AACII Meeting Notes

Thursday, December 6, 2018

2:00 – 3:00 pm

Travel Registry

Todd Holmes

Program Manager, International Safety & Security

The International Safety and Security office is continuously working on improving the travel registry system to be used by the entire community. The office is trying to improve the system launched in Fall 2017 by gathering feedback in real time while parts of the community are already using it.

The main focus is to make the system as easy as possible to use, to eliminate the additional work that might be done (or not) at the level of DLCs and also provide a central management of the essential information of any Institute employees who are traveling. The central management will be useful in situations where natural disasters (or any other events) can impact the travelers’ safety. The Institute (and DLCs) will be able to be know who is traveling in the affected areas and get in touch and ensure that the travelers are safe.

A demonstration of the system was performed by creating a bogus trip so the AACII members can experience:

• A walk through the entire system
• detailed instructions of what type of information is needed
• the required forms the are needed to be completed by travelers
• health assessment forms

To note: there is no current policy that requires the travel registration but there might be a real need to have one. Also, there is no policy on domestic travel.

Questions and feedback:

• What happens if a department organizes a trip but with either students or funds from other department? Who is responsible and how do we capture all this?

• There is no current way of capturing all the info above
• The department organizing is the responsible for starting the trip and entering all the info

• How do you identify/located people traveling internationally if the data is localized? How are the DLCs going to be informed of the individuals being located or safe?

• There is the need of adding the critical administrative people who should be aware such as AOs/Undergraduate or Graduate Administrators
• Find a way of disseminating the information

• Is there a plan in place for assistance and emergency report? How does it work
• Ensure that compliance and risk management are followed

3:00 – 4:00 pm

MIT Homepage

Nate Nickerson and Danyel Barnard

MIT Communications Office

MIT homepage hasn’t changed since 2009. New main page launched in July (followed by the launch of MIT Daily mail to keep community informed on what is going on across campus).

There has been a lot of research and thinking put into of the main page. Based on many surveys and data collection, the focus was put on the prospective students and outside world. The goals of the redesigning were: i. help better navigate MIT, ii. deliver a clear impression of MIT research and culture and iii. create platform for future growth. The audience to be focused on: students, alumni, general audience, community.

The post launch data confirmed that the changes spoke to the external audiences but not as well as internal population.

Questions and feedback:

• The homepage was used as an intranet by the community
• Certain features (such as people directory, map, etc) were lost
• Hard to find items when you did a search. Search tool currently being more as a google search than a way to link to different administrative aspects
• It did become a website mainly for an outside audience

• Proposed to maybe use and transform Alas as some type of intranet
• Gather more feedback on what community needs
• Focus on providing tools that are geared towards the community

Next Meeting:

Our next AACII meeting will be on January 17, 2019 in 4-105

Note Taker:  Brían O’Conaill