Dear Colleagues:
If you already use a UT Austin email address for University business, please disregard this message.
If you use a non-UT email address, please take the time to read this message as this change in our email policy will impact you.
I want to announce and explain renewed implementation of a longstanding UT policy requiring use of UT email accounts for university business. I know this is going to be painful for some of you and annoying to others, but a number of recent events make it imperative that we make the change I describe here.
The Short Version: You must use a UT account for all UT business. We are taking steps to make this easy and to make use of external accounts difficult. Exceptions will be made for emeritus faculty unless they have a grant, are applying for grants, or manage any funds held by UT Austin.
Why?
- This is a UT System requirement.
- The Texas Public Information Act makes certain of our records, including emails, available to the public upon request. Institutionally, UT Austin needs to ensure our ability to comply by having all emails on its own servers.
- Because of the Texas Public Information Act, you may find yourself forced by law to give access to all of your personal email and not just the business email if you have both on the same account.
- UT has an obligation under FERPA to protect the privacy of student records. Many external email systems are not FERPA compliant.
- Particularly during the COVID pandemic, hackers have targeted external email accounts used by UT Austin investigators in bioscience. You enjoy a higher level of protection and security from such attacks with your business email on UT servers.
What steps are we taking?
- UT Austin has removed all non-UT email addresses from the personal information pages within Workday. Information & Technology Services (ITS) is in the process of inserting your UT Austin email address if you have one. If they have replaced it with the UT Austin email you want to use, no action is required on your part. If you have another UT Austin email address you want to use, you will need to go into Workday and change the listing. The easiest way to see what email address Workday currently has for you is to look yourself up in the UT directory.
- Effective immediately, the Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP) will only submit proposals that list UT Austin email addresses for Principal Investigators (PIs), as well as for any UT employees named as co-Is or key personnel. OSP will correspond with PIs at their UT Austin email address only. This change in process arises from federal grant program officers warning the University that they will not do business with PIs using personal email accounts.
- Over the next few months, we will be contacting departments and ORUs to ask them to make sure that any mass mailing lists they use do not contain non-UT email addresses for UT Austin personnel.
- Beginning in September, 2020 UT email will disable automatic forwarding on UT email accounts.
What options do you have?
- For those of you who prefer the Gmail interface above all else, there is a UT instance of Gmail (UTmail) available on the @utexas.edu domain and you may arrange to have a UT Austin account with the look and feel of your Gmail account.
- You can also take advantage of many of the new available capabilities in the Office365 environment and also have an @utexas.edu address.
- Please contact your IT support staff if you need help with obtaining the type of UT account you want, with setting up the client, and (where possible) with re-importing your email archive.
I want to thank you in advance for helping us to make this necessary change. Carrying it out will better protect our intellectual property, protect our students, and protect you.
Feel free to contact us about the change by writing to us at provost.office@utexas.edu.
Sincerely,
Dan