Outsourcing E-Mail Service

Thursday, January 17, at 12 noon, U.S. Eastern time

Wendy Woodward is director of technology-support services at Northwestern University, where she is responsible for customer-service interactions between IT services and the students and employees. The work includes desktop support for faculty and staff members, the technical-support center, consulting services on telecommunications and networking, residential-networking support, distribution of site-licensed software, and support of Web-based applications. She is active in Educause and Acuta, the Association for Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education, and she is a member of Google's Higher Education Collaboration Advisory Board.

A transcript of the chat follows.

Jeff Young (Moderator):
    Hello and welcome to this week's Brown Bag chat. I'm Jeff Young, a reporter here, and I'll be moderating today's discussion.

Today's topic is outsourcing campus e-mail. Google and Microsoft are making deals with colleges across the country that turn over the e-mail services to these companies. The price to colleges -- nothing. More than 1,000 colleges and universities have signed up. But the decision on whether to outsource can be a tough one, and we'll take your questions on the various issues over the next hour. For background on the topic, see a free article from The Chronicle.

Our guest today is Wendy Woodward, director of technology-support services at Northwestern University. She is responsible for customer-service interactions between IT services and the students and employees.

Thanks so much for being here today Wendy.

Question from Adam Roberts, University of Illinois:
    Do you think alternative providers would be able to support such systems in a way that would feel acceptable to the researchers, administration, faculty and/or students that rely on them?

Wendy Woodward:
    I believe that these companies are working towards providing an environment that would be suitable for all types of business use. Some Universities are using these services for business use today. In addition, University faculty and administrators are using these types of services today for their personal business.

Question from Ethan Sommer, Gustavus Adolphus College:
    To your knowledge have any of the companies you have outsourced to received a subpoena about one of your students or employees? (eg, the RIAA asking who logged in to google apps from a specific IP.)

Do you know what would happen if they did? Would you even know?

Wendy Woodward:
    I am not aware of any subpoena to date. Northwestern has taken the stance that we are happy to have Google handle these transactions for our students.

Question from Michael Bugeja, Iowa State University:
    I have written in The Chronicle about service terms that are at odds with sunshine laws at public institutions. In as much as certain email is a public record, I am extraordinarily concerned about a state institution having to sue in court for a public record that should be free.

What appears to be "free" usually is offered in the name of revenue generation via data acquisition. How do these two megacorporations controlling the bulk of ad revenue on Internet make money offering "free" email?

Wendy Woodward:
    I believe that the overarching plan is to generate revenue on the "post student" experience. So, in the case of Northwestern, students do not see advertisements when they are within the Google Apps space. Upon graduation a student has a choice: 1) delete the account so that it is purged from the system; 2) delete the data but keep the account; and 3) keep the account intact. Post graduation advertisements are displayed in the space. It's at this point where I believe Google plans to generate revenue.

Question from Carmen Carter, Florence-Darlington Technical College:
    How many man hours, if any, are required of IT and/or College staff when student email is outsourced?

Wendy Woodward:
    For Northwestern, as an early adopter, the bulk of the effort was in the upfront agreement development with Google. Working with SADA Systems we have developed self service interfaces to facilitate the activation and management aspects of the account and integrated them into our identity management and student enterprise systems. It took us approximately six weeks to successfully deploy the system.

From a support standpoint, the effort has actually decreased because students already know how to use Google's applications.

Question from bill - small community college:
    My students don't like to use the provided email services at our college because we are on microsoft outlook and because the service is spotty at times.

I would like to encourage my classes to sign up for gmail accounts because I think the up-time will be better, the interface is better, and the students can then use that address to do collaborative work via Google docs.

Are there FERPA issues with using a third party vendor for communication about things like grades?

Wendy Woodward:
    I don't claim to be a FERPA expert but I can tell you that Google has agreed to protect our space in a "FERPA appropriate manner". Moving to Google Apps has dramatically improved our student's collaboration environment.

Jeff Young (Moderator):
    We're getting some great questions... keep those coming. Also, feel free to submit a comment about your college's own experience or your views on e-mail outsourcing.

Question from Adam Roberts, University of Illinois:
    Do you think that private and public schools should approach the idea of IT outsourcing differently?

Wendy Woodward:
    I believe that there is a tremendous opportunity to allow software vendors to develop and maintain systems that support the mission of the school. School resources can then be directed at the school's core competency of more directly supporting teaching and research. Each school will need to work within their unique environment to see whether or not outsourcing is the best option to pursue.

