2026-03-24 - ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

Decisions made during the meeting:

Agenda

Consent Agenda - Updates for the team that should be completed/read offline

If possible, please fill in this info prior to the meeting - thank you!

Additional Agenda Items

1. Research Community Annual Survey Discussion - @amajumdar

   1. Results from our annual Research Community Survey 

   2. Response is better than in the past

   3. Shared slides

      1. 594 responses in y4 - 284 responses in Y3

      2. Net Promoter score keeps improving - 76 in Y2, 77.9 in Y3, 79.1 in Y4

         1. A Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 7.91 is not a standard, recognized NPS calculation. NPS is a whole number ranging from -100 to 100, calculated as the difference between percentage promoters and detractors, not an average of 1-10 scores. A "7" or "8" rating represents a passive customer, suggesting satisfied but unenthusiastic, at-risk customers.

      3. 8 questions this year

      4. Meet research education needs - Y2 4.5, Y3 4.6, Y4 4.7

      5. Website - 4.10, 4.3, 4.6

      6. Support - 4.13, 4.5, 4.67

      7. Innovations - 4.0, 4.3 4.58

      8. Resource Discovery - 4.1, 4.4, 4.54

      9. Overall Interactions - 4.74 (no similar questions in previous years)

      10. Every score is above 4.5 -was not the case in previous years

      11. Consistently Increasing score is something to be proud of

   4. How was weighted average done? Were they done the same way?

      1. created average out of people who responded

      2. will confirm with Dave that is how he did the calculations

2. Need to determine if there is any funding for a PEARC26 sponsorship ($13k)

   1. Metrics can contribute $2.5K, Allocations can contribute $2K, John can contribute some.

   2. Shannon find out next steps and when payment is due

      Open

      

      Will need to ask if they can bill separate entities - Amit thinks they can - if it is one of the universities it should not be too hard to do.

3. Follow-up on challenge with getting smaller institutions associating with their institutional identity because they don’t participate with Internet 2 - this is a hurdle

   1. Sharon - she has heard this quite a lot - also in the context of students - not just research - for training as well

   2. Shelley - This comes up a lot for us in RMACC as we use ACCESS IDs - also has CCSTAR that gives time and they have issues too

   3. We need someone to review it and make a flowchart with the new registration process

      1. This is what it looked like when ACCESS first started https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1_j-kx630tva4YzJcsy3gwzH4ztPNIbDCNbnJurMompY/edit

   4. Shelley - not necessarily getting an ACCESS ID - but issue is that for some systems that is not the only thing you need to do to get access - Jetstream is the exception - some require you to sign in another way and there is a 2 step process - there is not a requirement for all RPs to have a singular way of logging in - she heard this from the panel and this could be a large part of it - people get lost between the 1st and 2nd

   5. Tom - add this to this meeting - when Eric and Virginia will be here to discuss login

   6. Nathan - look at the new method to see the new workflow to see how laborious it is - without in-common

      1. An answer to the question about how easy it is for users to register if they aren't in the IdP list:

         If they org they are from isn't one of the known organizations, it just directly prompts them to use an ACCESS password instead of using their institutional authentication. So should be really simple for them.

      2. John - This presumes they have already created an ACCESS ID.

      3. Shelley - someone gets an allocation they can add people from anywhere pretty easily? I’m asking just because we’re trying to sort this out for our RMACC users

      4. John - ..and will presumably prompt them for all the information we have just been discussing??

      5. Nathan - yes
         > So in other words, once someone gets an allocation they can add people from anywhere pretty easily?

         As long as those "people from anywhere" register for an ACCESS id first

      6. Shelley - Ok so this would stop the nefarious folks by default?
         We are trying to determine if people could still login to our portal if we disabled them

      7. John - And do we know if any RPs then require any additional identify creation?? - we need to fix this

      8. Bruno - this is being worked on

4. Follow up on AI chat - Easy to find - do we need two versions of it (unauthenticated and authenticated)

   1. John - disappointing - feedback on operations - true in access as well - people kept asking for things we have already done - means we have not effectively communicated with them and made it easy to find - ex. sample proposals - and how to put one together - this person could not find it - the only way they could find it was by using the YouTube channel

      1. we need to do better for NAIRR documentation - is the NAIRR chat working like ACCESS chat?

   2. Tom - to use the ACCESS chatbot you have to log in - that is because of data privacy (especially required in Kentucky)

      1. Can there be a separate chat bot for non-authenticated users? and it changes upon login?

5. Follow up on logging in to use Chatbot (Shelley) - 10 minutes

   1. Primary reason is the bots are getting slammed (ACCESS page too) - if we have people log in the cost on the backend the cost is much less

   2. If it is open the cost is much higher and we risk the issue of the service being cut off

   3. The resource catalog is to be the first page for people to land on when people start - and then the chat bot is there to log in and ask question

   4. We just need to determine if the initial implementation needs changed

   5. Possibly add a “Hey are you a human being?” to the bot as a first layer solution

   6. Should this be a higher priority?

   7. If it isn’t a heavy lift - it would be nice to have a simple gate so people could ask questions

   8. If more people are going to the chat bot than the resource catalog - will the work invested in the resource catalog end up be considered not as valuable

   9. Jim said the Resource Catalog has moved and people are not finding it now any way - so this may need to be moved as well?

   10. Joe - They should have to have an account to use it - they shouldn’t need to have an account to learn about it

   11. If more people are using the system - and the chat - will we get more users? Should this be our goal?

   12. We should look into it more and get a feel of how much of a lift it would be - have Jim come back and report

6. Discussion Co-Located Meeting with EDUCASE for our Fall Quarterly - from previous EC meeting

   1. Dates: Tuesday September 29 – Friday October 2, 2026 | Denver, CO

   2. Boulder to Denver is 28 miles - there is a bus that goes

   3. Do we want to have a meeting on Monday, Sep 28, 2026 - If it didn’t start until Tuesday afternoon - we could do a day and a half and meet Tuesday morning as well

      1. It would still mean flying into Denver in the Fall - but less likelihood of snow

      2. Could piggyback on travel for those who are going to EDUCAUSE

   4. Is not something we have to do - just under discussion

   5. Decision - No co-location with Education

   6. RP workshop is the week before - in Orlando - already a full week - we will not co-locate

   7. Shannon - Send out a Doodle for Dates in September and Early October for Colorado - leaning to Boulder

7. User Accounts Updates

   1. Many many users with incomplete information or ineligible status (e.g. generic email domains)

   2. Allocations has a plan of action: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wUTMf93D2n7tcL74R7O9odff95gcI4PZFoKf66ztbUU/edit?usp=sharing

   3. Targeting April to fix all of this: may impact Ops and RPs (increased traffic), need action from Support (new institution form)

8. Standing Committee Reports

Next Meeting: Mar 31, 2026

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