Appendix I
Lake Forest Country Day School
Employee Information Technology Responsible Use Policy
Draft Updated 2011-11-10 from I:\OPERATIONS\Policy\Employee Responsible Use Policy.doc
Use
Educational Mission
Lake Forest Country Day School (LFCDS) computing and communications facilities are provided to support the school’s educational mission of “Inspired teaching, academic rigor, attention to individual needs, [and] commitment to responsible citizenship.” Educational uses of information resources have highest priority and supersede other uses.
Personal Use
LFCDS computing and communications facilities may be used for personal use during non-work periods in accord with the provisions of this policy so long as such use does not interfere with LFCDS operations nor cause the school to incur additional expenses.
Access
Employees
The LFCDS IT Department issues all LFCDS employees network log-in accounts and @LFCDS.org e-mail accounts and Panther Portal Online Community intranet accounts for use while employed at LFCDS, subject to the provisions of this Responsible Use Policy. The IT Department grants access to other supported systems as determined by the security profile for the employee’s position, as approved by the employee’s supervisor.
Volunteers
LFCDS does not automatically provide network log-in and e-mail accounts for LFCDS Volunteers. LFCDS employee supervisors of Volunteers may request LFCDS network log-in and accounts for use by their volunteers while these volunteers are employed at the school, subject to the provisions of this Responsible Use Policy. Requests for such accounts should be made to the Director of Information Technology, who will work with the LFCDS employee supervisor to determine appropriate account provisioning and security settings based on the Volunteer's position description.
Visitors
LFCDS does not automatically provide network log-in accounts for visitors to LFCDS, including parents of current students. LFCDS employees may request temporary LFCDS network log-in accounts for visitors and parents of current students may request temporary LFCDS network log-in accounts from the IT Service Center. Accounts for visitors allow filtered Internet access but only tightly restricted access to local network resources and do not include LFCDS e-mail accounts.
Services
Scope
LFCDS offers employees access to a variety of internal network services such as file sharing, printing, as well as a subset of Internet services, including World Wide Web, and File Transfer Protocol access. The IT Department publishes a catalog of supported services on the IT Service Center intranet site at http://IT.LFCDS.org/.
Requests for Additional Services
Requests for access to additional services necessary for school-related purposes but not currently included in the IT Service Catalog should be submitted to the IT Service Center. The IT Department will evaluate the cost, benefit, security and support implications of the request and approve or decline the request accordingly. Requests involving procurement must follow the LFCDS Information Technology Procurement Policy.
Equipment
Care
Employees are responsible for practicing and modeling proper care of computer equipment. Specifically, employees must keep liquids, food, magnets and other harmful items away from computers, peripherals, and other electronic equipment. Employees must transport notebook PCs in standby, hibernate, or off mode inside padded carrying cases with no foreign objects impinging on the notebook PC to avoid screen and other sensitive component damage.
Computer Assignment
LFCDS provides its employees with access to computers according to the following assignment.
| Employee Class | Computer Type | Rationale |
| Faculty | Notebook | Notebook provides critical instructional tool with LCD projector, productivity enhancer for faculty meetings, working at home & conferences. |
| Administrator | Notebook | Notebook increases productivity in frequent meetings, working at home & conferences. |
| Associate Administrators | Desktop or Notebook | Desktop assigned by default, though notebook may be assigned with supervisor approval & funding availability for those with significant, ongoing away-from-desk responsibilities. |
| Administrative Staff: Full-time IT | Notebook | Notebook required for after-hours coverage as well as working at home, & frequent moves between office, IT Service Center, telecommunications closets, & user support locations. |
| Administrative Staff: Administrative Support | Desktop | Primary computing need in office satisfied by less expensive desktop, with little/no work at home. |
| Support Staff (Maintenance & Food Service) | Desktop (Shared) | Occasional computing need satisfied by shared desktop, with little/no work at home |
Notebook PC Checkout
Any employee assigned a desktop may check-out a notebook computer from the Library or IT Service Center for work-related purposes.
