Use of Institutionally-Owned IT Resources for ‘Personal Gain’

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Use of Institutionally-Owned IT Resources for ‘Personal Gain’

5/25/2005

By Terry Calhoun

SOME INSTITUTIONS ENCOURAGE STUDENTS TO RUN BUSINESSES FROM RESIDENCE HALLS, OTHERS FORBID USING IT FOR SUCH PURPOSES

You know, some of the things that annoy me more than almost anything else in daily life are rules and policies that are in writing but that don’t scale, or ignore realities, require compliance in counterproductive ways, or simply can’t be complied with.

For example, what d'es your institution say about the use of “IT resources” for personal gain? Some institutions even encourage students to create and operate businesses from residence halls. Others have language like this: “You may not use university IT resources for personal gain.” That’s a pretty big spread in policies there and I expect that the latter one is breached several times a minute.

A long time ago, investigating my employer-university’s-at the-time policy and its implementation I called up the top policy person and asked about the policy (which was quite strict).

I asked her, “What about a student who gets paid $20 to post a local pizzeria’s menu and contact information on their personal (but university-paid-for) website.” The answer was: “That’s a violation.”

I then asked her about a faculty member who accepted a speaking engagement for which she was paid $1,500. That faculty person was approached by university phone and/or email, and the negotiations took place by email, and the documents amounting to a contract went back and forth by an email, and the professor’s vitae which was a reference for the “job” was on her university-owned website. (And all of the work, including the PowerPoint show presented at the engagement, was done on a university computer.) Guess what? That was okay.

Hmm.

So, what is your institution’s policy? How different is it in real life from what it says on the printed (PDF, so it can’t be easily altered, because it’s "official") page? If you helped a friend’s business with a database issue and did some of the work in your office, using the university’s computer, email system, network, and Internet connection, are you in jeopardy because your friend is paying you $100 for the work? How about if you did the work at home, but on a university laptop and using your university connectivity? How about your own machine at home, but using your university email to transmit documents and other files back and forth?

Here’s another issue that is somewhat related: What if you decided that you could be more productive with a faster, more powerful laptop and you went out and bought one yourself and started using it at home (Because you do work at home, don’t you?) and at work–for university work. Are you frozen out of the use of university software? Support? Are you even allowed to bring your computer into the office? (There are policies all over the board on this.)

The problem is that we’ve come a long way, baby, from the 1950s when it was worth your life to sneak a personal phone call home on an office phone. (Those were deadly times in general, though, even attending a management meeting was life-threatening, because those took place in clouds of smoke. Really, they did.) One of the basic parameters for learning space design that I see coming out of various work by the ELI (formerly NLII) and others is that you should be planning to accommodate what the students bring with them to class, including their bewildering variety of technology toys. It’s obvious that’s where we are also going with knowledge workers in the workplace. Of course that runs right up against insufficient IT support resources in most places.