OIT announces Google apps for students faculty and staff

As complaints arose over the various e-mail systems required by universities throughout the United States, UAF along with the Statewide Office of Student and Enrollment Services challenged themselves with finding a single e-mail service that would suit the needs of all local and statewide students.

Karl Kowalski, Executive Director of User Services in the Office of Information Technology, stated that, “there is a business need for a single, official, reliable e-mail address that can be used for university business communications.” Users also demand that their e-mail have greater storage and platform, and be location-independent. An e-mail database that fulfilled all of these needs was Google, and so Google Apps for Education, the new email network, was created.

OIT has always been searching for ways to improve service and lower costs, and with the statewide office of Student and Enrollment Services supporting the idea of a system-wide e-mail structure long before it was brought to OIT, the idea became reality and was streamlined on the UAF campus, and from there to other universities.

The switch from the UAF e-mail network to the statewide network applies to all students, staff and faculty, as well as Statewide Offices employees. It is not voluntary, though UAF does have a transition period that extends through the remainder of the 2008-09 academic year. Kowalski states that the University approves of the Google Apps because it enlists the help of a pre-existing service, therefore “improving our offerings and reducing our costs.” The initial savings alone total to approximately $90,000 in software costs and longer term hardware cost to $150,000. These savings will, Kowalski believes, be “redirected toward other projects that have been backlogged due to lack of resources and manpower.” All accounts will be made directly on the Google site.

“We do not anticipate any obstacles.” said Kowalski.According to him, students as a group are “tech savvy,” and excited at the prospect of a new technology that will carry the best features regarding communication and easy use.

One concern that was expressed by both students and faculty was the loss of their UAF identities. As such a large corporation, does Google provide the same or better security as the UAF database? Also, there were some users who wanted to remain affiliated with the university and were concerned about having an e-mail address marked as “gmail.” OIT assured that, as a result of feedback from more than 1,300 students, faculty and staff, as well as the Chancellor’s Cabinet, all University of Alaska e-mail would become @alaska.edu.

Advertisements and logos were also of high concern, and again, OIT assured that neither would bombard students and faculty, nor become plastered all over their webpage, as this was discouraged by Google itself.

Worry was expressed over what would happen if the internet crashed, and OIT stated that such an event would temporarily close down our e-mail, but that these occurrences are rare. Also, confidentiality of particular e-mails should not be an issue, as one can label specific e-mails as confidential, sensitive, or proprietary in nature. Google is therefore unable to use them in a general keyword search relating to advertisement.

A few of the groups that are currently backing the e-mail consolidation project, which began in August of 2007, are the Deans, Directors and Department Heads, the UAF IT Council, the UAF Distributed Technicians Group, the Chancellor’s Cabinet, the President’s Staff, the Statewide Administrative Assembly, ASUAF and the Statewide General Function Council. A survey was also performed via the web and received responses from more than 1,300 individuals.

Google Apps is rapidly spreading from university to university and has received mostly good feedback. The future is looking bright for students and faculty of this statewide database, where e-mail is more accessible and lives are made a little bit easier.