IT Equipment Requests
Employees with work-related needs for IT equipment beyond that which LFCDS standardly issues, the use of which will result in significant productivity gains or accommodate a covered disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, may submit a request for such equipment with rationale to his/her supervisor. Should the requestor employee’s supervisor concur with the request, that supervisor forwards the request to the IT Service Center for review by the Director of Information Technology, who evaluates the request according to the protocol below for requests for equipment currently owned by LFCDS and, additionally, according to the Information Technology Procurement Policy for requests for equipment not currently owned by LFCDS.
| Equipment Type | Factors for approval |
| External Keyboard/Mouse | · Accommodations to mitigate risk of repetitive stress injury · Daily computer use |
| Second Monitor | Regular work involving graphic design, web and print publishing, spreadsheets with large data sets, video production |
| Scanner | Regular work involving digitizing documents. |
| Mobile Telephone | · Life/safety responsibility requiring immediate availability · Responsibilities requiring significant mobility while at LFCDS and a significant volume of requests requiring urgent contact; · Significant volume of on-call requests requiring urgent contact |
| Smartphone / Personal Digital Assistant | · Responsibilities requiring significant mobility while at LFCDS and a significant volume of e-mail requests requiring urgent contact and/or significant scheduling needs · Responsibilities requiring regular travel and a significant volume of e-mail requests requiring urgent contact and/or significant scheduling needs |
Portable IT Equipment Agreement
In addition to the other provisions of the Responsible Use Policies, users of notebook PCs, digital cameras, portable digital video projectors, and other portable electronic equipment acknowledge an additional level of responsibility for use of this equipment given its portable nature. As with any school property entrusted to employees, the portable IT equipment remains property of the school and employees will be accountable and financial liable if the equipment is lost, stolen or damaged due to negligence or careless handling. Employees may be responsible for any deductible amount on the School’s insurance policy for repair or replacement of notebook PCs. Departmental budgets may be charged for repair or replacement of portable electronic equipment.
While employees may in general keep school-assigned notebook PCs during school breaks while continuing employment at the school, the IT Department reserves the right to recall notebook PCs, accessories, and all portable IT equipment for maintenance and secure storage during school breaks.
Prohibited Activities
The following uses are disallowed:
Illegal activities,
including violation of state and federal law, including the purchase or sale of tobacco, alcohol or drugs, violation of software license agreements, violation of copyright law, attempting to break into restricted areas. As with other illegal activities, LFCDS may coordinate with law enforcement authorities on suspected violations of law.
Copyright Violations
As educators frequently involved in reproducing and transmitting written and recorded materials, LFCDS teachers must remain particularly vigilant avoid to copyright violations, especially in the context of “freely” available materials on the Internet. All LFCDS employees are reminded that any material recorded to any medium is protected under U.S. law by an implicit copyright. While copyrighted material may be reproduced in limited contexts under fair use provisions, educational use does not guarantee fair use exemption. Employees should be familiar with copyright restrictions and are directed to relevant U.S. Copyright Office and University of Chicago resources. Given these considerations, for any reproduction of non-original material::
· Employees must obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce their work, or
· reproduced material must be in the public domain or licensed under a Creative Commons license <http://creativecommons.org/education> to avoid the potential for copyright infringement, or
· the work must be used in such a way that it falls under fair use provisions of copyright law.
Violation of the LFCDS Honor Code,
including any activity not in line with the values expressed in the Honor Code, especially accessing network sites with pornography, obscenity, or content that demeans others.
Harassment,
including threatening or offensive communication, as defined in the Bulletin of Information and elsewhere.
Academic dishonesty,
including plagiarism and cheating, as delineated elsewhere in the Bulletin of Information.
