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2026-03-31 - ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

2026-03-31 - ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

Attendees:

  • RAMPS/Allocations: Bruno Abreu (v), Nathan Tolbert

  • MATCH/Support: Shelley Knuth (v), Alana Romanella, Jim Griffioen

  • CONECT/Operations: Tim Boerner (v), Leslie Froeschl

  • MMS/Metrics: Tom Furlani (v), Joe White

  • RP: Eric Adams (v), Virginia Trueheart

  • EAB: Chuck Pavloski

  • OpenCI/ACO: John Towns (v), Amit Majumdar, Misha Shah, Lisa Kaczmarczyk, Shannon Bradley

  • NSF: Sharon Geva, Ed Walker

  • Speakers:

Parking Lot

  • Shannon on vacation next week - will need a fill in note taker.

  • Shelley - Next week I’ll be at an all day retreat talking about my feelings, so I’d much rather be here - The next week though I’m in Vegas and I’d rather be there

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qlv6quvIWVgjtkh6KDZwH7lzP7AX9Pcnv-T40vf9U6Y/edit?gid=2127193757#gid=2127193757

Decisions made during the meeting:

Use Decision Macro - Tool (under Insert Elements in the toolbar)

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!

  1. Consent Agenda - @Tom Furlani (5 mins)

    1. Last Meeting Notes: 2026-03-24 - ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

    2. notes are ok

  2. Informational Items

    1. Link to ACCESS swag shop - https://dixon-graphics.com/access-ci/shop/home

  3. Allocations - @Bruno Abreu

  4. Support - @Shelley Knuth /Alana/Jim

    1. follow up: chat bot:

      1. Regarding the chat bot, I spoke with Jim about looking further into removing, the need for people to login to the chat bot to use it.  His team is going to test out a captcha so that people need to verify they are not a bot, and put some rate limits on the backend so that we don’t overspend.  They are also considering putting a question limit per session for folks.  He is anticipating this will be on the order of a few weeks to get to.

    2. ACO has not told Shelley if anyone is going to the AI training - need to get info to her - Chuck will follow up with Towns and confirm

    3. Need into from RPs as well by end of day

  5. Operations Tim/Leslie

    1. …

  6. Metrics @Tom Furlani @Joseph White

    1. Submitted Scientific Impact of ACCESS paper to PEARC26

  7. RP Forum @Eric Adams (RCAC) @Virginia Trueheart

    1. Re: Using ACCESS accounts across RPs some concerns were raised

      1. state and institution specific requirements that ACCESS accounts don’t meet

      2. continued security concerns with which accounts and institutions are approved by ACCESS

      3. some practicalities around if one institution wants to veto an account should other sites also have to reject the account or does the account stay active within ACCESS just with entry restricted to certain RPs and how would an RP report that to an auditor?

      4. additional concern re: auditing was who/what group holds the end responsibility for what accounts were allowed on the machine if one is found to be a bad actor?

    2. Some RPs do already use ACCESS as their only account process though so there are examples of both approaches

    3. We are sending out an email poll to get official record of everyone's existing systems and also preferences moving forward - will get this back to EC and Bruno

  8. EAB @Chuck P

    1. Report from EAB meeting on February 17, 2026 available for review here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gvl4GBlMWuBNhqK27IZdv0f0ZcNyTbytpfXT4w6tz4A/edit?usp=sharing

      1. This report was processed to help identify the key recommendations for each service team and the program as a whole

      2. The raw report is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U3-6AJcvm9chGuLnk6nJJ_w-wWJ9rqhB/view?usp=drive_link

      3. Email sent to whole EC with the intention of discussing this at a future EC meeting date

      4. Permissions set so our NSF colleagues can retrieve these

  9. ACO @John Towns

    1. absent

  10. NSF - Sharon and Ed -

    1. Will not have a full review panel for annual review - will be designed like last year - casual

    2. Need Blackout dates from everyone - she would rather do everyone’s in May if she can

    3. Did you get the copy of the surveys from Amit? yes

    4. Chuck did make sure she was able to get the EAB documents linked above

  11. Standing Committee Updates - EC Liaison - (Chuck lead)

    1. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pNfsXwr7640_7zk03mJu2jDUqDAsG37fOezlqNYcX0E/edit?usp=sharing - Need to schedule interim meetings with each SC/WG to interact with the EC

    2. Communications Standing Committee

      1. no report

    3. Cybersecurity Standing Committee

      1. Has not met; next meeting is Apr 9, 2026

    4. Evaluation Standing Committee

      1. no report

    5. Infrastructure Standing Committee

      1. no report

    6. Ticketing Standing Committee

      1. no report

    7. Web Presence Standing Committee

      1. no report

    8. Data Architecture WG (Proposed)

      1. no report

  12. Milestone Review: (Link Below)

    image-20260331-175544.png

     

  13. EC Meeting To Do / Follow Ups: (Link Below)

    image-20260331-175709.png

  14. Reminders

    1. don't forget to review Engagement Tracker and Risk Register Review

      1. Upcoming Meetings & Events (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_EXKUOXmY-TVkDWaHR1-SuiKt404uGEnGSr6uQCkwzw/edit?gid=0#gid=0 )

      2. https://access-ci.atlassian.net/jira/core/projects/RR/list?sortBy=assignee&direction=DESC&filter=status%20in%20(%22Execute%20Contingency%22%2C%20Monitor%2C%20Review)

Additional Agenda Items

  1. Standing Committee Reports

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

    1. Metrics can contribute $2.5K, Allocations can contribute $2K, John can contribute some, Shelley’s team FY ends on June 30th

    2. Historically, these have been billed as "sponsorships" and not signing up to be an "exhibitor" at the meeting.  The guidance my campus has given is the it is not allowable to use federal funds for a "sponsorship."  The "exhibitor" language may be the change my brain did not fully engage.  

