Executive Director's Report to Council 02/07/04
PJM June 24, 2004
Overview
Since the beginning of this year we are being asked more often by government and industry bodies to become involved in action to support their work. It is clear that InternetNZ is regarded in most quarters as the authoritative body for dealing with Internet related issues. In most cases the work is towards InternetNZ’s goals, and fits our mode of operation without
expending a large amount of resource. The difficulty is that with limited resources we are putting significant pressure on the officers and councillors to ensure we deliver the expected outcomes. We are thankful that our officers and councillors unstintingly spend many extra hours doing work which would not be expected in a more conventional governance model
Apart from these requests and other scheduled activities; staffing, internal systems and events have been the main focus of the secretariat since the April council meeting. The office is running smoothly, and performing its base functions effectively and with good results. The hiatus and change in staff has meant that, in order to meet external demands, some of the internal projects have been allowed to drop behind plan. It is expected that these will be up to date in the next 6 weeks. We are pleased with the outcome of the auditors’ report and will be acting on the recommendations. We are also examining our resilience and backup processes.
Staffing
Prior to Zofia’s departure, we were restructuring the secretariat to map operations more closely to the business plan. As a result, we were able to prepare a position description for the new team member which created the opportunity to balance skill and workload more effectively. Isabel Carberry joined us on June 21 and is proving to be a real asset. Isabel’s focus is in three areas; accounts, reception and general admin. Her training plan has been formalized, and will be carried out over the next month. Gale has trained Isabel in the basics. Several of the training sessions (marked *) may be of interest to other staff and councillors, and certainly will be useful if we have new councillors after the AGM. The areas to be covered include:
T * History of the society (David Farrar to present)
T * InternetNZ Goals and strategy (Executive Director)
T * The SRS (Nick Griffin and Debbie Monahan)
T Siemens PABX operations (Sietec)
T * Internet 101 (TBA)
T * HTML basics (TBA)
T * Dreamweaver basics (TBA)
T Quickbooks (Nicola Draper, basics complete)
Now that Isabel is on board and productive, Gale will be available to devote more time to projects, communications, and committee support.
As a result of a request by the secretary, the InternetNZ office management team (Nick Griffin, Debbie Monahan, Peter Macaulay) are evaluating models for best practice in providing staff with access to health and welfare advice.
Facilities
The new office space is working as expected and is providing real opportunities for synergies amongst the InternetNZ units. The staff have expressed satisfaction with all facilities. Just as gratifying is the news that the fit out, managed by Nick Griffin, came in $16,000 under budget. We are working through the usual minor process and physical issues that follow a relocation.
To date none have proven significant, and all have been resolved with consensus decisions.
Systems
Telephony
The Siemens PABX from the Bond Street office has been upgraded and is a current model. It has taken over the expanded office flawlessly. We aim to deliver more services to support councillors and committee members through the unused advanced capabilities. We aim to implement these in early August.
Central Computing
The old servers were struggling with lack of disk space and power. Installing the pair of Dell rack mount servers has removed the problem. We also changed operating systems, moving from Debian to Suse. We did lose some time and suffered a degree of frustration caused by the slow delivery of the Suse licences. Citylink have an access point in the meeting room, and we are installing our internal secure wireless access point in the next month
Collaborative Applications
To support the collaboration needs of the organization we have installed Suse Linux Open Exchange (SLOX). It is an excellent product meeting a very testing set of requirements including the need to operate in a mixed client environment. The basic set of functions is stronger than our previous tools, and we are as yet using a very small part of the SLOX capability. The range and effectiveness of the tool set is being exploited steadily. The capabilities of SLOX will meet all the needs and many of the desires for a true collaborative environment for the secretariat, the other business units, officers, and the voluntary workers. The features of SLOX are pushing us into changing the specification for the new web presence, by delivering better capabilities in an already integrated and easily configured package. We aim to deliver a useful subset to councillors within a month. A further benefit will be that we can deliver the tailored solution and supporting manual processes to other not for profit organizations
Desktops
To reduce the cost of support,(making John Vorsterman’s life a little easier) we have
standardized on Dell for all desktops. The operating system is MS Windows XP with Office 2003 the desktop application platform. We will re-evaluate an open desktop at the end of the year. Quickbooks will be our long term accounting solution, and has been upgraded. We are beginning to use more of its reporting and membership management capabilities. Over
the next three months we will develop integration of some functions with SLOX.
Web Presence
The interim site is being changed to meet several suggestions which arose during testing. Stuart Anderson is working with us to ensure the changes will still allow content to be simply added. We aim to have a part time content person retained to
update the content and to work through cataloging old pages for archival , relinking, or deletion. The new web presence project is in the CMS evaluation phase. We are behind schedule. However, we expect the output of the SLOX tailoring work will change the nature of some components of the new site, so delay at this time is probably prudent.
Committee Support
As we implement the components of SLOX, we will start to use them in committee support, along with the human administrative effort needed to make committee work easier and more effective. One immediate benefit should be reduced complication in arranging meetings and distributing material.
Auckland Office
Initial discussions with the Internet Safety Group have created an opportunity to open an Auckland office in their premises. We aim to conclude this in the next two weeks. We also expect to install D-link video conferencing units. An Auckland members meeting will be held before the AGM.
