Agriculture Information Technology

Advisory Group (AITAG)

Date:   October 3, 2006

To:       Dr. D.C. Coston and Dr. Jeffery Gerst

Re:       Agriculture Information Technology Advisory Group (AITAG) Report

Fr:        Randy Mehlhoff, AITAG Chair

Greetings, colleagues! Per your requirement, this memo serves as the first quarterly report on activities associated with the AITAG’s commitment to advise NDSU Agriculture Communication and Information Technology Services (ITS) on information technology issues associated with NDSU Agriculture and University Extension. This report is for the June 2006 through September 2006 time period.

The first meeting of the new AITAG was held in June. It seems there is good representation of all departments and offices associated with NDSU Agriculture and University Extension, including the ND Association of Counties. After introductions, the AITAG received an update concerning merging of services between Ag Communication and ITS. The effort to minimize duplication of IT services seems to be going well.

The first goal of the AITAG was to develop and submit a 2007-09 IT plan for NDSU Agriculture and University Extension entities to the N.D. Information Technology Department. This was accomplished with subsequent correspondence/meetings and submitted by July 1, 2006. The 2007-09 NDSU Agriculture IT plan is attached.

In reference to e-mail being changed from the @ndsuext.nodak.edu to the firstname.lastname@ndsu.edu, the AITAG discussed possible implications of the change. Tentative plan is to make the change by December 31, 2007. Security authentication for Pegasus e-mail users (majority of ag staff) was accomplished in September.

The AITAG continues to monitor IT advances that lead to changes in the hardware and software baselines. The AITAG typically asks for recommendations from Agriculture Communication and ITS, discusses potential changes and makes the recommendations. The baseline was updated in July 2006 and will again be considered in December.

NDSU Agriculture recently received 20 new laptop computers for training purposes. During its last meeting in September, the AITAG discussed potential training needs for NDSU Agriculture. This effort is ongoing.

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