Meeting Notes

AASHTO RAC Website Subcommittee Meeting

Monday, March 23, 2015

1:30-2:30 p.m.

Participants:Michael Bufalino, Amy Schutzbach, Natassja Linzau, Allison Hardt, Sue Sillick, Rick Kreider, James Watkins

1. Meeting Minutes from 2/23/15 were approved with revisions (Amy, All). After checking with Sue and Leni to make sure the revisions made to the Acronyms Brochure section accurately reflect what they suggested, Natassja will post these notes on the website.

2. Review of Changes from Last Meeting and Other Fixes Requested—In addition to the items from the last meeting, there were a few other needed fixes that we discovered as we were reviewing the site. Unless someone else is indicated as the responsible person, Natassja will implement these changes to the website.

OLD

  • All previous changes to the website were accepted.

NEW

  • Changes to the Contacts page are noted in #3 below and in the attached mockup of the Contacts page.

3. Contacts Page: There was a lengthy discussion of this page and what we should have on it. Michael created a mockup that reflects the structure and content we would like to have on the Contacts page. Natassja will make changes to the website’s Contacts page to match this document (see Attachment A.)

Here are some highlights from our discussion:

  • Should Canada be included under “AASHTO Members”? We decided to make the title “AASHTO Members” as opposed to “AASHTO Member States” to be more inclusive.
  • How do we include CUTC/UTCs on the Contacts page? We decided to only include those UTCs funded through OST-R. Sue has been trying to contact the president of the UTCs and will send an email to Shashi Nambisan, who is the new president. We will “table” this issue for now.

Update: We found a good link for CUTC that we will include (it is the “Contact Us” page from the CUTC website, which is listed in the mockup of the Contacts page).

  • SPR Part 2 Guidance contact—Correspondence from Leni recommended that we include an SPR Part 2 Guidance contact on the page. After some searching, we discovered a page that has good information about who to contact at FHWA for several issues, including SPR Part 2 Guidance. This link is included in the Contacts page mockup.
  • TRB Links—There were several items discussed regarding TRB contacts:
  • TRB Staff Listing=We decided to use a link to the “Contact Us” page not the Online Directory link for a listing of TRB Staff.
  • We discussed the importance of including contacts for internal TRB Staff as well as ways to access a listing of those who participate in TRB (using Online Directory) and will include links to both kinds of information.
  • For STRAP, we discussed the possibility of moving this link under “AASHTO” but decided it was better to keep it under “TRB State Representatives” instead.

Publications Notifications Page

A. We were not able to begin our discussion of this page. We need to finalize the content of the rest of the Contacts page first. Once that content is finalized, we will conduct a RAC Survey asking states to update their information for the following resources: Links to State DOT Research Branches, Publications Notifications Page, and State DOT Fact Sheets. It may be more efficient to request updates to these three resources at the same time. This will be determined at a future meeting.

ITEMS FOR NEXT MEETING:

I. We did not have time to discuss this fully in our meeting: Some questions arose about “outside” groups that RAC members are involved in and how to treat them on the website (i.e., list or don’t list, and if so, where?). Allison offered to bring the issue up at a future meeting of the Admin Task Force.

Here are the possible groups that could be included/listed on the SCOR/RAC website:

  • RAC-CUTC Liaison Group—Should we include their page with the RAC Task Forces? Or where can we put that information? (Amy suggested that we list the RAC-CUTC Liaison Group and STRP on the page with the RAC Task Forces but separate from the RAC Task Forces.) They are already listed in the most recent version of the RAC Task Force Membership Spreadsheet.
  • STRAP—This group is also listed on the current version of the RAC Task Force Membership Spreadsheet.
  • Implementation of NCHRP Results
  • AASHTO SCOR Process Improvement Task Force

[Amy S. comment: These groups are SCOR task forces that were created for one purpose and then shut down. They are not permanent, consistent SCOR task forces the way the RAC TFs are. They are more like the RAC Peer Exchange or Funding TFs that were created and then shut down. We may need to note these similarly to how the Peer Exchange and Funding TFs are called out.]

II. Discuss Programs page—content and structure [including Amy’s suggested changes to the page].

PARKING LOT/TABLED FOR FUTURE DISCUSSION:

  • If more funding becomes available:
  • Consider programming to display the date of each survey on its Survey Details page in the RAC Surveys database. Currently there is no date listed on the page.
  • Consider adding a box to the homepage that would be an automatic feed from the RAC Surveys database and would list the 10 most recent surveys, with links to the individual survey details pages. This would remove survey items from the “What’s New” list.
  • The website subcommittee would like to provide feedback to Chris Hedges and Chris Jenks on the layout of the Welcome letterfor new RAC members—it's getting dense. [This will be discussed at a future meeting.]
  • SCOR Roster—Still needs to be addressed, but it was decided to discuss this at a future meeting.
  • Task Force Products and/or Document Libraries—We decided to defer until we have finished our review of the rest of the site before tackling the issue of where these should be housed and/or highlighted. In addition, we want to find a way to preserve the “ownership” of each product, possibly by linking back to the task force that developed each product. In addition, we could potentially include a list of products on each task force page, as well as other relevant places on the site.
  • Calendar of RAC Task Force Meetings, Regional RAC Meetings, National RAC Meetings, and SCOR Meetings—This needs to be discussed further at a future meeting. Possibilities include posting on the RPPM Calendar, using the TRB Calendar, and/or developing a calendar for the SCOR/RAC website.

ADJOURNED. Our next meeting is scheduled forMonday, April 27, 2015, at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.

ATTACHMENT A

SCOR/RAC Website

Contacts Section

Suggest we delete the first four links, Staff Listings, and TIG.

Suggest we add the following headings.

AASHTO

Research Advisory Committee (RAC)

  • RAC-CUTC Liaison Group (I’m not sure if there is a membership list available online.)

Standing Committee on Research (SCOR)

AASHTO Members

  • State DOT Publications Notifications
  • State DOT Research Branches Note: Need a survey to update. I would also delete the third sentence in the note on this page. Why just RiP?
  • State DOT Research Unit Fact Sheets

CUTC (link to )

FHWA

Field

Headquarters

Research Expertise Directory (

Turner Fairbanks Highway Research Center

  • Transportation Pooled Fund
  • SPR Part 2

LTAP and TTAP Centers

Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (OST-R), among others, includes National Transportation Library (NTL); Research, Development and Technology; University Transportation Research Centers (UTC); and Volpe National Transportation Systems Center

TRB

Cooperative Research Programs (CRP)

  • ACRP (This lists the contact for syntheses, but NCHRP and TCRP do not.)
  • NCHRP (Add synthesis contact.)
  • TCRP (Add synthesis contact.)

Online Directory - Click “Browse TRB Lists” to view the following lists. It also allows a search of people by committee, name, and organization.

  • Committee Communication Coordinators
  • Committee Research Coordinators
  • State Representatives
  • STRAP (We should spell this out first. I’m not sure if there is a list online or if one needs to be created.) (Taskforce spreadsheet)

TRB Staff

Website Subcommittee Meeting, 3/23/15Page 1