Electronic Communication Policy

Background and Reasons for the Policy: The University has made great strides in promoting the use of electronic mail and providing email accounts to all students and employees. The past several years has seen a greater use of and reliance on electronic mail among students, faculty, staff and administration at the University of Connecticut. The University needs to insure that it can take full advantage of electronic communication.

Purpose of Policy: The purpose of this policy is to promote the effective use of electronic mail as an official communications medium within the University, to utilize email in lieu of paper for most general communications, and to prepare the University for a future that recognizes the importance of e-commerce and electronic workflow.

Expected Institutional Outcome: Since email is a timelier and less expensive means of communication than traditional paper communication, it is expected that implementation of the policy will result in reduced costs and improved efficiency of information exchange with our students and employees.

Policy Statement: In recognition of the increased use of email as a means of communication, the University of Connecticut has established email as a recognized means for sending official information to students and employees.  In support of this objective, the University will provide an email account to all students and employees of the University of Connecticut.

The University reserves the right to use email to communicate with students, faculty and staff and to expect that those communications will be received and read in a timely fashion.

Exceptions to this policy of creating an email account for students and employees will be submitted in writing to and approved by the Provost/Executive Vice President for University Affairs (or President's Office Vice President, where appropriate).  All requests for an exception must be accompanied by a document specifying the medium and the process by which the requestor will insure that exempt individuals will receive email communications in an alternate and timely manner.

Any student, faculty or staff member who has been provided a University of Connecticut email account will also be issued a Personal Name alias.  This will be the official address to which the University will send email communications, and the address that will be listed in the University of Connecticut Phone Book and other University publications.

While the easiest way to receive electronic University communication is by using the University's email service directly, an individual may choose to have their University email redirected to another email address at his or her own risk.  The University will not be responsible for the handling of email by outside vendors or by departmental servers. Having email redirected does not absolve a community member from the responsibilities associated with official communications sent to his or her University email address.

All faculty, staff and students are expected to check their University email on a frequent and consistent basis in order to ensure that they are staying current with all official communications.

Retention of Email: University Information Technology Services (UITS) maintains the University's central email systems for students and employees and creates electronic mail back-up tapes for disaster recovery purposes alone.  Back-up tapes of the employee and student email systems are retained for 30 days.  Back-up tapes, in most cases, will not be used for restoration of individual mailboxes and will not be used as a convenience to retrieve "deleted" messages.  Back-up tapes do not serve a records retention function. Originators and recipients of email are responsible for identifying and saving documents outside of the email system that must be retained in order to comply with federal, state, or local laws and to meet operational, legal, audit, research, or other requirements.  Refer to the Records Management website for specific information on records retention requirements (http://www.lib.uconn.edu/online/research/speclib/ASC/recordsmgmt/).

Central Email SPAM Filtering: In order to manage spam proactively, all inbound messages will be scanned and rated, and those messages with a high probability of being "spam" will be either tagged as {SPAM?} or {SPAM?}{HIGH}.  In some instances, when the likelihood of an email being "spam" is very high, the email will be dropped and not delivered to the recipient.

Responsibilities:

The Chief Information Officer has overall responsibility for implementation and enforcement of this policy and will respond to any formal complaints resulting from the implementation of this policy.

This policy will be reviewed on a biennial basis.

University Information Technology Services is responsible for providing and maintaining University of Connecticut email accounts and Personal Name aliases.

Moderators for the official UConn listserv lists are responsible for insuring that messages submitted for transmission meet the criteria for the list and adhere to the General Formatting Guidelines.

Individuals utilizing electronic mail are expected to adhere to all applicable Federal and State statutes and University policies, including the University's Electronic Privacy and Disclaimer Notice policy and the University's Individual Responsibilities with Respect to Appropriate Use of Information Technology Resources policy. 

Last updated: May 2007