SIS&T Support for Student App Development

Meeting Details

Date/Time/Location

Attendees


Meeting Goals and Expected Preparation

Goals

  • Discuss the suport that SIS&T can provide to student developers, and more specifically to the group of students that is developing the GoGaucho App.

Expected Preparation

Agenda

TimeTopicOwnerNotes and Details
2mWelcome and ArrivalDiana Antova

Welcome!

Current state of the appDiana AntovaSteven Maglio

Current Structure

  • GoGaucho app is published to the Apple store and Google play https://gogaucho.app/
  • The development team is of students only, they registered an organization with Student Life, grew it to 20 people in the last several weeks from 6 people.
  • Have 3 project managers, a marketing person and iOS, android and back-end developers.
  • Use screen scraping to get to dining menus, and other info
  • Requested access to APIs to replace screen scraping functionality 
  • Their road-map includes adding campus events, MTD real time bus map, registration Information, and other
  • Steven and Diana are in conversation with AS and Public affairs about providing access to UCSB events.
  • Technical challenge - they ask the students to login, get their password in clear text to log them to GOLD and screen scrape their schedule to display it.
  • Meeting scheduled with campus officials to discuss their view point of this app.
OptionsDiana AntovaSteven Maglio

Options

  • Do nothing
  • Hire students and make the app sanctioned UCSB app
  • Provide support to the students to make sure they don't violate security requirements and we support their growth in this app development.
  • Seth - now they have full access to GOLD, we don't know what they are puling and what they are storing, 
  • We can find the IP address of heroku and see how it looks in GOLD
  • If we can provide secure access in the future, we can
  • Steven - work with legal council to make sure we have the boundaries established
  • Shea gave us the go to experiment the google oauth system to provide a secure way to login users
  • James - what is the timeframe to setup the google oauth?
    • get access to heroku code
    • put dates and timelines to fix issues
    • Steven wil work on hisnext week
  • Seth - vote to end this feed as a responsible data owner can't let it continue
  • Josh - use of our trademark name
  • Josh - if we support them, we have a potential of them updating data - we have full control of what APIs they have access, registrar approves access
  • James - can we do a marketing push to make sure we are not seen as validating inappropriate use of student data, be proactive
    • an article in the nexus
    • we have plans to support you, we have to pull this functionality out to protect student data
  • can we create a badge to be added to the app that tells students 
  • Josh - are we going to force them to do open source, code reviews? 
  • At what point, UCSB is liable if something goes wrong?
  • Seth - IS3 - level 3 and up requires a code review by a lead developer 
  • Steven - the API gateway has the responsibility to review the app and approve the security, 
    • API team has language to do security review for anyone that requests API access
  • Josh - the app is addressing an existing gap
  • if we ask them to take it out and the message comes in nexus, it can be a PR issue
  • Steven - they can go to associated students and get sponsorship for server funding
  • A professor is now sponsoring their organization
  • Josh - biggest concern - the data owner being OK with it, there is a language that says "by using this you are taking ownership and responsibility of a breach happens"
  • Seth - main concern - we don't have visibility on what is happening on the heroku service, currently have access to a lot of information in GOLD, there is no way to control what they do. They can use these credentials for anything else on campus where students can login.
  • We will have to provide a roadmap for providing them secure access
  • Steven - we want to look for ways to support them and want to frame our conversations in this way
  • The larger campus needs to be involved, not just SIST and Reg
  • Josh - this will happen again, so taking the time to build the framework now, will pay off in the long run. 

Questions for campusteam
  • Branding
  • Legal documents to sign
  • Who is responsible if something happens - a data breach
  • Can we create a badge that the app is approved by UCSB?
  • API team has the authority to do the security code review, in addition to the technical support representative for the data being requested
  • Adding language to the app to let students know that this is not an official UCSB app?