REPORT TO REGION 3 EXCOM FOR 22 JANUARY 2011 During the last year, my professional situation limited my participation. I have renewed my committment to supporting the region and will be holding regular Communications Meetings. My entire team has reupped for 2011: * Vice Chair: Jim Remich * ECSC: Dave Green * Newsletter: Bill LaBelle * Public Information: Dave Bower * Web Support: Eric Ackerman Region 3 has appointed me as the Information Management Coordinator, IMC. MGA has asked the Region to provide an IMC to encourage and promote the responsible use of automated tools in the administrative, business, and technical operations of the IEEE. This includes the training of volunteers within the Region who use the automated tools. These automated tools are provided to simplify administrative tasks, reduce time spent managing activities, and to assist in member development. The IMC is expected to be proficient in the use of these tools including those tools that are a part of the vTools project and others that are developed, purchased or recommended by the MGA that assist and support IEEE volunteers and members. Our committe has examined the role of the IMC and will propose changes to the operations manual to align both our terminology and organizaition to expand to meet the IMC charter while continuing to fill our existing roles. Specifically we will propose changes to * Rename Communications Committee to Information Management Committee * Make minor alignments to Communications Committe section to use IMC terms * Eliminate Electronic Communication Systems Coordination Sub-Committe * Establish a new Automated Tools Sub-Committee * Establish a new Data Sharing and Privacy Ad Hoc Committee The role of the ECSC has diminished as more tools are available through IEEE and from free or inexpensive on-line services. Currently there are only a few services still provided using our own servers. The committee is confident we can identify suitable services that will provide these functions at less cost. The IMC has increased emphasis on a variety of automated tools over the previous roll of Region electronic communications coordinator. Our communications committe had already revised our charter to include this expanded roll for efforts within the Region. However, anticipating a greater demand for this type of activity now that the function is with the scope of our IEEE duties, we feel a new subcommittee focused on the responsible use of automated tools in the administrative, business, and technical operations of the IEEE is warranted. The member engagement strategy creates a tension between using and sharing member data and the members right to privacy. We know from discussions at Region 3 meetings, this is a sensitive subject with strong feelings on both sides. We feel it will be impossible to navigate these waters without broad participation in discussons on the subject. We will propose an ad-hoc committee on both Data Sharing and Privacy to tackle these issues as the IEEE policies are evolve to reach the MGA vision. We had some issues with the automatic renewal function of the Listserv on our Region 3 communications list. This is a closed list and we had numerous silent partners to allow committee members to send to the list from both thier home and office addresses. These silent partners did not receive the renewal notice but did receive the drop notice. We have recovered and restored the list to its former glory. The Region 3 Section list (SEC-R03) continues to be less than optimum. Region does not control many of the sub-lists. Each time we send at message to the list we get many bounces but none of the lists under our control have the bounced addresses. We are working with the list administrators at IEEE to resolve these issues. However if you have control of your section list under SEC-R03, please update it. Our next meeting will be 9:00 PM, 2 February on the HighDef Conferencing service: Skype Number: +9900827047769620 OR Telephone Number: 1-201-793-9022 Conference Room Number: 7769620 Our agenda is developed on Google Documents at https://tinyurl.com/4hop5x5. Please join us. Respectfully submitted, Bill Clayton Communications Chair w.clayton@ieee.org