      Let me check with those here that determine allowable costs.

      Honestly, if this allowable, the ACO has funds to cover this.

    3. or - other option is

    4. After speaking with the Conference committee, our understanding is that there should be no problem with splitting a single ACCESS sponsorship across several institutions. They can send separate invoices to each institution, but have ACCESS listed as the sponsor. 

      The process is managed by the Exhibitor Program committee, who can provide information about the different sponsorship levels. You can contact them directly here: 

      They may ask you to fill out the Exhibitor form for their records, in which case you can select a primary billing contact point, and then email them separately with a division of costs. 

      Rich and Sandra can provide you with more specifics on the process and loop in ACM for invoices. 

      Thanks, Alaine 

    5. Exhibitor fee payment must be received in full by ACM, the PEARC26 sponsoring organization, by July 1, 2026 in order to participate in PEARC26. 

  3. Fall Quarterly - dates

    1. Shannon - Sent out a When to Meet for Dates in September and Early October for Colorado - leaning to Boulder

    2. https://www.when2meet.com/?35760985-dIO7T

    3. Looking like Sept 15 - 17 is working well for many people -

      1. Tim will be remote (will be in Florida)

      2. Misha will be remote

      3. Sharon will be remote

        image-20260331-175452.png

    4. Need to tell me if it is Boulder or Denver

      1. Easier for Shelley if it is at Boulder

      2. Easier to fly into Denver

      3. Easy to travel to to Boulder from Denver

      4. Shelley is going to see if she can find a room

  4. Need Input from RPs - John T / for Dina M

    1. Not getting many newsletter submissions

      1. Normal for this point in the program?

    2. Partly a By-Product of how they planned things - getting to the end of a product year and gearing up for the next on

      1. maybe we can ask for what new things we can look forward to from the new teams and do one a month

      2. She can go by the info in the quarterly meeting info

      3. Will check to see if she is getting email from all RPs - does have comms at each of the RPs

      4. John will bring it up at the EC meeting

      5. Eric will reach out in the next RP forum call and make sure everyone is contacting Dina with news they would like to share

      6. Leslie will also confirm with JP about correct info for RP contacts for Dina - will loop in Shannon

  5. User screening and account information updates (Bruno/Nathan)

    1. Over 90% of active users do not have Department/Unit specified; requiring that across the board could be disruptive

    2. 10,000+ non-compliant accounts (e.g. generic email addresses, incomplete info excluding department/unit)

    3. ~700 active accounts with international affiliation---these will be screened soon

    4. Current plan is to send a message to ALL ACCESS announcing requirements for complete/updated information to be in an allocation; wait a couple of weeks; start notifying non-compliant accounts directly; wait one week; send reminder to non-compliant accounts and their allocations PIs; wait two weeks; disable any non-compliant accounts

    5. If in a US-based institution… should we disable if they don’t have department specified? That’s about 17,000 accounts.

Discussion via email after the meeting:

Regarding the question in item e., if having their department specified is a requirement given to us by NSF, then I believe we will need to disable the accounts at that point.  Hopefully many will have updated their information.

Thanks!
-John

Hi John,

Thanks for your input. Allocations discussed this further with the NSF yesterday. The primary reason to collect department information is that the denied party lists have that granularity (e.g. University X Department Y is on a list but University X Department Z isn't). 

We decided that we will, within the next month, require department information only for international users (less than 1,000 total). We will require department information across the board as we deploy annual certification process (e.g. at account anniversary or when added to a new allocation), but we won't disable US-based intitution users for not providing this information before the certification gets to them. Of course, new user are coming in with that requirement.

This process still will require almost 11,000 users to update their information within a month, but that is a much smaller fraction than the 90% I mentioned in the EC meeting agenda. Still, it is a substantial fraction the certainly will cause an impact. Thus, if you or others have more concerns, please let us know as soon as possible. We are very close to rolling this out.

Best regards,

-Bruno

Bruno--  Thanks for the update.  I think the approach makes sense and stands to be at least a bit less disruptive.  

The messaging may want to include that this update will be required of all ACCESS identity holders.  They are encouraged to update that information now, but will be required when they renew their identity or are added to a new allocation.  This might get some of them to get it taken care of before they are in a rush to get something done. 

Thanks!
-John

Next Meeting: Apr 7, 2026

 

LINKS

Program Milestones

https://access-ci.atlassian.net/jira/core/projects/ECMT/list?sortBy=duedate&direction=ASC&filter=status%20in%20(Annually%2C%20Monthly%2C%20Ongoing%2C%20Quarterly%2C%20%22Semi%20Annually%22%2C%20Upcoming)%20AND%20labels%20%3D%20EC

EC Meeting Task Tracking + Quarterly and Annual Meetings To Do Follow Ups

https://access-ci.atlassian.net/jira/core/projects/ATT/list?sortBy=duedate&direction=ASC&filter=%22Category%5BCategory%5D%22%20IN%20(%22EC%20Meeting%20To%20Do%22%2C%20%2224Feb-QtrlyMtg%22%2C%20%2224June-QtrlyMtg%22%2C%20%2224Dec-QtrlyMtg%22)%20AND%20status%20IN%20(%22In-Progress%22%2C%20%22To%20Do%22)


Reference:

Risk Register:

https://access-ci.atlassian.net/jira/core/projects/RR/board

Project Change Request:

https://access-ci.atlassian.net/jira/core/projects/PCR/board