In the summer of 2004, RPI’s Chief Information Officer John Kolb established the Information Stewardship Task Force, a group dedicated to developing “a holistic set of policies and standards to provide a consistent integrated framework for the stewardship of information entrusted to and created at the university.” Chaired by Jeff Miner, Director of Integrated Administrative Computing Services, this group consisted of three faculty members, one student, and a number of staff and administrators representing the many departments and organizations that handle information at RPI.
From approximately May 2004 until January 2005, the group met weekly or bi-weekly to accomplish the daunting task of developing standards for the handling of all information entrusted to RPI. They researched similar policies at over 30 other institutions and discussed current practices at length.
Although this task force was not addressing RPI’s continuing utter lack of a privacy policy, by establishing standards for the stewardship of information, the ISTF was addressing a very important portion of the concerns being raised as a result of the absence of said privacy policy. For example, if the final policies and standards developed by the ISTF are ever presented and approved by the appropriate bodies, it’s possible that they could establish clear, institute-wide information categories with corresponding handling guidelines. Such guidelines might include things like who has access to proximity card records or even how long IP logs are kept. Though such standards do not directly address privacy, they have many of the same effects as privacy standards. If only the appropriate people have access to the appropriate amount of information for the appropriate amount of time, the chance of a violation of someone’s privacy is greatly reduced.
Unfortunately, as of January, the Information Stewardship Task Force has put its work on hold, presumably to be continued at a later, unknown date. While the precise reasons are unclear, it appears the administration has given other issues priority over the work of the ISTF. On the surface, this seems completely unacceptable. Given the abhorrent lack of a privacy policy, what could possibly be taking precedence over at least establishing information stewardship policies?
The work of the ISTF is of the utmost importance to the RPI community, and as such the ISTF should be immediately reconvened to complete their objective.
