You may recall (or not) the post about GroupWhinge / Woes / Whines etc. Have a look at this (and thanks Celia for drawing my attention to the JISC Inform site)

 

Debate: Should UK universities outsource their email?

YES

In 2007, Leeds Metropolitan University’s student email system was reviewed. This important medium at the core of the university’s communication strategy allows staff to communicate with students directly, quickly and easily. By outsourcing our email provision to Google, we now have an affordable, scalable system that meets students’ expectations.

A key driver prompted our move to outsourcing. Students have an ever-growing demand for online storage, fuelled by the use of digital media and the electronic submission of assignments. Yet their in-house system could only offer a small amount of personal disk space (10-20Mb), resulting in students not using their university email as their primary account. As many students didn’t configure their university account to forward mail on, important communications were not getting through effectively.

To provide the same email data storage ourselves would have cost around £1m over four years, not to mention the capital investment of upgrading the previous email system.

The first task was to work with students and cross-departmental staff to determine exactly what students required from a university email account. We researched the market and found that, unlike in the US, there were very few options available. The one product that met Leeds Metropolitan’s requirements was Google Apps which, in addition to email, offered many more continuously revised and improved features, from calendars and chat to collaborative working tools. The pilot service went live in February 2008. Within four weeks, over three thousand students had registered, exceeding all initial expectations.

In terms of economic benefits, we still carry out certain administrative tasks, but no longer worry about server capacity, reliability or scalability. This frees up staff to do other things that add value to the student experience. There are also fewer technological glitches, and we keep getting added features and therefore added value on an ongoing basis, for free. To provide the same email data storage ourselves would have cost around £1m over four years, not to mention the capital investment of upgrading the previous email system.

By September 2008, over 30,000 accounts had been created, ready to allocate a Google email account to every student at Leeds Metropolitan, with integration to a calendaring system to enable a single-view of calendars for students. This has been successful, with very positive feedback from existing and new students.

Whilst I understand that some people may prefer to keep their data in-house, I think that each system should be viewed on its own merits and supported by a business case. Our project was evaluated over the rest of the year and was judged a success by all stakeholders. Both logistically and legally – and our lawyers investigated this in depth – I have great confidence in Google’s infrastructure.
Hugh Lavery
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NO

When it comes to outsourcing your email and other information systems, you can take your pick of the clichés when describing the potential dangers: ‘out of sight, out of mind’; ‘one hand tied behind your back’; ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’; and ‘the thin end of the wedge’ all spring to mind.

Human nature dictates that as soon as you become distanced from something you inevitably start to pay less attention to it. Soon the default answer to any question raised regarding security, back-up, data access or any other critical management issue will be ‘our service provider takes care of that’. I’m sure the Ministry of Defence said exactly the same about data security right up until their contractor lost a disk containing the personal data relating to 100,000 members of the armed forces. The simple fact is that no one has a greater vested interest in looking after your data than you. Outsourcing your data does not outsource responsibility – but it becomes all too easy to assume that it does.

Moreover, you could soon discover that without direct access to the servers and services themselves, you are powerless to take the required corrective measures when a problem does emerge. Will your Vice Chancellor really be satisfied to hear that ‘we are waiting for our service provider to get back to us’ when demanding to know why his email doesn’t work?

It’s also worth considering the volatile times in which we live. The global economic crisis is no respecter of size or reputation and it is a near certainty that some big names within the IT industry will be amongst the eventual casualties. When a company collapses it is the role of the administrators to try to recover as much of the money owed to investors as possible. It is far less clear who would take responsibility for reuniting the data they hold with their owners, or how long such a process might take.

Finally, it is interesting that so many of the current outsourcing projects have chosen to only outsource student email accounts, apparently on the basis that this raises fewer issues and represent a lower risk to the institution than outsourcing information created by, or relating to, its staff. That may well be true but if, despite all of the above, these initial pilot projects are a success, it won’t be long before the pressure is on to do likewise with mission-critical corporate data. Only then will institutions discover that all of their record and information management solutions are based on the premise that the institution has direct management access to its own information and that they have inadvertently exposed themselves to all manner of legal, regulator and operational risks. But by then it will be too late…
Steve Bailey
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
YES: Hugh Lavery is the Director of Information, Media and Technology Services at Leeds Metropolitan University.

NO: Steve Bailey is a records management professional and senior advisor at JISC infoNet. He is not anti-outsourcing but has kindly provided us with the flip-side to this debate.
 If this REALLY interests you, you may find these case studies of interest: (JISC Case Studies)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From JISC Inform

(JISC Inform is produced by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to raise awareness of the use of information technology (ICT) to support further and higher education in the UK. )