2022-09-27 ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

Owned by Lavanya Podila
Last updated: Sept 27, 2022
4 min read

Attendees:

  • RAMPS: Stephen Deems (v), Dave Hart

  • MATCH: Shelley Knuth (v), Dave Hudak

  • CONECT: Tim Boerner (v), Leslie Froeschl

  • MMS: Tom Furlani (v), Joe White

  • OpenCI: John Towns (v), Shawn Strande, Ron Payne, Lavanya Podila

  • NSF: Tom Gulbransen (NSF)

  • Guest Speaker:

    • Dina Meek for SC22 planning

    • Jay Alameda for community engagement

(v) indicates a voting member

Agenda/Notes

  1. SC22 Plan @Dina Meek (10 mins)

    1. Are there any ACCESS presentations or BoFs? 

    2. Dina to summarize the plan for ACCESS at SC22.

      1. It  might be neat to convey an anecdote or two from researchers who've successfully transitioned into the new processes

      2. It might be a good idea to emphasize some of the novel projects that the tracks are currently developing

      3. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uBQ40BDbDVBdvZ95btYqZr79lbuR_cE3/edit

  2. Approval of summaries from prior EC meetings @John Towns (5 min)

    1. 20 September 2022 EC Summary (Approved)

  3. Informational Items (10 mins)

    1. RAMPS @Stephen Deems

      1. Allocation Requests by Opportunity

        1. Explore: 106

        2. Discover: 31

        3. Accelerate: 1

        4. Maximize: 2

      2. AARC Reviewer Sign-Ups: 46

    2. MATCH @Shelley Knuth

      1.  

    3. CONECT @Tim Boerner

      1. Ticket Working Group kicked off ticket system requirements gathering to determine preferred system for the long-term. Platforms being considered include RT, ServiceNow, Service Desk (Atlassian). Goal is to identify one system that meets limited budget constraints and available personnel expertise.

      2. Cybersecurity Governance Council updated & voted on Core Policy. This will be presented to EC next week (likely). Also working on security standards.

      3. We are pleased to announce that Tom Maiden (PSC) is joining the CONECT team effective October 1 as the RP Coordinator. Tom has been part of the HPC/research computing community for many years and was a part of the XSEDE training team. While much of his experience in the community has been focused on the end user experience, he is familiar with the existing resource providers and the community in general and will be able to hit the ground running! We are seeking a more junior person who Tom can mentor into this role going forward (if you have recommendations for someone who might be good, please contact Leslie).

    4. MMS @Tom Furlani

      1.  

    5. OpenCI @John Towns

      1. EAB Charter Vote: Updated EAB Charter was sent to EC on Sun. 25 Sept. in preparation for an EC Vote this week. At this point we just want to be sure there aren’t any major changes that require discussion. For minor changes identified at the EC meeting, we can vote contingent on those changes being made. Recent updates to charter include:

        1. added representation from the ACCESS Resource Provider Forum and Researcher Advisory Committee; and

        2. added language on the initial year staggered membership terms. Please take a look at these and/or have a delegate from your team do so.

      2. Code of conduct drafts will be circulated this week.

  4. Change Management & Risk Management Processes @Ron Payne (10 mins)

    1. Change Management Processes

      1. Is there a place where we can check with NSF? There may be proposed changes that have a potential cost implication, either requiring commitment of existing resources, or requiring more $.

      2. Some clarity will be needed to distinguish between things the EC votes on per the Charter and those that fall into this process. Probably some overlap.

      3. What are the criteria for something needing a Project Change Request, - as soon as one of the awardees has a change that would likely impact any other tracks, we will go through the process. In practice, this will be fairly lightweight.

      4. This is a high level overview presented to the EC, program level milestones and schedules will be put up by Ron

    2. Risk Management Processes

      1. Suggestion to consider possible use of attributes for status (proposed, open, closed...) and action (mitigate, accept, transfer, exploit, enhance, share, escalate...)

  5. Community Engagement @Jay Alameda (10 mins)

    1. Planning Group formed

    2. permanent members from all four tracks (Support, Metrics, Allocations, Operations)

    3. Most (all?) are split between this and other ACCESS functions in their service track

    4. Meeting biweekly as members are oversubscribed

      • First meeting 9/13, next meeting 9/27 (prior to EC meeting)

    5. First meeting (summary notes: 1.0 Initial Meeting - Sept 13, 2022 )

      • Consensus for informal working group rather than formal committee with charter

        • focus on coordination and information sharing rather than policy setting

      • Introductions and community identification (only)

      • No discussion yet on track level community building and engagement plans

      • No substantive discussion on diversity and inclusion work at the track level

      • No discussion on coordinating community building and engagement plans (ACO level)

      • No discussion on coordinating diversity and inclusion plans (ACO level)

      • No discussion on tracking diversity and inclusion work tracking

        • XSEDE: this was handled/coordinated with evaluation, and leveraged data from the central database. I think this warrants discussion here, as to the best approach:

          • Are we using the central database in a similar fashion to XSEDE?

          • Should evaluation be tracking/measuring our diversity and inclusion baseline and any subsequent improvements?

    6. Next meeting (Sept 27, 2022)

      • continue to topics not covered in first meeting:

        • What kind of relationship do we seek with our communities?

        • How can we expand participation to new and underserved communities?

          • How are we planning on measuring community expansion for new and underserved communities?

        • How can we deepen participation in our existing communities?

      • This lays foundation for virtual community building and engagement plan

  6. Terminologies in Quarterly Reports @Tom Gulbransen (10 mins)

    1. Anyone with questions about quarterly report terminology should reach out to Tom directly.

  7. EAB Charter vote @Shawn Strande (10 mins)

    1. EAB Charter approved

    2. Next steps, proceed with email communications

  8. Consideration of ACCESS/NSF sessions to talk more about expectations for CC* projects to integrate with ACCESS & steps to integrate @Leslie Froeschl (10 mins)

    1. Ran out of time, will be moved to next week’s agenda

  9. Time permitting: EC Backlog Review: Update priority/items for next EC meeting @John Towns

 

Next EC Meeting: 4 October 2022