Non-School Use
LFCDS computing and communications facilities may be used for personal use during non-work periods in accord with the provisions of this policy so long as such use does not interfere with LFCDS operations nor cause the school to incur additional expenses.
Damage
to equipment, software, or data not owned by the user, including physical breakage, electronic corruption or erasure, and/or creating or distributing viruses or other destructive programs. Employees will be held accountable and financially responsible for missing or damaged equipment resulting from negligence or intentional destruction or misuse of equipment.
Violation of security,
including not protecting passwords, stealing passwords, not complying with password guidelines, using another's account, allowing another the use of your account, leaving your account unlocked while not attended, attempting to break into restricted areas, attempting to circumvent system restrictions, and distributing restricted information.
Violation of privacy,
including monitoring others' communications and viewing others' documents without permission.
Impeding others' use
of computing resources (e.g. overuse of network, creating or distributing viruses or other destructive programs).
System Modification,
including reconfiguration and installation of software, except by permission of the IT Department.
Interconnection of unauthorized devices
to LFCDS computing equipment, including the network, other than those devices provided by the school or user-provided USB storage devices for the purpose of transferring user files. These devices may only be connected if the device will not interfere with the normal operation of the computer or the network.
Disallowed Systems
To protect the integrity of the LFCDS network, the IT Department reserves the right to disallow installation of, use of, or access to any hardware, software, or network service. The following systems may not be installed on or accessed through LFCDS computers or networks except by the IT Department in service of official school business.
Peer-to-peer file sharing systems.
Due to the legal issues surrounding copyright violations and the overwhelming strain such file sharing services put on our Internet connection and storage space, peer-to-peer file sharing software and services such as Gnutella, BitTorrent etc., are disallowed.
Network Analyzers.
Due to the potential for stealing passwords and invading privacy, network protocol analyzers ("packet sniffers") such as Sniffer, Wireshark, etc. are disallowed.
Proxy Servers:
Due to the potential to bypass LFCDS network security and content controls, proxy and other tunneling servers are disallowed.
Network Intrusion Tools:
Due to the potential to inflict harm on LFCDS or other networks, network intrusion, attack, and cracking tools such as Nessus are disallowed.
Crackware:
Due to the potential to violate copyright laws, tools that disable or generate activation/license codes for software applications are disallowed. Software that has been so "cracked" is also disallowed.
Game Console Emulators:
Game Console Emulators allow games for such systems as Nintendo, PlayStation, Sega, GameBoy, etc. to be played on a personal computer. The ROM images containing the game code are copyrighted by their respective owners and protected by software license agreements that forbid use without the user owning the actual game. The process for determining legal ownership and regulating execution of game ROMs in order to maintain compliance with copyright laws and software licensing agreements would pose an overwhelming administrative burden on the IT Department. Therefore, Game Console Emulators are disallowed.
Filtered Web Sites
While LFCDS is exempt from the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), it chooses to filters World Wide Web content for the protection of its students. Users may not attempt to circumvent content restrictions. Requests for modifications to filtered sites for school-related purposes may be made to the Director of Information Technology.
Commercial use,
without the express written permission of the Head of School.
Political lobbying,
without the express written permission of the Head of School.
Other restricted activities,
as promulgated by the IT Department and LFCDS administration.
Privacy
Ownership of Information
LFCDS retains ownership of its communications and computing facilities. Messages, documents, and other information residing on LFCDS e-mail, voicemail, file servers, and end-user computers are legally the property of LFCDS.
Information Retention
LFCDS regularly backs up all of its servers, including e-mail, voicemail, and file servers. These backups create information archives that may exist indefinitely.
Internet Access
LFCDS logs Internet connections originating from its network, whether from LFCDS or privately held equipment.
Protected Information Access
Protected Information
Any electronic information not explicitly shared with others in the organization is considered protected information for the purposes of this guideline. Examples of protected information include: e-mail, elements of a user's network profile, including the contents of a user's Documents folder/home drive. Electronically stored library records are covered by the library's confidentiality policy.
