October 2025 Agenda

Meeting Date: October 1, 2025

Time: 1:30 pm

Location: Frey 206/207; Teams

Present: Craig Woolley, Param Singh, Tommy Smith, Calvin Feldt, Sean Courtney, Jacqueline Bach 

Remote Attendance: Angie Mann, Chris Barrett, Mo Carney, Stephanie Rhodes, Kilbert Spland, Wen-Chieh Fan, Brian Davis, Emmett Brown

Absent: Loree Ramezan, Lori Martin, Michele Montero 

Presenters: Neill Killgore, James Ghawaly, Buddy Ethridge, Sumit Jain, Katie Bouey 

Others: Ric Simmons, Susan Crochet, Robin Ethridge, Le Yan

 

Opening 

1. Administrative Announcements  

2. Executive ITGC Updates [Craig Woolley] 

                      
Action 

3. Approval of the Minutes from the meeting held on May 15, 2025 

 
Information/Discussion 

4. PS-128 [Sumit Jain] 

5. Upcoming ADA Deadline for Software Acquisitions [Buddy Ethridge] 

6. Mike GPT/Potential AI Standards [James Ghawaly/Neill Killgore] 

7. Project Management Tool Standard Proposal [Katie Bouey] 

8. IT Centralization Project     [Craig Woolley] 

 
Wrap-Up 

9. Information sharing/Announcements [All] 

10. Suggested agenda items for future meetings, including ITS topics of interest [All] 

11. Next steps/Follow-up items [Chair] 

 

October 2025 Minutes

1. Administrative Announcements

Craig announced that October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Sumit Jain, ITS, shared that there will be a different cybersecurity topic each week on the website. He also shared that there will be a geocache event across campus where participants can earn prizes by answering five questions. In addition, ITS will host two “Ask Us Anything” events related to cybersecurity.

 
3. Meeting Minutes Approval 

May meeting minutes were approved with no revision. Motion to approve by Param Singh. 

 
4. Vote on PS-128 Revisions

Sumit shared changes to Policy Statement (PS) 128 on Identity and Access Management (IAM). He shared that changes were necessary due to implementation of Okta as the IAM system, adding that language had to be updated to align with how Okta functions. He stated changes were made to PS-128 Standard 2 on Account Management now that account creation/termination has been standardized. He also discussed changes to guest account creation, account naming conventions, and the use of vanity email addresses. Sumit also discussed changes to PS-128 Standard 3 on Authentication Management, sharing the complexity requirements for user passwords. He added that passwords no longer expire once they are set in the new IAM portal. Lastly, Sumit discussed changes to PS-128 Standard 4 on Authorization Management. He shared that accounts are no longer deleted when an employee leaves the university. The username will be reissued to the employee if they choose to return to the university. He also briefly discussed the principle of least privilege for employees with administrative positions or elevated access.

 

 

6. MikeGPT/Potential AI Standards 

James Ghawaly gave an overview of MikeGPT, a custom Large Language Model (LLM) agent designed to assist LSU faculty and staff in everyday activities. He stated the two primary objectives were to provide a private and secure alternative to ChatGPT and to provide a tool to assist users in finding information for LSU A&M-related topics. He shared MikeGPT currently uses GPT 4.1 LLM which will soon be upgraded to GPT 5 and uses Django framework as its backend as well as React for its frontend. He stated that none of the data being used is made available to other customers, nor is it being used to train or improve products for other users. He also stated there are additional content filters for queries going into the system as well as responses coming out of the system. James shared several new features of MikeGPT, including agent selection, open feedback forum, and accessibility features such as text-to-speech. He also discussed the newly available custom agents feature, as well as data privacy and client-side encryption. James shared next steps including Moodle integrations through a custom MCP server as well as image ingestion. There was a brief discussion concerning communicating updates or accomplishments to the campus community as well as a discussion on grounding strength options. There was also a brief discussion on making MikeGPT available to the other campuses. 
 
Neill Killgore, ITS, gave an overview of Glean, an Enterprise AI Platform purchased for LSU. It features an internal search engine, tools for developers to access Glean’s indexed data, and light workflow automation. Neill discussed data safety, stating it keeps LSU data secure through agreements not to retain or use data for training new models. He added that any integrations with applications such as Teams or OneDrive will respect the original data permissions. He discussed several other features, including chatbot experience, agent builder, searching across applications, and scheduled agents. He shared that several important criteria were considered for selecting Glean including Enterprise Data protection, pre-built integrations, reduced hallucinations, and security controls around potentially dangerous prompts. Neill gave a demonstration of Glean to the Council.  
Craig shared that any users wishing to buy ChatGPT would be encouraged to use Glean as an alternative since it is centrally managed and grants access to what ChatGPT has in addition to other models. Craig shared that the Council will vote on making Glean the standard for LSU at the next meeting. There was a brief discussion on the cost of Glean as well as users being able to provide a use case for products other than Glean. There was also a brief discussion on adopting a different standard in the future if a product or platform performs better than Glean. 

 
5. ADA Compliance Deadline 

Buddy Ethridge reminded the Council of the April 2026 deadline for ADA compliance. He stated that if software is not compliant with ADA guidelines, LSU will work with the requestor and/or vendor to identify a potential solution. Buddy added that this may cause issues when approving software acquisition requests. 

 
7. Project Management Tool Standard Proposal 

Katie Bouey gave an overview of key features of a project management tool, which include tracking, documentation, task management, and reporting and analysis. She presented a table listing various PM tools currently in use at LSU and displaying how well each of them leverages those key features. She noted that Airtable scored favorably with each of the key features and is already used by several departments on campus. She displayed how much money is currently being spent on PM tools and noted a potential savings of $29,475 if Airtable is adopted as a PM tool standard for LSU users. It was decided Airtable would not be adopted as a PM tool standard; users could still request other PM tools, but ITS would only offer support for Airtable and TeamDynamix.  

 
8. IT Centralization Project 

Craig gave an update on the IT Centralization Project. He reminded the Council that two surveys were sent to departments that have IT professionals. The first survey gathered high-level information about job responsibilities, while the second survey gathered more detailed information such as the number of servers managed, their operating system, etc. He stated that all of the first surveys as well as some of the second surveys have already been submitted by the departments. Craig shared that he has met with all the Deans and the heads of various departments to talk about their concerns. He also shared that Faculty Senate and the Department IT Subcommittee have been heavily involved. Craig announced that the IT group from Residential Life has already moved under ITS.