Scope of initiative. After the BoG approved the proposal for a new web initiative in September 2013, the Online Committee initiated discussions with SixFeetUp to specify the new features to be added to the current website infrastructure. The main objective of the initiative has been to develop enhancements to the website that would enable us to integrate videos and media resources into the website, and in particular to give a more prominent place and more visibility to the lectures recorded during the schools of Information Theory. In addition, the initiative will provide simple means of sharing ITSoc resources on social media (Facebook, Google+, etc.). To avoid maintenance problems in the future, the infrastructure has also been upgraded to Plone 4, which should also provide side benefits, such as improved speed, etc. 

 

Status of development. 80% of the development (infrastructure upgrade and early enhancements) was completed before the end of 2013. The process was slowed down after IEEE decided to review our initiative - see details in next paragraph. On a positive note, IEEE has approved the budget and we will be able to pay SFU for past development and move forward with the last remaining features.

 

IEEE review. In   December 2013, IEEE indicated that we had to submit to an IEEE Project Request (IPR) procedure. 

• What is IPR? This process is run through the IEEE Business Administration Management and  Administration, lead by the CFO. The purpose of the process is to  explain the nature of the project and expenditures and encourage improved decision-making. The TA staff are required  to complete IPRs for all TAB, Society, and Council projects over $50K in order for the contract and purchase requisition to be approved and opened respectively. For volunteer led projects, this process requires volunteer involvement to complete the forms and to respond to questions asked during the approval process. The Business Admin Mgmt and Admin group determines who will be needed to approve the IPR.
• Outcome of the review process.  While we initially thought the IPR process would be perfunctory since IEEE had already approved the initiative, the process ended up being particularly slow. It has been extremely difficult to obtain concrete information, and the only feedback we received was that " [..] this particular IPR was stopped by the CIO. He has some specific requests that needed to be resolved [...] " and " There may be a need for IT to do a quality review of the web page as well as an architecture review [...].". We are hoping to obtain more information moving forward, but the process has been anything but transparent and open.
• Moving forward. After multiple requests from the Online Committee, the Management Council of IEEE finally approved the purchase order without the IPR being approved, which allows us to pay SFU's invoices for the work performed from September 2013 to January 2014. As far as the web initiative is concerned, we should be able to proceed as originally planned, but further interactions with IEEE on this are to be expected. The Online Committee will report on this in a timely manner once IEEE provides feedback.

The following table shows the top 5 page views (not including the main page) of the website for the period 9/9/2013 to 2/9/2014.

 

The following table shows the top 10 countries from which visit originates  for the period 9/9/2013 to 2/9/2014.