Sponsor: Peter M. Siegel, Vice Provost for Information and Educational Technology

Status: To date, the UC Davis Gmail project has received endorsements from the following campus groups:

• The Deans’ Technology Council
• The Technology Infrastructure Forum
• Campus counsel
• The Campus Council for Information Technology
• The Gmail Pilot Advisory Group
• ASUCD
• University Relations
• University Communications
• Student Affairs
• Students
• An ad hoc committee of campus privacy specialists, and
• The campus technical community (see PPM 200-45 administrative computing review of the Gmail preliminary plan)

On June 30, Pete Siegel, vice provost for Information and Educational Technology (IET), distributed an update to the Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors and invited the group to comment on the roll-out plan for Gmail. Feedback is expected by July 10. A final decision on implementation of the service will be made by mid-July.

A status of the review process and report on the outcome and findings is available for review at http://admincomputing.ucdavis.edu/secure/projects/gmail/Gmail-preliminary_plan_final.pdf.

For more information on the pilot and the UC Davis Gmail service, visit the official Web site at gmail.ucdavis.edu. For questions or comments on the project, contact the Gmail Team at ucdgmail-pilot@ucdavis.edu.

Rationale:

The electronic messaging landscape is changing as many students come to universities with their own e-mail accounts through providers such as Microsoft, Google or Yahoo. An increasing percentage of students forward their university e-mail to these accounts. Simultaneously, universities are challenged to provide the rich feature sets provided by these companies and are struggling with the increased costs associated with higher storage volumes, virus protection, and spam filtering. Outsourcing student e-mail may provide a more economical method of addressing these challenges.

Goals:

• Provide a richer set of collaborative tools for student messaging needs
• Provide closer linkage to other student communications services (cell phones, IM, etc.)
• Reduce duplication of services for users that already forward e-mail
• Reduce costs and complexity of campus data center infrastructure

Process:

• Provide a system-wide forum for evaluating the viability of outsourcing student email
• Perform technical and functional evaluations and comparisons of prospective providers
• Engage key campus constituencies in a discussion of outsourcing student e-mail and evaluation of primary contenders
• Conduct a student focus group to determine student preferences
• Draft a set of recommendations for campus review
• Develop an implementation plan

Groups to be consulted:

• Campus Council for Information Technology (see membership)
• Technology Infrastructure Forum (see membership)
• Undergraduate and graduate students
• Senior Advisors
• Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors

 

Reference Documents for Additional Information

General:

• Gmail pilot update to the pilot advisory group (04/03/08) (PDF 88 KB)
• Gmail pilot update to the pilot advisory group (02/26/08) and Technology Infrastructure Forum (02/27/08) (PDF 99 KB)
• For information on the overall project, see Evaluation of Options for Next Generation Email Services for Students - 04/25/07 (PDF 48 KB) and Draft student email services proposal - 04/25/07 ( PowerPoint 972 KB).
• Email: Paradigms, Options, and Outsourcing (Educause Center for Applied Research, Research Bulleting, Nov. 7, 2006) (PDF KB)
• Student Email Enhancements: Improving email services for UC Davis students, May 14, 2007 (PowerPoint 959 KB)

Google:

• Google Presentation to UC-wide Forum - 01/24/07 (PDF 5.7 MB )
• Notes from system-wide forum with Google - 01/24/07 (MS Word 74KB)
• Arizona State University Implementation (PDF 65 KB)
• Louisiana State University Presentation

Microsoft:

• UC Davis Microsoft College & University Program Evaluation (04/10/06 report to CCFIT) (MS Word 44 KB)
• University of Texas-Pan American: MSN Hotmail Promotional Flyer (PDF 108KB) | Logging onto Hotmail Flyer (PDF 84 KB)
• Eastern Washington University MSN Hotmail Set-up (PowerPoint 983 KB)

Primary Feedback to Date
Pending