Orbis Cascade Alliance: New Strategic Agenda

From: Orbis Cascade

As of last week, the Orbis Cascade Alliance has a new Strategic Agenda and statements of Mission, Vision, and Values:

Mission, Vision, and Values<http://www.orbiscascade.org/>

Strategic Agenda<http://www.orbiscascade.org/index/strategic-agenda>

This is our first major revision since 2009.  The new documents are the result of an effort that included a strategic planning retreat attended by more than 50 deans, directors, team chairs, and Alliance staff. These are fairly concise and, in some cases, aspirational statements and we are now working on specific projects, timing, and an updating of committee structure.

GIL Next Generation Cataloging/Metadata Team Meeting Notes

November 19, 2013

The Cataloging & Metadata Team met via Webex on November 19, 2013.  Members present were Erin Grant, Adam Kubik, Amy Eklund, Andy Carter, Debra Skinner, Guy Frost, Kathy Adams, Linda Jones, Mary Frances Hansard, Neil Hughes, Susan Wynne.  Guest: Elijah Scott

1.  Survey Responses

We received 73 responses to our survey, which closed November 15. The team discussed ways to integrate the responses with our work, especially the documents due in November and December (see below).  The survey responses will likely be most applicable to the December documents, but we will review the responses looking for any categories missing from our working documents for the November deadline.  Susan will also try to use NVivo to analyze the open-ended responses.

2.    Structure & Introductory Description(s) (due Nov. 30)

The group has been talking about the level of detail desired by the larger planning team and what we considered appropriate for this initial submission.  Our outline structure with the full version of our introductory descriptions and scenarios would currently be about 24 pages.

Elijah Scott, chair of the Team Leaders, clarified the parameters for what is due Nov. 30 and what the overall planning team expects our group to produce.  The November and December submissions are not expected to be the actual RFP, and the larger group is not asking for a deep level of detail in these documents or for the actual RFP.  He noted that these initial submissions are first drafts and not final.  He recommended using broad categories and focusing more on asking questions than submitting detailed lists of requirements (although the detailed lists and scenarios are extremely important to the process, even if they are not incorporated into the actual RFP as-is).  The planning team recommends the Orbis Cascade RFP as a model, but not a strict guide.  For the November deadline, Elijah suggested submitting the list of categories plus a few sentences accompanying each category, and maybe a brief broader introduction as well.  

Some group members expressed concern about leaving out detailed requirements in the RFP.  [Following the Webex meeting, in an email discussion, group members agreed to submit both the briefer document as described by Elijah, along with the more detailed scenarios we have already developed.]

The group has already identified categories that we wish to address (Structure), but we should continue looking at RFP examples, the survey responses, etc., for any missing categories.  Erin will create a new working document for the group to write and edit brief 1-4 sentence descriptions for each category.  We can pull from or condense the detailed scenarios and other working documents for the brief descriptions.

3.  List Required Functionality & Questions about Functionality (due Dec. 20)

Neil and Susan will formulate a plan to de-duplicate all the requirements we have gathered so far (including the survey responses) and reformulate most of them into questions.  

4.    Miscellaneous

Erin indicated that data security and support of issues and problems are being addressed by the Cloud/Systems team. Erin, Andy, and Susan will work on a list of requirements and issues to send to the Cloud team regarding archival and repository material and systems.

Teams were asked to make contact with our GIL Coordinating Committee member and ensure that they are included in the process. Guy is the current chair of the GIL cataloging committee, and Linda is the vice chair.  Both of them are also members of the Next-Gen Cataloging & Metadata Team.  Guy is planning a GUGM session on the progress of the next-generation system planning effort.

Updates from Collaborative Tech Services (Guy) or Discovery (Amy):

• Amy indicated that Discovery did not meet last month.  She publicized our survey and encouraged people to respond.
• Guy reported that the collaborative team would meet via Webex this Thursday.  They are currently working on RFP questions.  

5.  Other

• Guy reported that Valdosta recently hired a new librarian who has experience with migrating to a shared statewide catalog (albeit not a “next-gen” ILS product) in another state.  The group asked him to invite her to join our team.
• Elijah thanked the group for their work so far.

Cloud Team Meeting Minutes 2013-11-21

Present: Bill Clayton, Philip Fitzpatrick, Doug Goans, Chris Helms, Glenn Leavell, Craig Schroer

Posting minutes to blog
Discussion of whether to post all minutes to the blog. We will begin by posting the minutes of the 11/14/2013 meeting and today’s (2013-11-21) meeting.

