April 16, 2014 Meeting Agenda
Wednesday, April 16, 2014 at 9:00am
Host site: Varner Hall Lower Level, 3835 Holdrege Street, Lincoln
VOTING MEMBERS/ALTERNATES PRESENT:
Dr. Terry Haack, Co-Chair, Bennington Public Schools
Mr. Ed Hoffman, Co-Chair, Nebraska State College
System;
Mr. Burke Brown, Alt. for Mr. Jeff
Johnson, Centennial Public Schools
Mr. Steven Stortz, Alt. for Stephen
Hamersky, Daniel J. Gross Catholic High School
Mr. Greg Maschman, Alt. for Clark
Chandler, Nebraska Wesleyan University
Mr. Lyle Neal, Southeast Community
College
Mr. Gary Needham, ESU 9
Ms. Mary Niemiec, University of
Nebraska
Mr. Darren Oestmann, Boards of
Education
LIAISONS/ALTERNATE MEMBERS PRESENT: SuAnn Witt, Alt. for Brent Gaswick, Nebraska Department of Education
MEMBERS/LIAISONS ABSENT: Mr. Mike Carpenter, Doane College; Mr. Matt Chrisman, Mitchell Public Schools; Mr. John Dunning,
Wayne State College; Ms. Yvette Holly, UN-Medical Center; Dr. Mike Lucas, York
Public Schools; Ms. Brenda Decker, Office of the CIO; Mr. Randy Schmailzl, Metropolitan Community College; Mr. Gary
Targoff, Nebraska Educational Telecommunications; Dr. Bob Uhing, Educational
Service Unit 1; and Dr. Carna Pfeil, Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary
Education
CALL TO ORDER, ELECTRONIC POSTING,
LOCATION OF OPEN MEETING LAW DOCUMENTS, ROLL CALL, INTRODUCTIONS
The Co-chair,
Dr. Haack, called the meeting to order at 1:30 p.m. There were seven members
present at the time of roll call. A quorum was not present at the time of roll
call. After roll call was taken an additional member arrived, at which time a
quorum existed to conduct official business. A copy of the Open Meetings Act
was available in Varner Hall. The
meeting notice was posted to the NITC Web site on April 14, 2014. The meeting agenda was also posted to the
NITC Web site on April 14, 2014
CONSIDER APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA FOR
THE APRIL 16, 2014 MEETING*
Ms. Niemiec moved to approve the April 16, 2014 agenda as presented. Mr. Hoffman seconded. Roll call vote:
Maschman-Yes, Haack-Yes, Stortz-Yes, Brown-Yes, Neal-Yes, Needham-Yes,
Niemiec-Yes, and Oestmann-Yes. Results: Yes-8, No-0,
Abstained-0. Motion carried.
CONSIDER APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES
FROM THE FEBRUARY 19, 2014 MEETING*
Mr. Needham moved to approve the February 19, 2014 meeting minutes as presented. Ms. Niemiec seconded.
Roll call vote: Oestmann-Yes,
Niemiec-Yes, Needham-Yes, Neal-Yes, Brown-Yes, Stortz-Yes, Haack-Yes, and
Maschman-Yes. Results: Yes-8, No-0, Abstained-0. Motion carried.
Mr. Stortz
arrived to the meeting.
MEMBERSHIP UPDATE
At the
April NITC meeting, the Commission approved a new council member. Darren Oestmann was introduced and welcomed
as a new Education Council member. He
will be completing Jeff Stanley’s 2013-15 term representing Boards of Education.
Mr. Rolfes
informed the Council that there are many members whose terms will be expiring on
June 30th due to term limit and/or retirement.
If the
Education Council meets in June, the slate will be finalized and the council
can vote on them for recommendation to the NITC. It was advised to have a June meeting to
approve the following membership nominations for the 2014-2016 term:
HIGHER EDUCATION:
·
Mary
Niemiec, UN System
·
Clark
Chandler, Independent Colleges & Universities
·
Randy
Schmailzl, Community College System
·
John
Dunning, State College System
K-12 EDUCATION:
·
Gary
Needham, Educational Service Units
·
Dan Hoesing, Administrators (not yet confirmed)
·
Darren
Oestmann, Boards of Education (not yet confirmed)
·
TBD, Public Teachers (not yet confirmed
K-12 &
HIGHER EDUCATION (2013-15 PRO TEM)
·
Derek Bierman, Community College
System
·
TBD, State College System (not yet confirmed)
Dr. Terry Haack, Mr. Ed Hoffmann, Mr. Jeff Johnson,
and Mr. Lyle Neal were acknowledged for their many years of distinguished service
on the Education Council, in the role of advising the Commission on matters of
education technology initiatives, funding, and policy.
