The
Email Advisory Team was commissioned by the ITC in April 2001 with the
following charge:
The
Email Advisory Team provides a framework for discussing and recommending
strategies for central email services provided by CATS and used campus wide.
The primary charge of this advisory team is to recommend appropriate
functionality, responsibilities, policies and possible funding of central email
services. The team shall produce a report to the Information Technology Committee
on these recommendations, including the "next steps" for email
services in the context of an overall vision.
By
May of 2001, the Email Advisory Team was formed with the following membership
(alphabetical):
· Wanda Amos, Manager for Marketing & Communications, Student Housing Services
· Ramon Berger, Senior Systems Manager, Natural Sciences Academic Computing
· Jim Burns, Assistant Director, Public Information Office
· Ken Garges, Director, Social Sciences Computing
· Sue Grimes, Analyst, Office of Registrar / Admissions
· Geoff Pullum, Professor, Linguistics (member, Senate Committee Computing and Telecommunications)
· John Rocchio, Systems Manager, CATS Instructional Computing and Technical Support Manager, ResNet
·
Janine Roeth, Director Distributed Computing Group,
CATS
The Team represents many functional aspects of the campus, especially with regard to email usage. Team members regularly use email to communicate with different populations, including faculty, staff, prospective students, admitted students, enrolled students, and affiliates. Some representatives are email service providers for their own departments and able to inform the back-end issues of delivering email service.
While
the Team brings a variety of perspectives and uses of email to discussions, all
members share the value of electronic communications as critical to daily
business and operations at UCSC.
The
Email Advisory Team presented a progress report at the June 12, 2001 ITC
meeting[1]. In summary, this report presented general
recommendations for email, including:
·
Recommendations for
increasing the effectiveness of email being sent.
·
Recommendations to increase
assurance of reaching intended recipient
·
Recommendations to improve
central services
The
direction from the ITC at that meeting was for the Team to continue working
towards more specifics regarding:
·
…operating
reliable central email services
·
…implementing
the features in the last set of recommendations
·
…specific
policy recommendations for our other recommendations
The
Team resumed meeting in the Fall of 2001 with a goal of more focused
recommendations for ITC consideration.
The Team reviewed activities by CATS towards more reliable central email
services and enhanced features. The
Team also examined the general recommendations for specific recommendations
with feasible implementations.
This
report addresses two primary areas related to central email services:
Reliability and Policies. The Reliability
section presents a report on activity towards a reliable infrastructure for
central email services. The Policy
section presents four (4) recommendations that shape how email is used or can
be used to enhance University business.
A
general implementation plan follows the Policy recommendations. The Team identified immediate actions for
each recommendation. The Team also
recognized common dependencies in the full implementations of the
recommendations, primarily the creation of an Enterprise Directory.
The Email Advisory Team asks that the ITC a) review and endorse the following Policy recommendations, b) approve the actions within implementation and c) support the critical components that enable the next level of implementation, including the Enterprise Directory.
The
assumption is that central email services will be reliable. From a service provider perspective,
reliable can be defined as:
1)
Runs
on hardware and software systems that are current and vendor-supported.
2)
Provides
a level of redundancy within the hardware, software or service that allows for
a single level of failure within the hardware, software or service environment
without detrimentally affecting the service delivery.
3)
Ensures
the funding/budgeting for timely replacement of hardware and software and
regular maintenance contracts.
Central
email services operated by CATS have not fully met this definition. Efforts since Fall 2000 have focused on
improving reliability, and to date, the following activities are completed or
are planned towards increased reliability of central email services:
Upgrade Central POP Server: This provides a current
and vendor-supported hardware and software environment for the POP server which
stores all email for @cats.ucsc.edu addresses.
Timeline: COMPLETED in December 2000.
Cost: $22,000 onetime cost for
hardware; existing staff performed the upgrade.
Upgrade Central SMTP Server: This provides a current
and vendor-supported hardware and software environment for the SMTP traffic
that includes outgoing mail and the first stop for incoming mail.
Timeline: Planned for completion in
January 2002.
Cost: No cost. CATS intends to
use systems that have been freed by another service upgrade (AFS); existing
staff will perform the upgrade.
Multiple SMTP Servers. This provides redundancy in our SMTP servers locally for all
outgoing mail and the first stop for incoming mail.
Timeline: Planned for completion in
January 2002.
Cost: No cost. CATS intends to
use systems that have been freed by another service upgrade (AFS); existing
staff will perform the upgrade.