Clarification of document version to be editing
Question about which version of RFP document to do all of our subsequent edits in. Doug is going to harmonize all information into the the following document:
rfp_shared_library_management_service_final-sectE-v2

Upcoming holiday meeting schedule
Meet early the week following (beginning of December) Thanksgiving since we’ll miss our meeting on the holiday itself. Doug will send out a Doodle Poll to see what availability is for that week.

Upcoming project deadlines and deliverables
November 30th is date for introductory statement and general outline of sections (e.g., Section E.1. Reliability, E.2. Scalability and performance, etc.). On November 30th we will also want to submit any new structural changes to our document (e.g., if we added a new section, “F”). We already have this information mostly in place in our current document.

December 20th is deadline when team leaders meet to look at ‘first-pass’ draft of RFP. We will be asking many broad open-ended questions in initial RFP except for when we need to state specific requirements. Our present version of the document is already a rough draft of what we will wish to be sharing on December 20th.

Collaborative Technical Services Team WebEx meeting minutes November 7, 2013

Collaborative Technical Services Team WebEx meeting minutes

November 7, 2013

Present at the meeting were:  Beth Burnett, Bill Walsh, Cathy Jeffrey, Donna Bennett, Guy Frost, Jacquiline Vickers, Miriam Nauenburg, Sherrida Crawford. 

Cathy Jeffrey welcomed everyone to the meeting. She opened the meeting by requesting approval of the minutes from the previous meeting.  The minutes were approved.  Cathy indicated that the minutes would be posted to the Next Gen Blog. 

Cathy reported that there had not been any blog responses to the minutes of Team meetings nor any comments through e-mail other than sharing some information.  

Cathy stated that the first item of business would be to determine what sort of structure the Team’s RFP should have.  She suggested that we seem to have three choices:

            -produce our own section of the RFP with an introductory statement along with requirements and questions
            -submit our questions/requirements to the functional groups to be included in their sections of the RFP
            -submit a list of questions and let the committee drafting the RFP include them where they deem appropriate

Cathy asked for discussion on this topic.  Sherrida suggested that the last option where we work on our questions and allow the committee writing the RFP to position them where they made the most sense seemed acceptable.  Cathy stated that if we send them to the functional groups that we would lose control.  They could edit them, or leave them out.  She speculated that the group might be unhappy with that outcome.  Guy stated that he thought that the Orbis Cascade RFP had a separate section on collaboration.  He was reluctant to lose control of our suggestions for the RFP.  Bill Walsh stated in chat that he thought we should have a brief section on collaboration.  Sherrida said that she does not believe that it has to be either/or.  The Orbis example clearly shows that there is a section on collaboration but also questions that were integrated into the rest of the document.  Cathy summarized that we could have a dedicated section for some questions but also have questions that appear in other parts of the document. 

Cathy polled the group on the decision for how the Collaborative Technical Services section should be structured.  The poll question was:

Please select the statement that seems most appropriate:

a.    We should produce our own section for the RFP

b.   We should contribute our questions to the functional groups for inclusion in their sections

c.    We should submit a list of questions to be used where appropriate.

Results:

a.    5 votes

b.    1 vote

c.    1 vote

Following the vote Bill commented in chat that he had voted “a” but believed that we could submit less broad questions to other groups if we come up with any.  Donna made a similar comment in chat.

The next topic of discussion was in regard to what should be included in our RFP section.  Cathy referred to a document that Bill Clayton had sent to the group earlier which provided a template that could be used.  Cathy described this template as having 3 basic elements which were:

1.    Introductory description

2.    List of required functionality

3.    List of questions about functionality

Cathy asked the group if this was the template that we want to follow and reminded everyone that we are supposed to submit our structure by Nov. 30^th.  Sherrida stated that we should concentrate more on questions than required functionality. Cathy agreed and asked what everyone else thought. Bill, Donna and Miriam all agreed through chat.

Cathy then asked the group how they felt about including an introductory statement.  Guy said that an introductory description of what our intentions are for collaborative technical services and all it encompasses would be nice to have for those who have questions about it.  Guy thought it would be useful.  Bill and Donna agreed in chat.  Cathy asked for a vote on this issue. A show of hands approved the inclusion of an introductory statement.  Cathy summarized that the Collaborative Technical Services RFP should include an Introductory statement and questions but probably not any required elements.  

