by Willie Pritchard, Vice Chancellor and Chief Technology Officer

As always, ETS is working on a variety of projects to improve the use of technology throughout the District. One of the high-level projects is the portal, which is now in the beta-testing phase. Read the article Test Users Comment on New Portal for more information about the portal's function and for feedback from several of our approximately 130 test users at Central Services, Foothill and De Anza. If you are interested in helping us test the portal, let me know.

ETS is also in the process of developing service level agreements (SLAs) for each of our departments. Basically, this involves documenting what services each department provides and under what circumstances so that expectations are set on both ends. Our staff will know exactly what is expected of them and you will know what to expect as well. We are moving the SLAs through the governance process, starting with ETAC. For more information, see the article ETS and ETAC Distribute Service Level Agreements.

We've also included an article in this issue called Practice Good Security. This contains tips from a Cisco Systems security trainer who recently made a presentation to our managers and supervisors about good security practices. This is an important article for everyone to read, since it only takes one user acting in a careless manner to compromise the security of our District's systems. We hear about security breaches all the time and we don't want to become one of those nightmare stories.

Speaking of the District's systems, you may notice from time to time that our email performance slows down or even stalls. You can help resolve this problem. It has come to our attention that many District employees have their Eudora email clients set to check email every minute instead of at the recommended 15-minute interval default. Read How You Can Help Improve the Performance of the District's Email Service for more information and step-by-step instructions on how you can reset your email client to help our email system run at higher performance levels.

And last but certainly not least, we are running an article with information we can all use to help protect the environment. Recycle Old Cell Phones and Empty Cartridges addresses a collaborative effort on the part of the District and Office Depot to recycle used inkjet cartridges, laser cartridges, copier toner cartridges and old personal cell phones. And it doesn't cost you a penny. So before you throw that next ink cartridge in the trashcan, consider participating in this program.

There are a whole lot of other projects underway in ETS, and you can read brief summaries in Tech Alerts and Project Status Reports. As always, if you have any questions about any ETS project you're welcome to contact me at pritchardwillie@fhda.edu.