Email Guidelines and Procedures
Purpose
College of the Desert maintains email accounts for the primary purpose of communication between departments, faculty, students and the college community. All faculty and staff are held accountable for seeing that the email is used in a responsible, efficient, ethical, and lawful manner. Casual use of the COD system dilutes email as an effective district communication tool and encumbers the email storage system.
Authorized users of email will be granted appropriate access, including passwords, by the responsible system administrator. The administrator sets minimum guidelines within which users must conduct their activities.
Responsibilities and Discretion
Users may not allow unauthorized individuals to access their account. Email users shall not exploit a false identity. Users are responsible for maintaining their own password protection and it is highly recommended that the user’s password be changed every six months.
Computers and telecommunication equipment are the property of COD and are provided to employees for the use of conducting college business. Email is not monitored for content however information services technicians may have access to telecommunications transmissions while performing network or other maintenance or when trouble shooting network problems.
The nature of electronic mail makes it less private than users may anticipate. Email may become accessible to unintended or unauthorized individuals. Sender is responsible for email content and should be aware of breach of confidentiality. Emails should not be sent “reply to all” or “forwarded” intact unless the content was intended for all. It is often better to compose a new message.
Maintaining the integrity of the email is every employee’s responsibility. Do not send chain letters, virus warnings or junk mail. Always check with IT before sending out an alarm. If you are not sure of the source don’t send it.
Limiting File Size
All email that is not achieved is saved on back up servers for an extended period of time. Large file size and redundant files take up server space and can create difficulty when data needs to be recovered.
Files containing movies, video, pictures or graphic-intense flyers should be posted on department portal website whenever possible.
Email files should be achieved to the user’s hard drive when prompted. It personnel can assist in file management and storage.
For efficiency and convenience distribution lists are provided within the email system. Email sent to a list generates a large volume of messages. The smallest list possible should always be used. Anyone sending a message to a distribution list should include phone number and department so recipients can easily identify the sender.
Email Space Allocations
Individual users will be allotted 300 Megabytes of space for email files storage on the network. The disk quota is implemented in order to efficiently use district resources and allow for operative data recovery. IT reserves the right to archive emails from an account if they feel the account is overburdened. Users will be notified when the account is nearing the disk quota.
Employee accounts will be maintained for 30 days following termination of employment. Files will be achieved to disk for retrieval.
Accountability
Email is a reflection of College of the Desert. All correspondence needs to be courteous and professional. It is the responsibilities of each department to ensure that all employees, including full and part time faculty and staff understand and abide by these guidelines.