Cathy then asked for volunteers to write the introductory statement. Sherrida suggested that we use the Orbis statement as a model.  Bill pointed out that the statement Sherrida had referenced was for Collection and Resource Management rather than Collaboration.  Cathy suggested that we could try using Google Drive to craft an introductory statement.  She offered that she could write an initial draft that could then be edited on Google Drive and discussed at our next meeting.  In Chat Donna Bennett volunteered to help. When put to a vote the group agreed with this plan.  Sherrida pointed out that it would be acceptable whether this statement stands alone or is incorporated somewhere else.  Cathy stated that we should work on this statement over the next two weeks and finalize it at our next meeting for submission before the deadline on Nov. 30th.

The group moved to a discussion of the RFP questions.  Everyone agreed that while working on the introductory statement we should begin work on the questions.  Cathy asked the group if they preferred breaking into working groups or working as a committee of the whole.  She suggested that if we select working as a committee of the whole that those who had been willing to serve as group leaders could make sure that specific topics are not overlooked. Jacqueline commented that she liked the idea of working as a single group with some members focusing on specific sections.  By a show of hands the group approved that idea.  

Cathy mentioned the list of questions that Bill had sent out earlier this week that he had culled from the Orbis RFP and suggested that these might be a good place to start.  The group agreed to use Google Drive to edit the document.  Housekeeping issues for Google Drive were discussed.  The group agreed that the questions from Orbis needed to be edited and made our own.  Cathy encouraged the group to add to the list of questions from Orbis. Sherrida stated that just reading these questions might spark other ideas. Cathy said that she hoped that we do better sharing solutions to problems with the next gen catalog than we did with Voyager.  Sherrida used the need for a PO to make a check-in record as an example of things that need to be managed differently.  In chat Miriam emphatically agreed.

Cathy asked if there was anything else about the RFP that we needed to cover today.  No other items were mentioned.  Cathy summarized the work planned for the next two weeks which included a document that presents our structure and an introductory statement.  The group will also begin editing the RFP questions.

Cathy asked the group if meeting twice a month seemed sufficient everyone agreed that it did.

Before closing the meeting Sherrida wanted to discuss discovery and whether we should use a single record approach rather than a composite record. She wondered how others felt about that to distinguish print and e-resources.  She also asked how people felt about outsourcing e-serial records at the consortia level.  She felt that some institutions have that from their link resolver.  Bill stated that Georgia State uses sfx marcit.  Cathy expressed some concern that smaller catalogs could be overwhelmed by adding so many records.  Sherrida said that she thought it could help prevent purchasing content that was already available and would help with collection development.  Sherrida felt that it could help an institution know what was available to them at the local level or consortially.  Cathy discussed the issue of how many databases there will be in the new system and the distinction that seems to be made between the database and the institution’s catalog which may be the database with a local filter applied.  Sherrida agreed that it was important to have the language to describe what we are expecting. We need to figure out what terms are being used in the field and in the state.

Cathy mentioned that she would be filling in for Gordon Baker at the November RACL meeting and had been asked to comment on the work of this Team.  She asked if anyone had any ideas about what we should share with RACL.  There were no suggestions.  Cathy stated that she thought people are interested in the work we are doing.

Donna asked if the Cataloging/Metadata survey had been launched.  The answer was yes and Bill supplied a link for it.

Cathy announced the next meeting for Nov. 21 at 12:00. The meeting was adjourned.

Submitted by
Cathy Jeffrey

Cloud Team Meeting Minutes 2013-11-14

Present: Bob Trotter, Bill Clayton, Philip Fitzpatrick, Doug Goans, Chris Helms, Glenn Leavell, Caryl Nemajovsky, Craig Schroer
 
Editing Section E for RFP
Bob introduced a new draft version of Section E and has reworded parts E1 - E3. Cloud Team members are invited to edit the document (using colored text to indicate edits).

Questions to be considered for RFP:
Data Center – We will want to ask about nature of cooling in vendor’s data center?

Backups and Security (Section E4)
We should make an agreement that there is a backup dataset in USG’s possession (maybe on a weekly or monthly basis). 

It’s understood that vendor would have much more regular backups.

If vendor is using Oracle and redo log we’d want to know that those redo logs are backed up offsite.

How frequently does vendor do backup? Is there a remote data duplication feature in use? Is this something that we write into the RFP and in what level of detail? (Bob - we may not want that level of detail in RFP, rather, ask what vendor offers and the follow up with additional questions as needed).

Caryl suggested asking vendors if they have any examples of how they’ve handled a disaster and what changes have followed as a result of what they learned from the experience. Bob mentioned that there were probably some LC and Ex Libris systems in NOLA during Katrina.

