Our AUP leaves some latitude for personal use as long as it is in keeping
with appropriate standards for professional conduct as interpreted by
one's supervisor and/or contract. Excessive personal use becomes an AUP
violation when it interferes with others' access to technology resources
for educational purposes (support staff time, bandwidth, extra wear and
tear on gear, etc.). When I'm aware that's happening, I refer the matter
to the employee's supervisor for follow up. We don't sit around playing
"gotcha," but front line support staff knows the scoop and can tell when
it's time for me to intervene.
It doesn't show up very often, even with 300 employees. When we see it,
it's usually because people are over quota from having joined lots of
personal mailing lists and received lots of photos and attachments (and
coupons) from family and friends. It also shows up more often with
employees who don't have a computer or connectivity at home.
To prevent this, we try to educate people about why they might want to
think twice about doing this. One of our FAQ pages about school email
accounts reads:
- Your school email address is more exposed to harvesting by spammers when
you use it for shopping, signing up for various personal services, etc.
Because it doesn't belong to you, you can't cancel your school e-mail
account like you can with other available services.
- You may end up storing sensitive personal data on a computer that does
not belong to you and is subject to examination by tech support staff in
the course of routine maintenance and troubleshooting.
- Planned mail server down time may keep you from doing personal business
during holidays and vacations.
- Your online activity on a school-owned computer must comply fully with
school and University Acceptable Use Policies and, by policy, is subject
to being monitored remotely.
- Doing important personal business on your school computer confers
additional, unwanted demands on service level expectations for technical
support staff. The school is not an Internet Service Provider and is not
structured to function like one.
We also began reselling some out of cycle hardware to employees. It took
some time up front to make this work, but it has been well received.
Several employees on tight budgets have told us how glad they are to have
an affordable option like this. We are guessing that they are doing more
things at home instead of at work. Seems like a win/win outcome.
Curt Lieneck
IT Director
University of Chicago Laboratory Schools
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