Dr. Terry
Haack was congratulated for being appointed to serve on the Nebraska
Information Technology Commission representing K12.
NETWORK
NEBRASKA UPDATE
Mr. Rolfes
reported that there are 14 new confirmed entities joining Network Nebraska with
an additional 16 entities who want to wait until 2015.
7/1/2013
vs. 7/1/2014
261
participants 275 participants
$168,487,
1170-mile backbone $190,020, 1293-mile backbone
Internet
Unit Rate $2.50/Mbps/month Internet Unit Rate
$1.2844/Mbps/month
8.0Gbps
of K-12 Internet 13.95Gbps of K-12 Internet
2.7Gbps
of higher ed Internet 7.0Gbps of higher
ed Internet
0.0Gbps
of I2
Commercial Peering Service 3.0Gbps of I2
Commercial Peering Service
89% of public K-12 districts 94% of public K-12 districts
94% of Educational Service Units
100% of Educational
Service Units
100% of public higher ed 100% of public higher ed
50% of private higher
ed 50% of private higher
ed
3%
of private K-12 schools 3% of private K-12
schools
Commercial
Peering Service (CPS) is a separate pathway for data to travel through the
Great Plains Network Gigapop in Kansas City versus Commodity
Internet. CPS travels over the Internet2
backbone and is only one step removed from such commercial interests as
Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Netflix. Network
Nebraska IT Engineers are seeing that only half of the 3Gbps CPS capacity is
being used. The probable reason that CPS
is not full to capacity is because Network Nebraska’s current commodity
Internet providers must be advertising faster routes, and therefore CPS does
not present that much of a routing advantage.
With the level of commodity Internet purchases increasing rapidly, we
are out buying demand. The use of the Internet
is inexpensive but the cost of the traffic shaper devices to get Internet to the
schools is increasing. Participation fees
may go up due to this issue. By the June
Education Council meeting, the Office of the CIO will have more information.
The Network
Nebraska Advisory Group will need to look at and evaluate the cost recovery
model for Network Nebraska.
State of Nebraska
OCIO FCC Comment Filing
On April
7, 2014, the Office of the CIO submitted comments to the Federal Communication
Commission in the matter of modernizing the e-rate program for schools and
libraries. The FCC is allocating $2 billion over several years for this
effort. The modernization is looking to
discontinuation of voice services support, to encourage more broadband connections
for schools and libraries, to encourage consortia, and to explore ways to reduce
the administrative burden of filing. Responses
to the comments are due Monday, April 21st. Mr. Rolfes has been gathering circuit,
bandwidth, monthly costs, and provider information from K12 institutions. If
Nebraska wants to try to meet the national minimum 100 Mbps bandwidth
requirement for every school, more work needs to be done. If we can show our circuit data to the FCC, Nebraska
may be able to get some support, especially in the high cost areas. Schools and libraries will be encouraged to participate
in this effort.
LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
LB 1103. Sec. 2. [excerpt] The
Education Committee of the Legislature shall conduct a strategic planning
process to create the statewide vision for education in Nebraska described in
section 1 of this act which shall include aspirational goals, visionary
objectives, meaningful priorities, and practical strategies. The committee or
subcommittees thereof may conduct meetings, work sessions, and focus groups
with individuals and representatives of educational interests, taxpayer groups,
the business community, or any other interested entities. The committee shall
also hold at least three public hearings to receive testimony from the general
public in locations that represent a variety of educational situations. The
committee shall submit a report regarding such process electronically to the
Clerk of the Legislature on or before December 31, 2014.
The Education Council would like to help senators
understand that there is collaboration and efficiencies occurring among many
school districts because of Network Nebraska.
Network Nebraska has saved the state significant costs through more
efficient networking and less expensive Internet access. The question was
raised as to whether the NITC can assist in the LB 1103 planning effort. Mr. Rolfes recommended that the Council approach
the NITC to see if the Commission could assist with communicating information
to Senators. The Education Council would
like to submit a formal offer to be a part of the study and to provide
assistance. The offer should include the
NITC’s statutory purposes. The Office of
the CIO may also be involved with the summer studies.
Ed Hoffman
presided over the rest of the meeting.
Emerging
Technologies Task Group, Greg Maschman. The work
group has not met.
Services Task Group, Gary Needham.