We need to know whether vendor maintains their own data center or contract out with another provider?

Caryl suggested that Beate Rusch Library director in Berlin has been working with ALMA and others on link data and data security. Some of the elements they’ve been looking at might be relevant to us.

RFP Deadlines and Level of Detail
There was a question about deadlines for preparing the RFP and Bill said his understanding is that we’ve set some initial deadlines to get started but teams continue to be involved with and fine tuning their documents and requirements even beyond proposed deadlines.

Bill mentioned that here will be some things we have to specify as an RFP requirement but we’ll likely get more detail from vendors if we ask them in broader terms about their systems rather than telling them "you must provide X." It’s too easy for vendors to say, "oh yes, we provide that" if we’re too explicit in our requirements.

ADA Compliance (staff and public) and mobile support
Doug suggested we include questions about whether platform is ADA compliant for users and Bob recommended we’d also want to confirm its compliance for our own staff who will be using the system.

There was also a question about the extent of responsive web and mobile device support.

Posting NextGen Cloud Team minutes to blog
It was decided that we want to put our minutes up so that other NextGen teams will be able to stay abreast of our progress, ideas and questions. Bill mentioned that team Leaders meeting this morning had some questions about cataloging area and need for data security. They weren’t sure which group was covering this topic (concern that multiple groups might be addressing the same issues). For this reason, sharing meeting minutes is important.

Alternate Lead for Cloud Team Meetings
Doug volunteered to be team leader if Bob can’t lead the meeting.

Modules included and defining vendor’s system
Section E3.6 - What are the modules that define their system? Which modules are included on their platform and what’s on the horizon? (Doug added this to our RFP)

User authentication (shared instances)
Caryl brought up topic of dealing with duplicate patron records. Bob suggested that it might be more of a Fulfillment Team RFP item.

Glenn asked whether we’re asking that individual institutions be able, under robust identity management and authorization management, to separate institutions’ staff and user records.  If multiple institutions log into service, do we want a model in which the UGA portion of the service can attach to UGA directory management (and likewise for Valdosta, etc.)?  Bob said we also need to look at its functionality for catalog instances that are shared by multiple institutions. Glenn asked whether it’s a Multi-Tenant service we’re looking for? What if the vendor can only integrate with one identity management system? Might that mean that USG would have to create a single identity management system?

Bill cautioned that if our demands are too stringent at this we might end up greatly limiting our options.

Bob suggested that we reword the E5 section and also request description of services to support multiple authentication services/models.

NGL ACQ/Serials/ERM Meeting Minutes 10/30/2013

NGL ACQ/Serials/ERM Meeting Minutes 10/30/2013

Present:  Courtney Mcgough, Elizabeth Winter, Olga Russov, Sandra Bandy, Ben Davis, Kat Hart (Recorder), Dana Walker, Ken Smith, Agnes Muriuki, Charlie Sicignano

Absent:   Jacqueline Vickers, Jim Garner

Dana reported on the Team Leaders meeting held on Monday (10/28/2013). The purpose of that meeting was for the team leaders to update everyone on the status of their team’s efforts at the moment. Bill Clayton spoke on behalf of Merryll, who was unable to attend. Bill indicated that more schools may be merging in the future, so please keep this in mind while developing our functional requirements. Ask questions such as how they would handle the merging of two schools’ data into one module, and the like.

Several teams are developing surveys to send to USG schools not as heavily involved in this committee. The Assessment (Reports, BI, Analytics) team asked if we had information we could add to their survey, but Dana had not yet respond to them. Dana suggested we may want to put reporting requirements into their survey. Our team was invited to contribute to the Cataloging survey. Elizabeth Winter suggested adding something on serials check-in and invoicing to elicit some response. The Cataloger’s survey will be going out in the next week or two. Dana believes that we are far enough along in the process that we do not need to focus on developing a survey ourselves.

Team leaders will meet again in a couple of weeks to share where we are in the process.

Dana reminded the team to ask our own departments or collection development units for input to add to our list of functional requirements as well.

Deliverables
There are two deliverables due by November 30^th: the template and the essay.

Template
The committee only wants a structure for the template at this point in time. Once the committee has structure ideas from all the teams, they will choose one and let us know. Earlier in October, Dana sent out an email to our team asking if everyone was comfortable with using the template structure that the Orbis Cascade Alliance RFP (OCA RFP) uses. No one seemed to object, so we will create three separate sections in our template: one for Acquisitions, one for Serials and one for Electronic Resource Management. Merryll wants a limited amount of specific functionalities in the functional requirements section, so we need to focus more on questions for the vendor(s). We can tease out questions vs. functional requirements from the Google Doc after the template has been turned in.

