For the week of November 18, the following items of general interest are worth commenting on:
News
New
The committee evaluating the NaaS RFPs will meet Friday to review the BAFO responses
Jeff Graham, LEARN Board Chair sent out this email on Thursday (in case you missed it)
Good afternoon Board, TAG and LEARN staff:
I want to let you know about something that has happened in the last 24 hours that will significantly impact LEARN as an organization. Family considerations have led Pankaj to make a very difficult decision to return to Ohio, and as such he has submitted his resignation effective February 16, 2020.
First off I want to thank Pankaj for all that he has done for the community and the tireless effort he has put in these last four years. Without him we would not have been able to develop and execute a community-driven strategic plan that modernizes the LEARN business model and offered innovative solutions such as the Unmetered Network Services, DDOS mitigation as well as a model to add additional services in the future. His outreach to K-12, community colleges, cities, counties, libraries and museums is paying off as we are beginning to see these community anchor institutions participate. LEARN has also completed the optical backbone upgrade in record time of 18 months. Recently LEARN won a National Science Foundation CC* grant worth $800K which will further LEARN’s reach into small colleges and universities across Texas helping fulfill the research and outreach mission of LEARN. As it was the first NSF grant for LEARN a rigorous audit by them endorsed LEARN’s financial process and systems as meeting the federal standards thereby allowing opportunities to compete for future grants. Nationally LEARN is now directly connected to the Energy Science Network (ESnet), PacWave and Internet2 creating new opportunities at the state and regional level.
If that were not enough Pankaj has also been able to attract and develop top talent. He has put together and groomed an Executive Team that is nationally recognized and respected and LEARN is in good hands with them. Thank you Pankaj.
Second please make arrangements to attend the December board meeting as it will be a very important meeting where as a board we will need to appoint an Interim President and CEO and deliberate and plan our next steps.
Join me thanking Pankaj for his tireless effort on behalf of the community and wish him well in his next endeavor.
Comments, ideas, or concerns feel free to reach out to me or any Executive Committee member.
Thank you
Jeff Graham, LEARN Board Chair
Repeats
Internal Audit will join the CIOs at the December CIO Chat to discuss internal control patching requirements
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
- Sedona Systems 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 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
- PVAMU (Nov 21)