Question from Jeff Young:
    Wendy, how important are the other services that Google or other companies offer in addition to e-mail (the apps part)? Are you seeing examples of students and professors using those in any significant way? If so, can you give a quick real-world example?

Wendy Woodward:
    While improving e-mail services was the primary driver for Northwestern's Google partnership, the added bonus of IM, calendaring, online document sharing and storage, and future collaboration tool development at a price point that we could not duplicate internally were certainly major factors in our decision.

In the real world we have a graduate class that is divided into teams for coursework. Prior to the launch of this service they were using ad hoc services such as Yahoo IM, WebEx, to collaborate on school projects. Now, the teams have set up workspaces within our system and it has provided a seamless collaboration environment to support their classroom efforts.

We also have student groups that have established "group accounts" within the system to facilitate communication with other students and within their own group. This also provides a place to store documents that are developed by the group so that when the group membership transitions next academic year the new group has an electronic historical record of their activities. This is something that was not previously available at Northwestern.

Question from Ron Vick, Coosa Valley Technical College, Rome, GA:
    So, if this is self-service... Does that mean that the student sets up their own account? Is there any guarantee that the student is legitimate?

Wendy Woodward:
    A student has to log on to the self service pages using a University NetID (network identifier) and password. From there they proceed with activating the Google Apps hosted account.

Question from Samuel Puleio, Clarion University:
    In considering NW's move to Google, how did you approach the privacy and FERPA issues?

Wendy Woodward:
    Northwestern spent time reviewing Google's privacy policies and conversing with Google team members to better understand how things would operate. At the end of the day we were convinced that Google would adequately protect our student data AND if for some reason they did not protect the data, we would be able to exit the agreement. I would encourage folks who have concerns about any of these company's privacy policies that they take the time to review the policies, take them in context, and ask questions directly of the company.

Question from Allegra Communications:
    Is there an example of an international institution outsourcing email to Google or Microsoft?

Wendy Woodward:
    I know that Google has agreements with several international institutions. I would suggest you contact them directly to learn more.

Question from Mary, DeVry:
    What do you feel is most challenging about meeting students needs through this type of oursourced arraingment. How have you addressed those concerns?

Wendy Woodward:
    The biggest challenge at an institution such as Northwestern is to understand which of the issues that are raised by the various stakeholders are legitimate and which are not. Change at any institution is a challenge. Keeping focused on the true end goal while answering and resolving legitimate concerns is key to advancing such a program. For us it was all about comparing our current e-mail system to what Google could offer us (versus comparing Google's system to what we wish we had in terms of security, reliability, etc.); focusing on e-mail and calendaring services (at launch) and dealing with the other services at a later date.

Jeff Young (Moderator):
    We're more than half-way through and still have plenty of questions cued up ... if you're thinking of asking a question or making a comment, please do so now to get it in in time for us to get to it.

Question from Randy Spydell, Western State College of Colorado:
    What role should (or has) the student body played in choosing whether to outsource e-mail? and which service to choose (live@edu, yahoo, Google Apps, . . .)? Is this only an IT evaluation and choice or is success related to student acceptance and happiness and therefore their voice should be heard? There are a number of recent and ongoing listserv conversations about effective communication to students. Should we be asking them? or is that a swamp best avoided?

Wendy Woodward:
    At Northwestern the student government was one of the key stakeholders in our decision making process. The message from the student body was clear.....we needed to improve the collaboration services we were delivering. Statistics showed us that a large percentage of our student body were either forwarding their email to Google or using a Gmail account for personal use in addition to the University mail service. IT spent time comparing and evaluating the services and agreements, worked with other University stake holders (e.g. Student Affairs, Registrar, various schools, Alumni, etc.) to uncover other legitimate concerns that needed to be addressed before making a final decision to partner with Google.

Question from Allegra Communications:
    Does Google have intellectual property rights to the content developed in the collaborative groups --- such as Google Docs?

Wendy Woodward:
    The content is owned by the student. I know that some people point to a section in one of the privacy agreements that seems to say otherwise, but when put together with other statements that are published, and the agreement we have with the company, the end result is that the student owns the content.

Question from Jeff Young:
    Once upon a time campus administrators would probably not have dreamed of outsourcing e-mail, thinking it was too mission-critical to the university. Are you surprised that this is becoming so common at colleges?

