NIH Electronic Directory Project

Steering Committee Meeting Minutes

October 12, 1999

 

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Participants:

            Akinyele Akinyelu (Junior)-CIT

Tom Bodine-CIT

            Bob Borah-CIT

            Keith Gorlen-CIT

            Andrea Hobbs-NIAAA

            Rob Malick-CIT

            Sandy Miller-ORS

            Diane O’Neill-ORS

            Doug Price-NHLBI

            Ann Robertson-NIDDK

           

                                   

Miscellaneous Issues

 

The following miscellaneous issues were discussed.

 

• Instances in which AOs, ATs, and general users (i.e., owners of directory entries) will receive email notification.  The following table summarizes the instances.

 

NED Event	Email Recipients
An AT submits a registration/update request to an AO for review	Reviewing AO
An AO approves a registration/update request submitted by an AT	Submitting AT, entry owner
An AO rejects a registration/update request submitted by an AT	Submitting AT
An AO registers someone new or updates an existing entry (an AT is not involved)	Entry owner

 

 

Question:  Should SSN and DOB be required fields for Fellows during a registration? 

Answer:  SSNs-no; DOB-yes, (for now anyway).  Many fellows don’t have SSNs, although there are some (e.g., visiting associates and scientists), who must be entered into the HRDB and are therefore assigned a temporary SSN until a permanent number is issued.  However, entering temporary SSNs in these cases could lead to problems down the road if directory entries are not updated to reflect permanent SSNs once they are obtained.  It is not clear whether current business practices capture DOB for all fellows.  Some AOs indicated that they thought they did,  while others weren’t so sure.  It was decided for now, that DOB will be required for registering a fellow, but if this proves not to be feasible, will be changed. 

 

• Question:  Do tenants require a SAC and an IC?

Answer:  Yes, all entries in the NED must have both a SAC and an IC affiliation, although technically, if you have a SAC, your IC is already built in to the SAC.  The bigger question is who “sponsors” these people, or is responsible for their registration and deregistration in the NED.  Admittedly, the tenant category is somewhat nebulous and contains a number of different groups of people.  Those that have been identified thus far include: R&W workers, employees of the Office of the General Counsel, FDA employees working on the NIH campus, Credit Union workers, and FAES.  Sandy Miller, an Administrator Officer with ORS, indicated that she was going to look into this issue and report back to the committee.

 

• Question:  Do we want to insist that required fields are filled in during an update?  (This could be problematic because it will require that AOs track down a lot of information for people that have been imported into the directory and are missing required information.)

Answer:  No, this information should not be required, at least during the pilot for the reason stated above.  However, some of the AOs present indicated that they felt the imported data should be validated, with the missing required information entered manually into the NED by AOs or ATs.  For the larger ICs in particular, this sounds like a major undertaking, but it was pointed out by AOs that the full IC population could be broken down into reasonably sized groups based on SACS to distribute the workload.

 

• Question:  Consider the following scenario, AO Bodine covers SAC HNU1; AO Borah covers NHU14.  Joe User with SAC HNU146 is updated by AO Bodine.  Currently, the change log reflects Borah as the approving AO.  Is this the way it should be?

Answer: No, the AO who actually updates the entry, regardless of whether the other AO has SAC coverage that’s “closer” to that of the person being updated, should be reflected as the approving AO in the Change Log.

 

• Question:  What fields are required for the following NIH “services”:
• ID Badge
• Parking Permit
• Listing in paper directory

Answer: 

           

Required Information	ID Badge	Parking Permit	Listing in Paper Directory
First Name	Y	Y	Y
Last Name	Y	Y	Y
Phone	Y	Y	Y
Building	Y	Y	Y
Room	Y	Y	Y
Mail Stop Code	N	N	Y
Home Address	N	Y	N

 

Also, in order for contractors to obtain an NIH ID, they are required to provide their contractor affiliation and phone number.

 

 

Demonstration of Enhanced Functionality for the AO/AT User Interface

 

A couple of new features that had been recently added to the NED user interface were demonstrated at the meeting:

 

§         Return to AT:  Allows an AO to return a submitted request to an AT with a comment.  Requests can be returned numerous times if necessary before being approved or rejected by the AO. 

 

§         Scheduled Changes.  Allows an AO or AT to enter information into the interface at their convenience and schedule the update or registration for a future date.  The default “effective date” on the Update or Registration Confirmation screen is the current date, but a future date can be either entered manually or selected from a popup calendar should the AO or AT choose.  If entered by an AT, a scheduled request must be approved, like any other change, by an AO.  Once approved, the contents and/or date of a scheduled change can be modified, returned to the AT, or canceled. 

 

 

 

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Ø      Next Meeting:     Tuesday, October 26, 1999

                                    2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

                                    Natcher, Conference Room G1/G2