In what might be a setback for Google’s effort to put to bed persistent privacy and security concerns among existing and potential higher education e-mail customers, the University of California at Davis has announced that it will not be adopting Gmail for its faculty and staff members due to “increased privacy risks that have come to light in recent weeks.”
Outsourcing faculty and staff e-mail to Google might run afoul of the university’s electronic communications policy, said Peter Siegel, the CIO at Davis, and other campus technology officials, in a letter dated April 30. That policy forbids the university from disclosing electronic communications records “without the holder’s consent.” It also proscribes selling or distributing e-communications “that contain personally identifiable information about individuals” to a third party without permission from those individuals.
While it is debatable whether those passages would apply to outsourcing faculty and staff e-mail to Google, the letter said, the concerns that have been raised during the university’s eight-week pilot with Gmail were sufficient to convince officials to rule out a change. Davis, like many other colleges, has already outsourced its student e-mail to Google — and will continue to do so, according to Jeff Keltner, a business developer manager at the company. Most faculty and staff still use the university’s in-house system, called Cyrus, which serves about 12,000 employees.
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