Project Management Office
Following Hilary Carlile’s study and the project management office, we should have revised the manual and processes to fit our changing requirements. As a result of higher priority work, we decided to defer this work until late July. The PMO has not been fully implemented as a result. One benefit has been time to better map our PMO outputs to governance requirements. As a result the PMO processes will be simplified, with reduced inputs and more targeted, more timely and lighter reporting. In addition we will be using the SLOX project tools to deliver a lean project administration tool. The SLOX project tools are available on the InternetNZ portal now. A report in the proposed PMO changes will be delivered by July 9
Research Office
To provide high quality research in a small Not for Profit Organization requires a similar model to the PMO. The Research Office (RO) is a facility which defines a simple set of standards and delivers administrative support to the volunteers, contractors and other researchers. We had planned to start this in the second quarter, but have decided to defer it
start concurrently with the Code of Practice project.
Code of Practice
Work on the Project Initiation Document has been put on hold until a decision on appropriate remuneration models for councillors/officers who are involved in projects beyond the expectation of their office. Background effort continues.
Interop
The first phase of the Interop programme funded by NZT&E, InternetNZ and industry contributors concluded successfully and achieved its goal of industry agreement to engage in Interoperability action. A proposal to provide bridging funding for the evaluation stage of the Interoperability Action phase of the Programme is included with the Council papers. We have
strong support from NZT&E, MED and industry for InternetNZ to lead and brand this phase. Discussions are under way with Ray Hunt of Canterbury University to provide a ‘home’ for the virtual laboratory. The peering issue is seen as part of the Interop programme.
Peering
When Telstra Clear announced that it was withdrawing from the current peering arrangement, direct action was demanded of InternetNZ by all parties. We are seen as the only neutral organization with the knowledge and reputation to undertake the work needed to ensure the well proven and effective NZ peering model is not weakened On the other hand we must maintain good relationships with all those connected, and avoid painting any into a corner. To this end we are working with Citylink, NZT&E, and the telcos. We have asked John Small of Covec to quote to provide a study of the commercial issues around peering. We are also investigating bringing an international speaker Bill Norton of Equinix to address a workshop on peering aimed at middle and senior managers. To ensure we are all on the same page, Simon Blake will present the current peering operation at our council meeting. Full proposals for any funding requirements outside of allocated budgets will be prepared by the secretariat.
Sibling Organization Relationships
There are too many organizations representing the ICT sector (more than 130) and this dilutes the attention that is available. We ar planning to develop an umbrella structure, and offer convergence to willing smaller like minded organizations. MED and NZT&E have applauded this initiative. Significant proposals will be brought to council. ITANZ and TUANZ are both
involved in these discussions, and several meetings have been held to keep the wheels turning.
NZCS
The Computer Society is currently our closest sibling. We are working on several initiatives and have already held one successful joint event, on the night prior to the AntiSpam legislative options workshop. Other initiatives include:
- a joint membership thrust, where NZCS offers a single membership application for both organizations.
- Event management. We will use the NZCS event management team to manage any medium sized event we are planning, and will endeavour to coordinate our events with theirs.
- Joint events. We unsuccessfully bid to bring Sir Tim Berners-Lee for a speaking tour. We are looking for another speaker.
E-Regions
InternetNZ is planning to keep close to the E-regions initiative now it is launched. The ED is meeting regularly with the E-regions team and will provide activity reports.
Other Activities
Securemail
SSC are looking at ways to expand the Government Secure email facility to allow citizens to get delivery of private information over a secure channel. This will require the installation of secure email servers for the service providers who choose to offer the service. InternetNZ is engaged in the discussions, and expects to prepare a case to have a pivotal roile in this initiative. Papers on securemail are available from the secretariat.
ICT Strategy
With the launch of the MED ICT strategy consultation, InternetNZ will join with its sibling organizations to deliver a co-ordinated response as suggested to reduce the impact of consolidating the many industry inputs. Initial meeitngs have been held with
NZCS, ITANZ and TUANZ.
DNSSEC
The secretariat is prepared to start work on the DNSSEC consultation process in conjunction with the registry Domain Name Registrations With more than 40 domain names registered, InternetnZ can save a significant amount by shopping around for reduced fees. We have moved all our domain names to Discount Domains.
Anti-spam legislative options workshop
The secretariat worked in support role as David Farrar organized this event. It ran very smoothly, and it was gratifying to be praised by the Honorable David Cunliffe, who not only presented the government position, but stayed to hear other speakers. Taking into account the web cast audience, more than 100 people were able to benefit from at least some part of the proceedings. David Harris has anchored this exercise superbly. We now need to keep the pressure on to ensure the legislation goes through. On Friday I got verbal confirmation of support from Maurice Williamson, which I will follow
through on this week.
Parliamentary Lobby
we are working with Peter Isaacs of the Press Club and British Trade Commission to create a similar model to provide a place and time for Internet advocacy. Initially we will provide local speakers to address pertinent issue over lunch or breakfast at parliament. Whenever we are working with an international speaker, we will give MPs the chance to meet them in a tailored session.
Conclusion
Depending on the timing of the Code of Practice initiative, it is likely that the secretariat will have to increase staff from 3.7, to 5.2 FTEs to allow business as usual. Our team is developing well, and productivity will increase over the next two months as we settle into new roles, and learn to use the new tools. We are fortunate to have John Vorstermans and Gale Blikshavn aboard as they willing tackle everything that is thrown at them. I am sure Isabel will follow in their footsteps once she has learnt the ropes. The staffing stability is finally giving me room to move in the areas of human networking and relationship building, which is a strength I have not delivered on in full. The benefits of the ground work are starting to flow. It will be
hard to bring the infrastructure projects back to schedule, and I am sure other critical activities will intervene, but we are not far behind, and the pieces we have delivered are already showing real benefit. All our work is now measured against the strategic pan, business plan and budget. What we can measure, we can manage.
