Office of the Vice Provost
Informational and Educational Technology

April 30, 2010

To: UC Davis Faculty and Staff

Re: Discontinuation of Assessment to Outsource E-Mail for Faculty and Staff

We write to inform you of a recent decision to discontinue consideration of “outsourcing” UC Davis e-mail for faculty and staff, including to Google. Vice Provost Pete Siegel made this recommendation to the chancellor and provost based on extensive community consultation as well as a campus assessment of the UC Electronic Communications Policy and increased privacy risks that have come to light in recent weeks. The Academic Senate Committee on Information Technology and the Campus Council for Information Technology concur with this decision.

First, there are new concerns that outsourcing e-mail may not be in compliance with the University of California Electronic Communications Policy. The policy states that the university “does not examine or disclose electronic communications records without the holder's consent" and that "in no case shall electronic communications that contain personally identifiable information about individuals be sold or distributed to third parties without the explicit permission of the individual." Though there are different interpretations of these sections, the mere emergence of significant disagreement on these points undermines confidence in whether adopting Google’s Gmail service would be consistent with the policy.

Second, and of greater importance, were the views of faculty and staff. We especially appreciated the active involvement and contributions of many faculty, both as participants in the Gmail pilot project and in discussions of potential risks and opportunities. Although preliminary feedback from volunteer testers was positive, many other faculty expressed concern that our campus’s commitment to protecting the privacy of their communications is not demonstrated by Google and that the appropriate safeguards are neither in place at this time nor planned for the near future. These concerns were echoed in recent news reports and in a letter released last week by the privacy commissioners from 10 countries. The letter criticized Google's perceived inattention to protecting user privacy and called on the company to incorporate fundamental privacy and data protection principles directly into the design of new online services. Perhaps this broad international attention to Google’s privacy practices will lead to progress.

Although outsourcing is no longer under consideration, the need to provide UC Davis with a more flexible and effective central e-mail system remains. As a next step, we suggest that, jointly with the Academic Senate, a committee be established in the coming months to identify essential campus email features and capabilities. Its discussions would be informed by reports from the Gmail Assessment Committee, the Unified Communications Workgroup and the UC E-Mail Task Force. All three initiatives, as well as the experience and perspectives of faculty and staff involved in them, will be critical to defining a functional, reliable and secure email system for UC Davis.

We express our sincere appreciation to the faculty and staff who participated in the Gmail pilot project, to the faculty who have come forward with comments and concerns, and to the staff who work so diligently to create and support our campus systems. We also appreciate the collegiality that has characterized this assessment of email outsourcing, and we look forward to more collaboration in defining a central email system that can meet the needs of our campus.

Sincerely,

Peter M. Siegel
Chief Information Officer and Vice Provost
Information and Educational Technology

Niels Jensen
Chair, Academic Senate Committee for Information Technology
Professor, Applied Science

Joe Kiskis
Chair, Campus Council for Information Technology
Professor, Physics