A draft of Catalog of Services was linked to the agenda. After the work group held discussions with
NNAG, it was recommended that the Education Council provide the structure and
outline of the catalog. Network Nebraska
would provide the information regarding what services NN can provide. The catalog is divided up into these
sections:
·
Services
Provided by Network Nebraska
·
Services
From Member Centers of Excellence
·
Externally
Provided Services
Rick Golden
is working on fee-based or subscription co-location services that have not yet been
charged to participants. Rather than
charge for service hosting and management, the option of billing per rack is also
being explored. The entities will
determine what servers and applications they want in their hosted rack. The University of Nebraska will take the lead
on the entity agreements. The Nebraska Department
of Education is discussing the use of Network Nebraska for the student data dashboard
as a service.
Governance Task Group.
The work group has not met but will try to meet before the June meeting.
Marketing Task Group, SuAnn Witt.
The Network Nebraska marketing survey has not been done for the past
couple of years. The work group has been
working with NNAG to see what type of information would be helpful to
collect. After discussion, it was
recommended that the focus of the work group should be on communication about Network
Nebraska services and perhaps publish quarterly electronic newsletters. The Network
Nebraska website is undergoing redesign and should also be used as a
communication tool. By group consensus, the name of the Marketing Work Group
was changed to Communications Work Group.
State
Colleges, Ed Hoffman. John Dunning
is back at Wayne State working part-time.
The CIO’s from the three state colleges met to discuss the re-energizing
of services and to determine what elements all three institutions have in
common to benefit the students. Efforts are
underway with the University of Nebraska and the NeSIS
project to use their analytic tool data warehouse. The goal is to have a standardized central
reporting system for the colleges.
Community Colleges, Lyle Neal.
He attended the Ellucian Live Conference held
the first part of April in California.
Five of six community colleges have Ellucian
products hosted at their campuses. There
have been discussions regarding moving services to the cloud. Doane and Wesleyan University also work with
this company. In June, there will be a meeting
of community colleges technical staff and will invite Wesleyan and Doane. This
is another opportunity for collaboration of this effort. Community colleges are taking advantage of
UN’s rack hosting. Mr. Neal is retiring
in June. He stated that he has enjoyed
his experience on the Education Council and sees that the collaboration between
K12 and higher education has been and can be beneficial to students in
continuing their education. In July, Southeast Community College will have a
new President who has a strong IT background.
Independent
Colleges, Greg Maschman. Tom Peters
has been instrumental in bringing community and independent colleges
together. There is an interest in DataTel. Mr.
Maschman invited Mr. Rolfes to the Independent Colleges Business Officers Meeting
to be held in Hastings. Mr. Maschman stated it would be good for them to learn
about Network Nebraska participation.
University
of Nebraska, Mary Niemiec. The University
is releasing an RFP to establish a task force to explore the future of
Blackboard. President Milliken is
resigning to take a position as President of CUNY in New York. The Board of Regents have
appointed James Linder as Interim President.
He has been supportive of technology in teaching and research. The search for the Vice Provost for the P16
initiative is coming to a close. This
person will be very instrumental in multiple ways with distance education and
partnering with other entities. The
University of Nebraska and University of Nebraska-Omaha is doing a pilot project
with three dual credit classes and key general education courses. The first offerings of MOOCs on the Kucera
platform will be in health literacy and communications. A press release about this will be coming out
soon. This will be the University’s first
Kucera move. Rules negotiations
regarding federal financial aid and distance education are occurring in DC. States are supposed to have rules and
regulations for providing distance education (cost, time, and consistency
across the states).
K-12
Public & Private. Mr. Stortz was
pleased to see another potential parochial school joining Network Nebraska
(e.g. Archbishop Bergan—Fremont). Mr. Needham
commented that Internet2 and InCommon have been helpful
with the identity management project. This
year’s Internet2 Conference focused on identity management. The project would
like educators to login with the same information that they login with every
day at school. Higher Education’s Internet demand has been separated from K12
to provide added flexibility and simplify E-rate eligibility. The University of Nebraska will consult with
the higher education entities and then will contact the OCIO as to billing and
what the fee and contracts will be for them.
The University bills the OCIO quarterly for Internet, and the OCIO bills
the participants monthly. .
AGENDA ITEMS FOR THE 6/18/2014
MEETING/CONSIDER LOCATION FOR THE 6/18/2014 MEETING
There were
no pressing agenda items for June 18th meeting so there will not be
a meeting in June. At the August
meeting, the council will need to vote on new co-chairs. Co-Chair, Dr. Terry Haack, has been appointed
to serve on the NITC.
Mr. Brown moved to adjourn. Mr. Stortz seconded. All were in favor. Motion carried.
The
meeting was adjourned at 10:45 a.m.
The NITC
Education Council wishes to thank the University of Nebraska Online Worldwide
staff for helping arrange and host the April 16, 2014 meeting.
Meeting minutes were recorded by Lori Lopez Urdiales and reviewed by Tom Rolfes, Nebraska Information Technology Commission.