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      Date:Sun, 15 Apr 2007 14:18:56 -0700 (PDT)

      From:"David Kantor" <dkantor606@yahoo.com>

      Subject:Comments about some IT issues

      To:ec@discussthis.com

Dear Friends;

 

Please review the attached and provide comments if you have them.

 

David

Plain Text Attachment

 

 

 

Dear Friends;

 

First of all, please accept my expression of appreciation for each of

 you. I deeply appreciate the efforts that are being made within our own

 organization to advance dissemination efforts, as well as the efforts

 that are being made to secure some degree of organizational integration

 and cooperation with the dedicated individuals trying to manage the

 complex affairs of Urantia Foundation.

 

A comment about our IT situation:  I do not think it is servicable to

 think about our IT situation in terms of discrete projects with planning

 stages, beginnings, and endings.  We are never going to have a

 completed website, a completed database, a completed bookkeeping and

 accounting system.  It is important to understand that work in these domains

 involves *the management of processes*,  not the management of sequences

 of tasks leading to completed projects. 

 

Relevant technology is in a state of rapid development and change.  Our

 organization is in a state of change, transition, and growth.  In the

 context of our organization, goals and objectives related to IT

 services become orienting parameters of *processes* rather than definitions of

 states of completion.  Understanding this provides a crucial insight

 into how we must structure our management procedures.  For example, we

 need to understand our database program and our website as nothing more

 than ephemeral ways of presenting, manipulating, and displaying

 organizational information. 

 

We are in the information business.  Information is our primary

 commodity.  The presentation, propagation, preservation, and further

 development of this information are the primary tasks of our organization.   

 

It is essential that we understand the difference between information

 and the means by which that information is accessed, manipulated, and

 displayed. Hardware and software technologies intended for displaying and

 manipulating our data are changing frequently.  The underlying data

 itself is a separate reality with higher order requirements for the

 assurance of integrity. 

 

For example; backup procedures now being followed which backup

 Filemaker Pro or Quickbooks files provide data that is usable only as long as

 we have hardware and software capable of running the Filmaker Pro and

 Quickbooks programs.  These backups hold our data in formats that are

 understandable only by these software programs. 

 

On the other hand, backup procedures that store our data as ascii text

 files provide the lowest common denominator for digital data --

 information stored in this format can be imported into a great variety of

 software programs for display and manipulation. (I recently wanted to

 access some files I received from the Jesusonian archive that had been

 copied a few years ago to zip disks.  Remember zip disks?  It is very

 difficult to find someone today who still has a zip drive working on their

 computer and this is only a few short years past the time when zip drives

 were the latest technology.) 

 

For this reason I suggest we institute a data backup procedure which

 regularly (not less than weekly) backs up all critical data in the file

 formats of the software within which it runs.  In addition to this, we

 should have a regular (monthly?) backup to ascii.  And, to achieve one

 more level of security, I suggest that we backup regularly to print

 media (Quarterly?  Annually?  Semi-annually?).  That is, at some determined

 interval we actually print out to paper full copies of our data,

 followed by appropriate storage of these paper copies.  Such an approach

 would give us a multi-level approach to assuring the long-term integrity

 of our data. 

 

Does anyone have any comments on this? 

 

If such procedures are deemed to be important, they should be codified

 by the Executive Committee and included in the job description for the

 organization's IT services manager.  But I belive it is important that

 the EC simply not accept the IT Manager's opinion that organizational

 data is adequately being backed up.   

 

It is important that the EC mandate that periodic (Annual?

 Semi-annual?) tests of backup procedures actually work; on a test machine critical

 organizational software applications and data should be installed and

 then trashed.  Following this a restoration of this data should be

 attempted from existing backups.  Whether or not implemented backup

 procedures actually work can only be determined by creating an artificial

 disaster, forcing a restoration, and then checking the integrity of the

 subsequently restored data.  Ideally such a test should be conducted by a

 completely separate group which periodically (Annually? Semi-annually?)

 attempts to reconstruct the Fellowship's data from available

 backups--with no guidance from anyone involved with the preparation of those

 backups.  Assume that everyone associated with the organization's IT

 services was killed by a plane crashing into the building where the

 organization's servers were installed and maintained, and that no mirror sites

 were operational.   

 

At the very least, such an exercise should be conducted on an annual

 basis with the results being reported to the Executive Committee at a

 specified meeting.  An additional level of security could be provided by

 having someone completely uninvolved with present IT activities attempt

 to recover/restore organizational information following a staged

 disaster.

 

It may be good to run these ideas past Barry Clark, who may have more

 insight related to these matters. 

 

If I receive no EC direction on this, I will proceed to implement

 backup strategies which address the personal concerns I've expressed above.

 

In friendship,

 

David