011.

Lib asked the group if they had run into problems with vendors having different time tables for the release of new versions of their software that required newer versions of the underlying databases. ITAC members indicated that they did not run into problems like this very often. Darryl McGraw asked if it would be possible to work with vendors on a three year schedule of upgrades to help level things out and Lib indicated that it would be worth discussing with vendors.

Lib then asked if any changes or additions needed to be made to the roadmap. Darryl McGraw and Reginald Brown asked about the possibility of including other services and specialty software such as data extraction tools to the roadmap. Lib indicated that she wanted to keep the roadmap at the enterprise level and used service level agreements with departments to document plans for specialty services. All agreed that this approach made sense.

Lib asked the group if they thought the roadmap was a valuable tool that would prove to be beneficial to the department in terms of decision-making and communication and all members agreed that the roadmap was very good and will prove useful. A few members discussed using the tool in their organizations, as well.

Lib Wanner stated that her staff will be finalizing the roadmap in early November and she will use it with her meetings with her fellow department heads in November and December. She then thanked the group for their input.

Other Topics for Discussion

Lib indicated that the topic for the next meeting would be Security Policy Development and asked the group if they would be open to providing input on the development of various security policies as the IS Department developed them over time. The group agreed that they would be more than happy to help.

The ITAC members thanked Lib for the presentation and materials delivered and Lib Wanner thanked the group for their input and participation.

Meeting adjourned at 9:35 a.m.