UWIDEC APC P. 2

2003/4

UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES

Information Technology matters in the DEC

1 New teleconference bridges. On Oct 3 2003 a contract was signed with World Wide Net Limited in Trinidad to procure Polycom teleconference bridges for Port of Spain and Mona at a cost of US$250,000. This was necessary as the existing bridges are no longer supported by the respective manufacturers but there is still the need to support existing delivery modes using audio conferences. The new bridges have video conferencing capabilities. The manufacturer has committed to providing technical support for these bridges for 10 years. The migration to the new bridges would be completed by end of the year.

2 Maintenance of all routers. In July 2003 a contract was signed with Western NRG Inc. in California USA to provide maintenance for all the routers in the 16 country network at an annual cost of US$15,605. Under the terms of the agreement Western NRG Inc. provides unconditional hardware replacement guarantee. That means if our equipment becomes damaged because of fire, flood, water, wind or lightning, power failures, misuse or tampering – Western NRG will replace it at no extra charge.

3 Network upgrade at Port of Spain and Mona hubsites. Purchase orders were placed on Aug 29 2003 to Western NRG for equipment to increase the network capacity of the Port of Spain and Mona hubsites at a cost of US$31,251.50 and US$24,196.50 respectively. Western NRG is preparing the equipment for delivery. This was necessary to accommodate the new bridges and the increased bandwidth of the network.

4 Graphics conferencing. We are in the process of acquiring Bridgit software to enhance the graphics capability of the network at a cost of US$7,650. This software was successfully used by Mona in a pilot project during summer 2003.

5 Frame relay network. A contract was signed on July 24 2003 with Cable & Wireless to migrate all the current international network connections to international frame relay at a reduced recurrent monthly cost of US$28,576.50. The current monthly cost of international network connections is US$40,896.00. Cable & Wireless has held up the installation of the UWIDEC international frame relay network due to non-payment of the inter-campus frame relay network.

6 Internet bandwidth. The 64kbps Internet circuit at Port of Spain has been providing email, web services for most of the 30 Centres for the past three years. The Centres which have procured their own local Internet services include Anguilla, Bahamas, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman, St. Lucia and Turks & Caicos Islands. With the savings from the migration to international frame relay it would be possible to implement a much needed upgrade of the Internet circuit at Port of Spain to T1.

7 Computer hardware and software upgrades. In the past three years the computers at Centres have been replaced in an ad hoc fashion and in small spurts and fits because of funding constraints. It may now be possible once the approvals are in place to secure funds to replace obsolete computers and upgrade software at all Centres. The funds identified is JA$16.40 million which was approved by the Office of Finance for 2001/2002 but was underutilized because the Director’s office was unaware of these funds.

8 Negotiations with Cable & Wireless. Relations with C&W have deteriorated due to the conflict arising from the non-payment of the inter-campus frame-relay network. This has negatively affected the Banner SAS project and UWIDEC’s migration to international frame relay as C&W has halted work until payment of arrears is settled.

9 Debt to C&W and TSTT. As of June 30 2003 the debt for International Private Leased Circuits was reduced to US$192,987.52 from an amount of US$1.4 million in 2001. The debt for the T1 fibre optic tail circuit at Port of Spain is approximately TT$291,052.80. The debt for the 64kbps Internet connection at Port of Spain is approximately TT$193,782.67.

10 Databases. This academic year all Centres were requested to submit a list of registered students and tutors in a pre-formatted Excel spreadsheet. The returned spreadsheets were used to populate an Access database from which preliminary class lists, numbers of students by Centre and Course were to be generated.

11 Staffing. The St. Augustine campus is in the process of selecting a Systems Engineer and a Web Administrator from applications which were received before August 31, 2003. The Cave Hill campus has yet to advertise for the Web Administrator post. The Mona campus has already filled its Web Administrator post. The technician posts at the intra-Jamaica Centres are still to be advertised.

12 Intranet. For the past two years the Port of Spain and Mona hubsites have been maintaining ftp servers to allow Centres to download electronic materials and MP3 recordings of teleconferences. The teleconference schedule is available on the Internet at http://www.dec.uwi.edu/teleconference.

13 Course Management System. The campuses have licensed WebCT as the web delivery platform for this academic year until a decision is made to continue with WebCT or use alternative software such as Blackboard, Bodington VLE, DotLRN, OAS Virtual Classroom, etc.

14 OAS-JITL. In the second phase of the OAS funded Just-In-Time-Lecture project regional workshops were held in Trinidad June 3-6, 2003 and Jamaica June 24-27 2003. The workshops covered the JITL and the issues in using the technology. The participants produced a short JITL as part of the group work. The audience included a cross-section of site coordinators, technicians, course coordinators and tutors across the region. All the JITLs produced in the workshops would be collected in a CDROM. Dell Servers provided for the three campuses in this phase of the project are still to be implemented.

15 OAS-SATMEX. The last correspondence from the OAS was August 27 2003 which indicated that they would propose a plan of action for UWI to access the Satellites of the Mexican Government. We are still awaiting word from the OAS.

Telecommunications Manager, UWIDEC

October 15th, 2003