AZSITE Consortium Meeting

Notes

Thursday, August 20, 1998

ARI, Tempe

 

In attendance:

ASM: George Gumerman, Paul Fish, Karen Lominac, Chuck Adams, Beth Grindell, Rick Karl

ASU: Barbara Stark, Keith Kintigh, Michael Barton, Peter McCartney

MNA: Mike Fox, Ed Wade, David Wilcox, Nancy Caroli

SHPO: Jim Garrison, Carol Griffith, Carol Heathington, Christy Garza

  1. ISA Review:

The group reviewed the Interagency Service Agreement drafted by Carol Griffith. Response was favorable overall; the following comments or suggestions were made:

ASU should be listed as ASU/Department of Anthropology, rather than ARI.
The agreement should run for 5 years and renew automatically unless an agency requests otherwise. If automatic renewal is not acceptable, then it should be renewable by mutual consent.
Items V.B.3 and V.C.3 should be modified to read ASM and ASU, respectively, not SHPO.
There will be separate funding agreements that refer to this ISA, to allay concerns of agency administrators that they are committing their institutions to long-term projects in the absence of monetary arrangements.
The ISA should incorporate the principles enunciated in the original MOA (the "whereas" clauses).
The "Cooperative procedures" section is standard language that SHPO attorneys will provide.
Each agency should begin informal review within appropriate staff to speed up the final version.
Each agency should provide Carol with the name of the signer from that agency.
Incorporate the principles of the original MOA (the "whereas" clauses).
Further changes should be sent to Carol within the week.
  1. AZSITE ACCESS LICENSE PROVISIONS:

The group reviewed a temporary access license Carol Griffith prepared to use for BLM and Forest Service archaeologists who will use the database during the testing phase. Comments and suggestions were as follows:

A standard disclaimer concerning the accuracy of the records
Item 6 (agreement to ignore records outside of the land manager’s jurisdiction) is specific to the temporary license.
Suggested that item 8 (agreement not to sell, disclose, lease, etc., information) be stricken and add "not authorized by the land manager" to item 3.
  1. REVIEW OF PROPOSED MOA WITH MNA

Major points to be considered for an MOA with MNA are:

MNA will enter all its existing data and serve as onsite access point for authorized outsiders without internet connections.
This agreement should not preclude MNA from entering their own data in the future.
Add a line stating that MNA has data entry responsibilities.
Add "user support" to #3 in Responsibilities.
ASM and ASU responsibilities should be added to this agreement, too, to indicate that all agencies have responsibilities to each other.
Substitute "signatories" for "consortium."
Incorporate the principles of the original MOA (the "whereas" clauses).

 

  1. TRIBAL CONCERNS AND ACCESS POLICIES:

Review of letter sent to tribes on 8/8/98:

There was general agreement that we need a written policy on site files restrictions and use. When such a policy is written, we should ask each tribe individually if it wants to participate in AZSITE.
ASM’s July policy memo was accepted as good general policy; procedures need to be written and then it can be circulated.

Consideration of access to Master Database (the full version of AZSITE):

Only the 4 consortium members (and their employees, researchers, and students) may have access to the Master Database.
Beyond that, there was disagreement as to who should get access to what portions of the database.
In the end, a consensus of sorts was reached that a consortium member may provide information on restricted portions of the Master Database (those portions not available to non-consortium members) to a non-consortium member if it deems that the non-consortium member has a valid research or CRM inquiry.
Site location data should be provided only when absolutely essential to the purpose of the inquiry.
All users of the database will be encouraged to consult with appropriate tribes on research or CRM and to share results of published research with tribes. AZSITE cannot require this, however, or monitor it.
Until the system is in operation, we cannot know how many requests might be made of the restricted portions of the Master Database by either consortium member personnel or other researchers.
An access agreement for one time users needs to be prepared and should be standardized for all agencies.
  2. BUDGET:
Various levels of access fees were reviewed. There was general consensus that billing by actual time for which a user is connected to AZSITE might be the most equitable system, although no one has any ideas on how much to charge per minute. We don’t know how much time licensees will spend connected to AZSITE, or how much the total AZSITE costs will be. (For argument’s sake, 60 minutes per day at $1/minute would total $14,400/year for a 240-day year.)