Wendy Woodward:
    As services become commoditized, in an environment with limited resources, campus administrators need to seek alternative ways of delivering quality services to their constituents. If we do not provide services that are comparable to what is available in the marketplace, the customer base will naturally move to the alternate service provider. We have to ask ourselves how we can best utilize the resources we have in support of the core mission of our schools. At Northwestern we call it "Right Sourcing". This involves taking a hard look at existing or new services to determine how they can best be delivered, while balancing risk, customer demand, and resources.

Question from Don Ralis, Dominican University:
    Are you considering outsourcing of staff and/or faculty email?

Wendy Woodward:
    Not at this time though I do know that some schools have outsourced their faculty/staff e-mail.

Question from Robert Lucas Shawnee Community College:
    Is there anything you can tell us about the details of Northwestern's agreement with Google?

Wendy Woodward:
    Our agreement is under non disclosure. That being said, you can get a copy of their standard agreement off of their Google Apps web site.

Question from Brian, Oswego State:
    How many people are currently supported on the NW system. Has there been any specific disruption in service since [putting the system] in place or other specific IT issues that have come to the surface?

Wendy Woodward:
    We currently have over 8,000 accounts in the system. The only IT issue that has surfaced was related to the integration with our internal NetID authentication system. The Google system has operated without incident.

Question from Sandy Peters, University at Buffalo:
    A privacy concern: Is robotic content "trolling" by google occurring on the student gmail content? (I realize that there is no advertising while individuals are students.)

Wendy Woodward:
    To effectively deliver the features and functionality within the system there is some level of "trolling". As an example....To facilitate a popup to show the status of a package that was shipped to you. Generally speaking they do not target any personally identifiable information.

Question from Ivan Zaher, Dominican University:
    Do your students' email addresses have a different domain name than they did before switching to Google?

Wendy Woodward:
    Yes they do. Before it was @northwestern.edu and now it is @u.northwestern.edu. That was a choice that we made at our school though I know it can be done otherwise. That being said, students who have an @northwestern.edu account will continue to have their mail delivered to the new account, until they graduate. At which point the @northwestern.edu address will expire and the @u.northwestern.edu will continue if the student wants to keep it.

Question from Kevin Donovan:
    What would you like to see changed about the Google system?

Wendy Woodward:
    We are looking forward to having them develop the ability to create more group definition (e.g. alumni versus student, grad student versus undergrad) as well as granularity to display custom content to that group. That being said, we think that Google is much closer to our customer base and will continue to develop tools that are attractive and meets our customer needs.

Comment from anonymous:
    Who at Google would be a point person for questions?

Jeff Young (Moderator):
    As to who to contact at Google, we've talked with Jeff Keltner, Google manager of collaboration products for education, about this issue in the past. Plus there seems to be information on Google Apps Web site.

Question from Barbara, Pittsburgh State University:
    Were you able to move existing data (messages, address book, etc) to Google, or did you start fresh.

Wendy Woodward:
    We started fresh though Google does have tools to facilitate the transitioning of data.

Question from Scott, WCC:
    are there unique challenges for community colleges versus 4 year public/private. CC often have many more students, professionals, that are part-time and accustomed to mutliple email platforms. Do you find at NW the graduate school has different requirements versus undergraduate?

Wendy Woodward:
    I would think that an outsourced solution would be ideal for a CC especially if you take the time to set up integrated self service tools that can easily handle the "student to non student back to student" statuses. With the documented API solutions it can certainly be accomplished.

Some Northwestern administrators had concerns about "sensitive research" being handled by graduate students in the Google system. While in today's centrally hosted system faculty, staff, and students can forward their e-mail off campus, administrators wanted the opportunity to educate students about how to best handle sensitive data before including them in the system. While the Google Apps solution is now the default system for all incoming eligible students, IF a student wants a centrally hosted account the request can be accommodated.

Jeff Young (Moderator):
    Looks like we're out of time. I guess we should all get back to checking our e-mail now.

Thanks to everyone for the interesting questions, and thanks so much to Wendy Woodward for the answers and advice.

Wendy Woodward:
    Thank you for the opportunity to share today. I would encourage people who want to know more about the services these vendors are offering, to review the documentation on the web sites and then contact the vendors with further questions. For more information about the service Northwestern is providing go to http://www.it.northwestern.edu/accounts/ to review the @u.northwestern.edu service information.

Jeff Young (Moderator):
    We'll be talking about these and other issues at The Chronicle's annual Technology Forum, down in sunny Tampa, Florida. Hope some of you can make it.

See you next time on The Brown Bag.