NACS Advisory Committee Charter

Introduction

Network and Academic Computing Services (NACS) manages critical campus resources on behalf of the UCI faculty and the extended university community. An effective advisory mechanism is essential to ensure NACS operates in harmony with overall campus goals.

Currently, NACS receives advice and input using a variety of informal and formal mechanisms, including the Academic Senior Managers (ASMs), School Computing Coordinator (SCC), the Computing Support Coordinator (CSC) , and the Computing Lab Coordinator (CLC) groups. The official Academic Senate advisory mechanism is the Council on Research, Computing and Library Resources (CoRCLR), where the NACS Director participates as an ex-officio member.

The amount of time the CoRCLR has to deal with computing and network issues is limited as their agenda is full with many other important matters. It has become clear to NACS and others that an additional formal advisory mechanism would be beneficial.

The NACS Advisory Committee

NACS proposes to create the NACS Advisory Committee (NAC) would meet regularly to review current and future computing and telecommunication issues and directions. Proposed parameters of this group are listed below:

• Meeting Schedule: Every other month
• Participation: The goal would be to broadly represent the campus by having someone from each campus school participate in the Advisory Committee. In addition, the group would likely have representatives from Administrative and Business Services,  Student Affairs, student government, the Libraries, and the Division of Undergraduate Education.
• CoRCLR participation: A faculty subcommittee from the CoRCLR would participate as NAC members.
• ASM/SCC participation: One school representative would come from the Academic Senior Manager (ASM) group, and one would come from the School Computing Coordinator (SCC) group.
• Additional faculty participation: Additional faculty would participate to represent any remaining unrepresented schools.
• Chair: The NAC would be chaired by the NACS Director.

Potential Advisory Group Topics

NACS will look to the Advisory Group to help determine areas for review and participation. Examples of potential topics are listed below:

• Future services: 
  What new services should NACS be investigating? What is the relative importance of "new" technologies such as wireless networking, voice over IP, streaming video?

• Review NACS services and service policies:
  E4E/Enterprise Service offerings and per-user resource allocations; what services should be fee-based and which should not; DCS service policy and futures; high performance computing directions.

• Network Edge Upgrades:
  Provide input on the order NACS does major upgrades to school and building network infrastructure; help prioritize short-term "hotspot" minor upgrades.

• Review relative priority of existing efforts for staff and financial resource allocation:
  Instructional technology/EEE, instructional labs, campus help desk, high performance computing, research computing and networking support, DCS, network consultation, subnet/LAN assistance, network security, e-mail services, indirect support, training coordination, etc.

• Review high-level network and computing policies as needed:
  Computer and Network Use Policy, UCInet Guidelines, UCInetID allocation/maintenance policy, UCInet access and security policies, etc.

• Advise on managing/allocating off-campus network bandwidth.

• Provide input on annual budget requests.

• Provide a conduit for feedback from individual schools and units about current or potential NACS services and activities.
  Advisory committee members could serve as spokespersons for their colleagues to help voice concerns about the quality or nature of NACS services

Updated: December 11, 2007

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