Secondary Store and Forward
Offsite. This provides a backup repository for
incoming mail external to UCSC in the event that our mail server or network
connection is unavailable.
Timeline: Planned for completion by
March 2002.
Cost: No cost. CATS hopes to
establish a partnership with a sister campus as a backup repository for our
email.
The above activities are steps towards full reliability of the central email infrastructure and primarily address the first two items in the definition. Additional functionality[2] and redundancy as well as funding for timely replacement and regular maintenance are continued areas of focus for CATS. CATS intends to continue working with the Team to define, prioritize and review these activities.
During the Fall of 2001, the Team focused on the following subset of recommendations from the more general of June 2001:
Recommendations for
increasing the effectiveness of email being sent.
1)
Develop
"mass mailing" systems and policies, including mandatory and opt-in
mailing lists.
Recommendations to increase
assurance of reaching intended recipient
2)
Develop
a standard, accepted address for all faculty, staff and students.
3)
Ease
the redirection of this address to other addresses via a web interface.
The
Team asks the ITC to endorse the following:
Email is one form of communication that can be useful for time-critical or urgent messages – this was reinforced by the events following 9/11/01 both locally and nationwide. However, UCSC does not have an endorsed mass mailing policy that supports comprehensive emails to the campus population. The Team recommends the development and implementation of mass mailing policies that consider and accommodate issues of membership, authorization, content guidelines, and consent/privacy[3].
To
make any comprehensive mailing lists effective, we must be able to send mail to
nearly 100% of the campus population.
This requires an email address or alias that can be created for the
entire campus population. CATS estimates that currently 80% of all faculty,
staff and students have CATS accounts[4]. The Team recommends required CATS accounts
to serve as UCSC accounts towards a goal of 100%.
While
the CATS account serves as an email address for campus communication, it is not
necessary that all faculty, staff and students use the CATS servers to read
their email. Through a redirection of
the CATS account to another email service, any faculty, staff or student may
choose how and where they read their mail.
Currently,
all CATS accounts are only addressable through @cats.ucsc.edu. The Team recommends the adoption of the
@ucsc.edu right-sided naming convention, with a left-side naming convention
based on a user’s full name.
The
Team identified the following as immediate actions towards the full
implementation of the policy recommendations above. Many of these actions require additional definition and planning
before implementation.
The
Team asks the ITC to a) endorse the following immediate actions and b) further
charge the Team to form implementation working groups for each action.
Develop initial mailing
lists for “Campuswide” distribution.
“All Staff”, “All Faculty”, “All Graduate
Students” and “All Undergraduate Students” mailing lists would be created. Membership would be automatic and managed by
CATS through the CATS account system. Email distributed campuswide in the new
system must be urgent and time-sensitive, such as key strategic messages from
the senior administration or information concerning the health and safety of
members of the campus community. Campuswide messages are authorized and
distributed by the Public Information Office.
·
It
is estimated that this could be completed in Spring 2002 with no incremental
cost. It will be necessary to involve
the Public Information Office in the implementation and the Policy Coordination
Office for the relationship to the Electronic Communications Policy.
Require the pre-assignment of UCSC accounts (CATS accounts) to all incoming students.
All incoming students would be pre-assigned a UCSC account that follows an 8-character naming convention. An expiration policy would exist for the reassignment of an account name after a student leaves the University. Intersection with mechanisms used by Admissions and Alumni Office would ideally create seamless communication throughout the life-cycle of a student.
·
It is estimated that most of this could be completed by
Fall 2002 with no incremental cost. It will be necessary to involve the Office
of the Registrar and Admissions to address timing, communication and any
student information issues.
Automatically create class mailing lists populated with student’s email address.
Faculty receive class
lists that include email addresses for their students. Email mailing lists for each class would be
automatically created according to a naming convention and populated with the
information from these class lists.
Automatic updates to mailing lists could coincide with class list
updates sent by the Registrar throughout the quarter.
·
It
is estimated that this could be completed by Fall 2002 with no incremental
cost. It will be necessary to involve faculty and the Office of the Registrar
to address naming conventions, timing and updating issues.
Require the assignment of UCSC accounts (CATS accounts) to all current faculty and staff.
CATS would work cooperatively with departments or service
centers to establish or renew CATS accounts for all existing faculty and staff
within that department. New accounts
would follow an 8-character naming convention.