Introductory Essay
The OCA RFP included our team’s descriptions under Collections and Resource Management, so we can develop three separate essays for each area, and the Committee may decide to combine them. Overlap in essay content is to be expected at this point. No one is sure what the end result will look like. We will create a brief introductory essay describing each of the three areas. Dana requested if anyone wants to collaborate on these, please send thoughts and ideas to her via email. Dana will create a skeleton that we can all add to. She will post the skeleton to Google Docs, but will also send out an email to the team. Dana wants us to resolve this the week before Thanksgiving because people may be taking off for the holidays.

Dana will aim for next week to send out template structure and start the essays so we can knock it out as soon as possible. Regarding the team’s list in Google Docs, people are making really good comments, and the document is growing. Dana is hoping we will have more ideas from other colleagues in our respective libraries to add as well.

No one on the team had any questions or comments.

Next Meeting Schedule
Depending on how we progress with descriptions, maybe in two weeks we will meet again. We hope to be close to finishing the deliverables due at the end of this month by the next meeting. Dana will send an email to schedule it.

Feel free to call if you have anything to discuss, concerns or suggestions.

Collaborative Technical Services Team WebEx meeting minutes, October 17, 2013

Collaborative Technical Services Team WebEx meeting minutes

October 17, 2013

 [It should be noted that although the Team discussed the possibility of submitting questions to be included in the Cataloging/Metadata Team survey, no consensus was reached and the questions discussed in these minutes were never sent forward by the Collaborative Technical Services Team.]

Present at the meeting were:  Beth Burnett, Bill Clayton, Bill Walsh, Bob Trotter, Cathy Jeffrey, Chris Huff, Dave Evans, Donna Bennett, Guy Frost, Hallie Pritchett, Jacquiline Vickers.

Cathy Jeffrey welcomed everyone to the meeting. She opened the meeting by requesting approval of the minutes from the previous meeting.  The minutes were approved.  Cathy indicated that the minutes would be posted to the Next Gen Blog. 

Cathy reported that a request for additional members suggested by the committee had been forwarded to Merryll Penson.  At this point one new member has been added.  Miriam Nauenburg, serials librarian from the University of West Georgia will be joining the group.  Cathy reported that several members including Miriam had informed her that they had other commitments for this afternoon and would not be able to attend the meeting.

Cathy reported that there had not been any blog responses to the minutes of the Team’s first meeting.  She asked if members had received the information about the shared Google drive for documents and could access it.  Responses seemed to indicate that Google drive was working.

The first item on the agenda was a discussion of the option to submit questions to be included in the survey that is being prepared by the Cataloging/Metadata Team.  Cathy used a poll to determine support from the group for this collaboration. 

While the polling was taking place Bill Clayton commented that the survey should not be too complicated and should be straight forward.  He said that if we could think of something that would benefit our perspective that we could certainly do that. It was mentioned that currently the Cataloging survey had three questions.

Question:  Do you think that it would be a good idea to contribute questions to the cataloging/metadata survey?

Answer:         yes                  67%
no                   22%
no answer     11%

The majority voted to participate in the survey.   

Cathy shared three potential questions to begin the discussion.  These were based on the discussion the week before regarding shared catalogs and local customizations.

The questions that the group considered were:

1.    Do you believe that moving from individual catalogs to one or more shared catalogs would be:

a.    A very good decision

b.    A good decision

c.    Neutral

d.    A bad decision

e.    A very bad decision

2.    Do you believe that local customization and enhancement of bibliographic records is:

a.    Very helpful to users

b.    Helpful to users

c.    Somewhat helpful to users

d.    Not helpful at all

3.    Would it be important for local customizations and enhancements of bibliographic records to be part of new shared catalogs that replace our individual catalogs.?

a.    Yes

b.    No

Bill Clayton  agreed that the first two questions captured the essence of the previous discussion but worried that there needed to be more context.  He thought that we would get some idea of how the larger community felt about it.  Bill stated that he thought that a shared database was something that we had to consider.  It is not necessarily something that we have to do but it would good to consider if it would be a benefit to us providing more flexibility.  If we think that it could be a benefit then what are the downsides.  Are there other issues besides local customization.  Cathy suggested that an additional question about other potential problems associated with a shared database could be included.  She also suggested that it might be interesting to know how people would respond to these issues today and how they would respond six months or a year from now.  Hallie Pritchett felt that the questions were fine but that there needed to be space to add a comment.  Hallie said that adding an explanation and/or pros and cons for a shared database would be needed.  Bill’s concern was that any explanation should be brief.  Hallie agreed.  Cathy suggested that perhaps Hallie could make some of these changes to the Google document. 

