Outsourcing Student E-mail & Other Collaboration Services

Wendy Woodward Director, Technology Support Services Copyright Wendy Woodward 2007. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

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Northwestern University

• Carnegie Classification RU/VH (R1) • Private • 17,000+ students • 7,000+ faculty and staff • 190,000+ alumni • Evanston and Chicago campuses • Highly decentralized • Comprised of 10 different schools • Professional schools have custom student/alumni management programs

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Northwestern E-mail Today

• Domains – Official University e-mail sent to @northwestern.edu

– Schools may have separate domain, e.g @law.northwestern.edu

• Services – Limit of 50MB for e-mail for students, faculty, and staff – No calendar for students – Limited Webmail capability – Alumni forwarding service is declining (1%) – E-mail can be forwarded off campus by end users

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Drivers

• Student Government requested better e-mail program • Creating desired functions will be costly and time consuming • Replacing University wide e-mail system is costly • Community uses these services today – Gmail, Windows Live/Hotmail, Yahoo, others – 90% of students maintain outside personal accounts – 20% of students forward their @northwestern.edu mail to outside providers, 67% of those to Google • Software-as-a-Service is a growing trend

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Investigation Process

• Examine Services – Free services offered to the education community – Basic offerings include large e-mail accounts, calendaring, IM, and more • Understand Benefits to Providers – Companies want life-long customers – Advertising revenue • Determine “best fit” for Northwestern

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Benefits to Northwestern

• Improve services for students/alumni • Create an active online community for Northwestern students/alumni in a way we could not afford to do • Investigate the redeployment of Northwestern server resources to improve faculty/staff e-mail • Improve communication pathway to alumni

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Key Stakeholders

• Board of Trustees • Office of General Counsel • Student Affairs • Office of Development and Alumni Relations • Student Financial Services • Office for Research • School of Law • The Graduate School • Enrollment Services • Provost Office • Feinberg School of Medicine • Kellogg School of Management • University Relations • School Technology Leaders • Associated Student Government and other student leaders • Graduate Student Association

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Institutional Conversations

• Individual meetings with key stakeholders to gauge institutional level of interest and address concerns – Adjust strategy based on feedback • Open meeting with all stakeholders to share findings and proposed direction • Plan-development meetings with Alumni Relations and Board of Trustees members • Progress meetings with IT Committees • Open meeting to present deployment strategy

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What We Heard

Outsourcing these student and alumni services to Google would improve the services we provide, and be a positive thing to do…

IF

Security, privacy, and policy concerns are adequately addressed.

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Northwestern’s Service Offering

• @u.northwestern.edu (General domain) • @nlaw.northwestern.edu (Law School) • Gmail (E-mail) • Google Docs and Spreadsheets • Google Talk (Instant messaging and Google to Google voice service) • “Keep your address post graduation” • Other services under consideration – Northwestern-branded launch page – Student event calendar integration

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Deployment Strategy

• As of June 4th 2007, traditional undergraduates and School of Continuing Studies students invited to “opt in” to the @u.northwestern.edu Google service – Week 1 (also Finals week) 24% of the students signed up • By the end of June 2007 @nlaw.northwestern.edu will be the default service for all incoming Law School students • Over the summer, work to deploy the service as the default for all included students • Medical school and business school not included at this time

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How Does it Work?

• Automated coordination with Google system • Self-service functionality created through APIs – Password changes, alias creation, account deletion • Google system kept in sync with University directory system • Students involved in “sensitive” research can keep a Northwestern-hosted account

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How Does it Work?

• When student data system indicates the student is no longer “active,” student sent an e-mail that outlines future options: – Purge data, request that account be deleted – Purge data, keep the account • Ads will be shown – Do nothing and keep account with all files after graduation • Ads will be shown

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How Will it be Supported?

• Google online support for general questions • http://www.it.northwestern.edu/stucollab/in dex.html

• Additional student support provided by central IT department • Additional non student support provided by Alumni Relations

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Institutional Response

• Students – THRILLED! • University legal counsel – Comfortable that our risk is sufficiently contained • Student Affairs, Alumni Relations, many other administrators – Optimistic about the future • Others – Discussions continue regarding the education of students who are involved in “sensitive” research

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Scheduled Presentations

• ACUTA Annual Conference – Hollywood, Florida – Late July • EDUCAUSE SAC – Snowmass, CO – Early August • EDUCAUSE Annual Conference – Seattle, WA – Late October

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Questions?

Wendy Woodward Director, Technology Support Systems Northwestern University Information Technology (NUIT) [email protected]

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