An expiration policy would exist for the reassignment of an account name
for separated staff.
·
This
action has a flexible timeframe due to the workload implications for
departments or service centers. It will
be necessary to provide extracts of account status and Payroll/Personnel
information to aid this process.
Develop a web interface for
users to easily forward CATS accounts to another email address.
Users who do not read their email on CATS servers should have the option to easily forward @cats.ucsc.edu email to the email address where they check mail.
·
DONE.
This has been introduced Winter 2002 and is available at https://webmaint.ucsc.edu/cats/cgi-bin/chpobox.pl
There is an immediate action for the adoption of @ucsc.edu which was discussed by the Team and presented here, but with the caveat that it was not supported by the entire Team.
Adopt @ucsc.edu which
mirrors @cats.ucsc.edu.
Maintain
the left-hand side of the email address as the CATS account or maillist (e.g. jar@cats.ucsc.edu == jar@ucsc.edu; coord@cats.ucsc.edu
== coord@ucsc.edu ).
Several
of the Team members felt that this immediate action of elevating the CATS
account to @ucsc.edu should be skipped in favor of a full name alias as the
left-hand side of the @ucsc.edu address presented in the next section.
The Team identified a number of actions that more fully implement the policy recommendations. In addition to the further definition and planning, most of these actions require the presence of an Enterprise Directory to be more completely and effectively implemented.
The
Team asks the ITC to endorse the following actions and to support the
Enterprise Directory as an enabler for full implementation of the Policy
recommendations.
Develop “Targeted” lists for
divisional, unit, or other targeted audiences.
Mailing lists for targeted
communication would be established, and may include portions of the campus
hierarchy (. “BAS”, “Social Sciences”, “Biology”, “CHDCCS”), or lists by
attribute (All Oakes Students”, “All 2004 Students”) Appropriate authorization and general guidelines for content and
privacy would be established and communicated.
·
This
relies on the Enterprise Directory to identify people by attributes and
appropriately populate and manage the mailing lists.
Develop “Interest” lists for
opt-in subscription.
Mailing lists that address topics of interest to the campus (e.g. Bookstore Sales) would be created through a defined review process. Membership would be through subscription, ideally self-service. General guidelines for content and privacy would be established and communicated.
·
This
relies on the upgrade of central mailing list software, estimated to be
complete by Fall 2002 at no incremental costs.
Require pre-assignment of
UCSC accounts to all incoming faculty/staff at the time of hire.
In a manner similar to incoming students, all incoming
faculty and staff would be pre-assigned UCSC accounts that follow an
8-character naming convention. An
expiration policy would exist for the reassignment of an account name after the
faculty or staff leaves the University.
·
This
relies on the Enterprise Directory with a connection to Payroll/Personnel to
identify automatically new hires and separations.
Develop a full name alias
(e.g. Janine.Roeth@ucsc.edu) for the
@ucsc.edu address.
All faculty, staff and students would be automatically assigned an @ucsc.edu alias which is based on their full name as determined by an authoritative source. This alias would be easily configured to forward email addressed to that alias to any email address. An expiration policy would exist for reassignment or retirement of the alias after the end of affiliation.
· This relies on the Enterprise Directory for authoritative name information from SIS/AIS and PPS. It also relies on clear principles for naming conventions and handling data integrity issues, including changing email alias and nicknames.
Mass Mailing Policies and Frameworks
· UC Irvine - ZotMail http://www.ddm.uci.edu/zotmail/
· UC Berkeley – eBerkeley http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7015/e-Berkeley.policy.html#mass
Enterprise Directory
· ITC minutes from May 29, 2001 discussion on Enterprise Directory http://planning.ucsc.edu/pac/MtgNotes/itc/itc-01-05-29notes.htm
· ITC minutes from June 12, 2001 discussion on Central Email Services http://planning.ucsc.edu/pac/MtgNotes/itc/itc-01-06-12notes.htm
Central Email Service Features Proposed
Student Housing Services Statistics on Student Email
Accounts
[1] Minutes for the June 12, 2001 ITC meeting can be reviewed at http://planning.ucsc.edu/pac/MtgNotes/itc/itc-01-06-12notes.htm
[2] Please see Appendix for functionality proposals for central email services
[3] Please see References for examples of mass mailing policies and frameworks from UC Berkeley and UC Irvine which include these considerations.
[4] See Appendix for information about student CATS accounts compiled by Student Housing Services