Bill asked what the distinction would be between questions 2 and 3.  Cathy said that question 3 would be associated with the migration of the data.  Hallie suggested combining question 2 and 3.  A discussion of the definition of local customization continued with Guy Frost describing an example from his library.  Guy mentioned that there is a method in the Marc format to add a code that would identify local information but he felt that how that code was implemented by the vendor could vary. He also mentioned some customization that would be useful to everyone – like a contents note enhancement.  Hallie suggested that specific instruction for standardization across the system would be needed.  Guy agreed that having  “best practices” would be a good idea.

Donna Bennett recommended the following information from the Orbis rfp: “the consortium requires a solution which will support a structure of shared records while retaining the ability to add and maintain unique local fields as needed”. She wondered how well the vendor had done at supplying that.

The group continued to discuss how local customization might display in a shared environment. Bob Trotter said that would be a question that we would need to ask the vendor.  Bill Clayton said that we would have customization but it was not clear how the local data would display.  Bill said that he did not think that we knew the answer to that question.  Bob agreed.  Bob went on to say that we currently have more questions than answers about how the information will display.  Bill said that the heart of what we are doing is identifying what the questions are.  Bob said that the Systems Team is looking at the broader questions and will be responsible for making sure that the system will be able to handle what we want it to do.  Bill stated that what he was hearing fairly clearly was “there needs to be a way to display local data to their users.”  Cathy agreed and said that would be one reason for the question.  Bob agreed that was what this team should be doing and it would be up to the System team to make sure that it was possible.

To summarize this discussion the group seemed to agree that questions 2 and 3 should be combined.  The resulting two questions should include a brief explanation of some sort as well as a free text box for comments.

Other survey questions were suggested.

Guy suggested:

Would you support the idea of having system wide best practices?

Bob suggested:

Would you support a centralized processing center?  

Cathy suggested that instead we might ask if there might be support for a larger institution helping a smaller institution with its cataloging and processing.  Bill stated that it is important to make a distinction between what we want to do and what we want the system to be able to do should that ever become a need in the future.  Bob agreed.

Cathy said that in that case perhaps that question would be more appropriate for the rfp rather than the membership.  Bill said that he did not see a reason to include this question in the survey other than to expose this idea to a broader audience.  Bob said that it would need to be phrased correctly.   

Guy felt that this possibility needs to be disseminated publicly because others may have valid reasons why it would not work that we have not considered.  Bob suggested that Merryll might also have an opinion on this question.  Hallie felt that rather than asking about centralized processing we could ask about centralized processing for certain processing for certain aspects like authorities  or formats.   The group agreed that “shared” processing would be a better term. 

 

Would you see it as beneficial to have shared processing for some cataloging tasks such as authority work?

Cathy suggested

Would you see it as beneficial to have a shared collection development policy for the system?

The next item on the agenda was the rfp template.  Cathy shared a document that she had created to be a starting place.  She asked the question if we should eliminate required features from the discussion of collaboration.  Guy expressed some concern that doing so might mean that the system we ended up with might lack features that we needed.  Bill said that Merryll feels that we can get more information from the process by asking questions than by listing requirements.  Then we get to evaluate the answers and can decide that a vendor’s answers don’t meet our needs.

Bill and Bob stated that the Cloud Team will handle area 4.E which is related to the Cloud computing environment and system functionality.  The Collaborative Technical Services Team should respond to the Functional Areas as they relate to collaboration.

The group discussed briefly how the rfp would be structured.  Bill stated that question regarding collaboration could be included in the rfp in their own section or they could be added to the specific functional area that the question addresses.  That will be determined later.  Cathy summarized that we simply need to come up with the questions and they will be used where they are most appropriate.  Bill agreed that might be correct.  Cathy suggested that perhaps we could develop an introductory description for collaboration and then refer to the functional groups for the requirements and questions.  Bill agreed that might work.

Cathy announced the next meet for Nov. 7 at 12:00 and encouraged everyone to work on the documents.

The meeting was adjourned.

Submitted by
Cathy Jeffrey