It is Spring Break week across the Texas A&M University System. For the week of March 9, the following items of general interest are worth commenting on:
News
New
The TTVN Board meets at 1:30 p.m. Monday
The Office of the General Counsel reviewed a specific outsourcing case related to access to CJIS data at PVAMU
- PVAMU has outsourced some of its IT functions to Ellucian
- A question was asked: If an Ellucian employee has access to CJIS data, do they have to sign the CJIS Security Addendum? The answer is yes; the relevant threshold under the FBI’s CJIS Security Policy appears to be having access to hardware used to access CJIS or providing IT connections through which CJIS is accessed
Joe Mertens, President & CEO of Sirius sent the following email:
To our valued clients,
Sirius is closely watching the rapidly changing circumstances related to the Coronavirus (COVID-19). We are issuing this communication to provide helpful information to our clients about the impact of this situation.
Our top priorities are the support and satisfaction of our clients, as well as the health and wellbeing of our clients and employees. As such, we want to ensure we are keeping you informed regarding our Business Continuity plans and the current state of the IT Supply Chain as we see it.
- Business Continuity: Sirius has an existing Pandemic plan since the H1N1 (Swine Flu) outbreak in 2009. As such, our employees are equipped to work from home if necessary due to quarantine. Additionally, our four Network Operation Centers are geographically dispersed in Omaha, NE, Chicago, IL, Toronto, Canada, and Chennai, India to help reduce any risk tied to a single location. Based on what we know at this time, we do not see any concerns around our ability to support your system operational and technical support needs. Additionally, should you be concerned about your existing Pandemic Business Continuity plans, we have specialists that can assist you in determining your risks and readiness.
- Supply Chain: As your partner, we know you may have concerns about the potential of impacts on the IT supply chain, and we are seeing some OEM manufacturers lengthening lead times for products. This is due to component parts that originate in China, Japan, and South Korea. Given the uncertainty of short- and mid-term impacts of the Coronavirus on the supply chain in our industry, some of our clients have reviewed current and upcoming business priorities to determine which projects may be at risk if lead times from OEM manufacturers lengthen further, and have accelerated ordering product for critical projects. If you determine this is in your best interest, we can assist you with secure warehousing and integration services if necessary to meet your needs.
As your partner, our goal at Sirius is to support you with the best people, information and programs at our disposal. For further inquiries or assistance, please contact your Sirius representative or email info@siriuscom.com.
Sincerely,
Joe Mertens
President & CEO
In Process
RELLIS contracts
- Contract negotiations for network services at RELLIS with AT&T/ Cisco (RELLIS NaaS) and for data center services at RELLIS with RCDRC continue
Captioning, transcription, streaming and experience management contracts
- Contract negotiations with Qualtrics, Rev.com, 3 Play Media and Mediasite continue
System-Wide Contracting News
In Process
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