News
New
Texas A&M’s ITAC meets Thursday at 8:30 a.m.
The ODNI meets with various System Offices representatives on Thursday and Friday
The TTVN Board meets Friday at 1:30 p.m.
Netsync and Sirius were awarded Cisco Smart Net contracts
- The contracts are in the process of being finalized and signed with each VAR
- Each member needs to select their Smart Net provider by December 9 and produce a right-sized coverage list of to be covered items with the associated coverage level as soon as possible
- The A&M System is on Winter Break starting December 23, which doesn’t give us many working days
Ed Evans reported that A&M-Corpus Christi was among two A&M System members highlighted in the Texas Department of Information Resources 2020-24 State Strategic Plan for Information Resources Management; check page 16 in the report
- A&M-Corpus Christi’s work for Security IT Service Delivery with multi-factor authentication
- Texas A&M’s Division of IT’s work with cybersecurity awareness
In case you missed it . . . As required by Texas Government Code, Section 2054.0965, the IRM of each state agency and institution of higher education (IHE) must conduct a Information Resources Deployment Review (IRDR) every two years
- Texas State Agencies are required to submit IRDR results for review by the Quality Assurance Team, which is includes representatives from DIR, the Legislative Budget Board, and the State Auditor’s Office; the online submission through the SPECTRIM portal constitutes a complete submission
- IHEs are required by Texas Administrative Code, Section 213.40 to complete an Electronic Information Resources (EIR) Accessibility survey; the online submission of IRDR Sections 1.03, 2.02, and 2.03 through the SPECTRIM portal satisfies this reporting requirement
- Texas Education Code, 51.406 exempts IHEs from reporting the additional IRDR results to DIR; however, IHEs have the option to completed IRDR section if desired. IHEs will not receive a separate EIR Accessibility survey and must completed the Accessibility sections in the SPECTRIM portal to meet the EIR Accessibility survey requirements
Key Dates
- Early January 2020 – Statewide Portal for Enterprise Cybersecurity Threat, Risk and Incident Management (SPECTRIM) open for data entry
- March 31, 2020 – STATE AGENCIES deadline to submit all IRDR responses in SPECTRIM
- March 31, 2020 – INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION deadline to submit the EIR accessibility survey responses in SPECTRIM
- May 31, 2020 – STATE AGENCIES deadline to complete Information Resource Corrective Action Plans (IR-CAP) for items of non-compliance, if applicable, in SPECTRIM
DIR has worked over the past few months to streamline this process and has reduced the overall number of IRDR questions. DIR will provide additional information and host a webinar in January to answer questions. In the meantime, please take some time to review IRDR instructions and start gathering information needed for input into the SPECTRIM portal
In Process
The committee evaluating the NaaS RFPs will meet December 19 to determine the finalist
System-Wide Contracting News
New
A&M System-wide Contracts Under Development
- Captioning Services will provide members with closed caption, transcription, and subtitling solutions to make video accessible, searchable, SEO-friendly and more engaging
- Interfolio is a self-service web database program that allows faculty (or staff) to use the Internet to maintain their teaching, research, and service records; the System Offices received a proposal for a system-wide agreement and is working with the System Procurement Office to develop a competitive bid for this product
- Qualtrics provides feedback from customers, employees and students. The System Offices is in conversations to obtain a proposal for a system-wide agreement
Repeats
Current A&M System-wide Contracts
- Access Data provides members with preservation hold software (in annual assessment)
- Adobe provides members full Creative Cloud suite and Adobe Pro software tools (discretionary)
- Banner COE provides members with Banner-related services (discretionary)
- Blackboard provides a cloud-based learning management system option to members (discretionary)
- Canvas provides a cloud-based learning management system option to members (discretionary)
- Class Climate (Scantron) provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- D2L provides a cloud-based learning management system option to members (discretionary)
- Diligent provides board portal functionality for all members (discretionary)
- DocuSign provides members with electronic signature and related workflow capabilities (discretionary)
- Duo provides two-factor authentication for all members (discretionary)
- Examity provides members with on-line proctoring services under a one-year master contract (discretionary contract)
- eXplorance provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- GovQA (WebQA) is the TAMUS approved Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) solution for all members (in annual assessment)
- Guardian I-9 (LawLogix) provides members with electronic I-9 compliance verification (discretionary).
- Hootsuite enables members to manage social networks, schedule messages and measure social media from a dashboard (discretionary)
- IOTA Solutions provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- Laserfiche provides members with the digitization of documents, the automation of records processing, storage retrieval, security and archiving (discretionary)
- Modo Labs provides mobile application development support (discretionary)
- Navex provides members with a ethics and compliance management (discretionary)
- Oracle provides members with a shared hardware/software platform to host Oracle-based applications (discretionary)
- Portfolium provides students and recent graduates with the ability to connect with businesses and employers using previous academic work and projects to supplement their communication (discretionary)
- ProctorU provides members with on-line proctoring services under a one-year master contract (discretionary)
- Proofpoint email filtering and data loss prevention tools (in annual assessment)
- Siteimprove checks web pages, every five days, for spelling, grammar, broken links and accessibility for 54 cents per web page per year (discretionary)
- Smart Net (Cisco) offers members equipment maintenance (discretionary)
- SmartEvals (Gap Technologies) provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- Syncplicity licensing is available for all members (in annual assessment)
- WebEx online collaboration and meeting software is available to all members at the low cost of $1.44 per month per license (discretionary)
- Zoom online collaboration and meeting software provides members with an alternative to WebEx, GoToMeeting and Adobe Connect
SCIO Trips/Visits
- No trips scheduled this week