The Direction and Value of UEN

This is a follow-up to the message posted Monday, February 17, 2003. More thoughts on the roles of UEN.

Certainly UEN should lead in SECURITY. Securing the network is essential. Steve Hess, University of Utah CIO, UEN Steering Committee member and former UEN Executive Director put it this way. "Anything that doesn't work or is not secure will go away." While his remarks were not directed to UEN specifically, they apply fully.

In fact, if I had a son or daughter that was contemplating a career. And if he/she had any interest in networking. And if I was asked for my advice. I would certainly recommend taking a good look at Network Security. Knowledge and capability in this area should guarantee job security far into the future.

UEN has formed a working group to address Network Security. Barbara White, CIO for Utah State University, is leading this effort. Whatever happens it is clear that Security is/should be part of the UEN future.

Another aspect of whatever UEN provides can be categorized under the general heading of Resource Allocation and Optimization. Training is certainly part of this area. UEN has held two training sessions in the past year. The first, held in Spring 2002, was specifically aimed at security. The second, held October, 2002, was filled with many different technical classes and was heavily weighted toward security.

Another aspect of Resource Optimization is UEN's ability to understand the technical strengths and weaknesses throughout the state. UEN can and should serve in a coordination capacity to bring these resources together. One example is that of Box Elder and CUES. Box Elder was a beta site for the State Student Information System application (SIS). Preston and Dave learned a lot about distributed versus centralized servers. This was important information. BJ and Steve were working on installing unlicensed radios in the central part of the state. They spent time understanding the ins and outs of getting these radios to work over long distances in hostile surroundings.

Preston (Box Elder) has been struggling with a few of his radios throughout the district. BJ needs some more information about how to deal with the State SIS application in his region. I was in a position to see this opportunity and recommended that BJ call Preston. I also recommended to Preston that he call BJ. Nothing formal was arranged, but perhaps it should have been.

There is another good example. We all believe that the big districts have all of the help, knowledge, ability, etc. necessary to take care of themselves. The assumption is that the big districts need UEN to step out of the way and let them take care of all District needs. And to some extent that is true. However, I was amazed to find out that Jordan District is a little different.

Jordan is the largest district in Utah in terms of students, faculty and numbers of buildings. Max Mulliner is the Technology and Data Communication Specialist for Jordan District. Max is also the only person in his district that works on routers. So Max is responsible for over 90 routers. And routers are not the only thing Max does. We here at UEN should be understanding of this and make darn sure we don't do things that cause problems for Max. More important we should make sure that we get information to Max and that we help him to maximize his limited time and resources.

I'll give more thought to this in the next few days. I hope to have a paper prepared in the near future.

That's all for now.........
9:37:33 PM    comment []