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  CCD Standards Committee

Desktop Standards for Administrative Systems - Draft

Standards Committee

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CONSTITUENCY

Members are made up of CCD members, invited members of CIT and OIT.
CCD members can invite members of their staff or others they feel would be useful to the effort.

GOALS

To develop a "Best Practices" policy, as well as standard software and hardware configurations that individual units can adopt to improve computer support services and/or decrease costs through improved economies of scale.

In this context, "Best Practices" are practices that we all might aspire to, but we may not necessarily implement in their entirety. Their use is to provide leverage through easing communication (e.g.: We implement this part of the practice but not that part, instead we do....), letting us share tools (databases, web sites, etc.), and provide the weight of a consensus opinion in decision processes.

In addition to specifying the content of the standards we may want to describe the purpose and rationale as well. This will make clearer to the standards customers which standards to adopt. It also allows us to hand off maintenance and updating of the standards (to future CCD members, CIT, or OIT for instance) without losing the initial intent.

Areas we anticipate gaining economies of scale include:
  • Negotiating and buying in bulk (e.g.: having a "Cornell standard" ghost image at Dell)
  • Focusing our support efforts on a smaller set of configurations (e.g.:The Hotel school enjoys enormous advantage by limiting new purchases to 3 standard configurations--good, better, and laptop. If there is a business case, non-standard configurations are allowed.)
  • Codifying "best practices" to communicate better with each other, and will allow us to build tools (databases, web sites, etc.) that can be shared, adopted and improved by other units.
  • Having a common set of platforms and practices, our technical support staff will be better able to back each other up. (e.g.: Departments with a single support person can easily get coverage when that person is away.)
  • Encourage cross unit communication, leading to improved leverage outside of the standards. (e.g.: Sharing best practices, vendor experience, boilerplate contracts, database schemas and tools, etc.)

Individual Units are free to accept/adopt the developed standards and gain the inherent advantages or not. The CCD Standards Committee is interested in identifying standards that work for particular constituents, not for everyone. Our goal is to find standards that have enough support that they enable the economies of scale described above.
As we move forward we will want to be aware of other standards and recommendations that have been developed on campus, such as the minimum hardware standard for machines running Bear Access, the Cornell Linux image standard, and recommendations of individual Colleges for computers for incoming students.

The initial goal is to develop a standard for new administrative desktop machines and replacement practices.

METHODS

  • The group will meet monthly on the 4th Wednesday of each month, 10 - 11:30am, 508 Rhodes Hall.
  • CCD members can be self-identified, with the CCD Executive Committee resolving ambiguities.
  • Standards and meeting notes will be posted to the CCD web site for comment.

Please send comments to the CCD Special Mailbox.

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