Termination of Computing and Network Access Policies Procedures
With the exception of faculty emeriti, employee usernames and accounts privileges terminate at departure from the college. Human Resources is responsible for notifying IIT immediately upon the change in employment status.
Whenever an employee leaves the employ of the college, it is critical that their supervisors do everything possible to safeguard the college’s data that may reside on the employee’s local hard drive, in the e-mail account of the individual, or on one of the servers. Local computing access and privileges cease at the time an individual leaves the employment of the college (the single exception is that of retired faculty members).
Many supervisors believe, wrongly, that unless the individual has access to protected or confidential data he or she poses no computing-related threat to the office, the department, or the college. Any employee with a St. Olaf e-mail account has the potential to damage the college’s reputation by simply sending an e-mail message to the community or to off‑campus individuals. Therefore, it is important that each supervisor carefully weigh the possible scenarios that could arise after an employee leaves the employ of the college.
Termination/Immediate Departures: If the supervisor expects that the termination will be difficult, computing privileges should be suspended while the employee is meeting with his or her supervisor. This requires that the Director of Information and Instructional Technologies be informed of the date and time of the notification meeting. In all cases, supervisors should communicate to the employee that he or she must return immediately all college‑owned data, software, and equipment that has been kept off‑campus.
After the individual is terminated, the supervisor or a designee needs to schedule a time with an IIT staff member to begin the process of identifying files on the former employee’s local hard drive, e-mail account, and server account that need to be archived. When necessary, a copy of the local hard drive should be archived to a CD, DVD or other media as soon as possible after the termination. Once this is done, the hard drive should be reformatted and the appropriate data reloaded on the machine. The supervisor should keep a copy of the CD/DVD in a locked file cabinet. At the discretion of the supervisor, a former employee’s personal files can be archived to a CD and mailed to them.
Supervisors must also determine how to handle the individual’s e-mail account. While the individual may no longer have e-mail access at the college, important college data may arrive in messages addressed to the former employee’s account. IIT can make arrangements to have e-mail forwarded to another individual within that office so that important e-mail isn’t lost.
If the former employee was involved in maintaining any college mailing lists or web pages, the supervisor must appoint someone to assume these tasks and notify IIT that the system changes need to occur.
Future Scheduled Departures: If the employee’s departure date is in the future, the employee must be asked to:
- Meet with an IIT staff member to remove personal files from his/her computer and accounts on the network servers. During this meeting all work-related files stored on the hard drive will be archived to CD or to a folder on the server designated by the supervisor.
- Meet with his/her supervisor to sort and classify external disks (e.g., CD’s, DVD’s, Zip disks, floppy disks). These disks should be clearly labeled and have an explanation of the types of files contained on the media.
- Remove all personal e-mail from their e-mail account and mail folders. The employee should be asked to forward work-related email of potential importance to their supervisor or a designee.
- Unsubscribe from all mailing lists well in advanced of the scheduled departure date. The employee will be removed automatically from stolaf-staff or stolaf-faculty, and stolaf-extra.
- The individual must transfer the ownership of any office or department campus-wide mailing lists to another staff member.
- If the individual is involved in any department or office web page development, he or she must coordinate the transition of ownership of these files to another staff member designated by his/her supervisor.
- Prior to their last day of employment, the individual must return to their supervisor all data, software, and equipment that they have kept off‑campus.
