The Information Stewardship Task Force was created during the summer of 2004 and is tasked with making recommendations on the policies regarding information in the Institute. The ISTF is chaired by by Jeff Miner, the director of Integrated Administrative Computing Services, and consists of three faculty members, a number of administrative staff from the various RPI departments, and one student. It met on a weekly or biweekly basis during the time frame from May 2004-January 2005, but the task force has not had a formal meeting since.
According to Miner, the purpose of the Task Force is to react to the variations and forces creating change in the realm of information. He explained that these forces can be broken down into three different categories of drivers: technology drivers, legal and regulatory drivers, and cultural drivers. Technology drivers consists of the huge change of information from a hard paper form to a data form. Legal and regulatory drivers detail the changes regarding security around sensitive information. Cultural drivers cover the cultural changes that have occurred due to technological advancement and development of new forms of “information crimes” including cases dealing with identity theft, fraud, and software piracy.
Miner pointed out that “all the different departments of RPI have policies that govern the practices regarding information, which in turn dictate the correct process in which the information is used .... this group is charged with looking at things from a high level to make sure the practices are consistent with the policies.” He said that the ISTF exists to ensure that the policies and practices of the Institute regarding information are flexible enough to allow for privacy and security of sensitive material while still allowing the flow of appropriate information, and that these policies and practices must be able to adapt to the changing information environment.
This includes policies surrounding piracy and file-sharing, which have become prevalent in today’s ever changing technological landscape. RPI is responsible for protecting the personal information of the students, but when outside organizations state that they have records of a certain IP address accessing and illegally downloading, Miner stated that “there is a set of laws that we have to abide by.” He explained RPI is required by law to cooperate and provide the correct information pertaining to the case.
When asked what still needs to be changed, Miner responded that there is not so much a need to change but rather that “there are gaps in the consistency” in some of the departments and organizations of RPI stating that “consistency is needed, not so much change.” The information that goes and comes into RPI, he continued, needs to be consistent, well organized, and easily accessed if need be.
Graduate student Matt Newman, the student member of the ISTF and chair of the Committee on the Judiciary and Student Rights of the Student Senate, said he could not comment on the progress of the ISTF, because of the lack of tangible results as of yet.
As of now, the draft report of the ISTF is still under production of the sub-committee, which then needs to be reviewed by the whole ISTF. Because of conflicts with schedules and the holiday breaks, it is expected that the review process will not be completed until next semester when the draft report is released. As of now, the ISTF has not made any definite plans about meetings in the future, according to Newman.