System Maintenance
For purposes of system administration, IT Department members have the ability to access all information residing on LFCDS computer and communication systems. System maintenance may occasionally require IT Department members to access protected information on these systems. The IT Department respects the privacy of protected information residing on or passing through such systems.
Information Access
Access to a user's work-related protected information may be granted by the Director of Information Technology by request of the employee’s supervisor if the employee is unavailable. In such cases, the IT Department will notify a user any time an IT Department member has accessed his/her protected information within 24 hours of information access.
Legal Proceedings
Electronic data is subject to legal discovery proceedings. LFCDS must comply with any court order demanding production of any electronically held data.
Communication & Publishing
Principles
While the modes of communication, expression, and publishing facilitated by the Internet and other electronic media are new, the principles of conduct to which LFCDS employees should aspire in using them remain the same as those that apply to more traditional communication media and to in-person interactions. These principles are grounded in common standards of professionalism and in the LFCDS Honor Code.
Internal Communication
All communication posted on or conveyed through LFCDS computing and communications equipment should comply with commonly accepted standards of network etiquette (“netiquette”), including avoidance of spamming, flaming, and sending chain letters and the general netiquette guidelines presented in such articles as Internet RFC 1855 and Virginia Shea's book, Netiquette.
Public Conduct
Since the novelty of the “read/write” Web (Weblogs, wikis, discussion forums) and social media services (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN) may initially obscure the appropriate application of these principles, LFCDS offers its employees specific guidance. While the majority of rules in this Responsible Use Policy refer to use of school-owned communications and computing equipment, many of the guidelines in this section apply to use of the Internet in general, whether accessed from school equipment or not, as the “read/write” Web and social media constitute public and semi-public spaces that offer equal or greater visibility of employee actions to colleagues, community members, as well as current, prospective, and past students and parents as does employee conduct in physical public and semi-public venues.
Public Posting
Appropriateness
As a vibrant academic community, LFCDS encourages employee engagement in intellectual, social, political, religious, and civic-oriented activities. However, just as employees are expected to be prudent in their personal presentation in other social contexts, employees must be prudent in allowing access to their online content. Employees must exercise care with content posted to the public Internet (blogs, Wikis, discussion forums, e-mail lists) to ensure that this information does not reflect poorly on their ability to serve as a role models for students or otherwise create conflicts of interest.
Affiliation
When posting on-line content for non-school purposes, employees are encouraged to use personal accounts rather than those affiliated with LFCDS, such as the @LFCDS.org e-mail accounts. In such non-work-related postings, employees may neither state nor imply an endorsement by the school without the prior consent of the Head of School.
Social Media
Social media sites allow users to establish accounts with profiles that link to other users to facilitate directed information sharing. LFCDS maintains official social media presence in various social media, as outlined in the Web Publishing Policy.
Friending
Terminology describing the linking of online profiles varies from site to site. “Friending” is used here as a generic term to include following, subscribing, adding as a contact, or any other term meaning establishing an online relationship between two people that makes available otherwise restricted content.
Students
To maintain appropriate professional boundaries, employees are discouraged from “friending” current students (of any age) or former students under the age of 18.
Alumni
Use professional discretion when friending alumni 18 years of age and older, recognizing that many former students have online connections with current students (including younger siblings and underclassmen friends), and that information shared to recent alumni/ae is likely to be seen by current students as well.
Parents
Employees are discouraged from friending parents of current or prospective students due to the inherent conflicts of interest that may arise.
Colleagues
Employees in supervisor/subordinate relationships are encouraged to use caution in friending due to the potential for both parties to feel pressured to accept the request, potentially impacting the work relationship (as well as raising conflict-of-interest, unequal-treatment, discrimination, or similar concerns).
Privacy Settings
On most social networking sites, profile privacy settings can be changed at any time to limit both public access to profiles and restrict the types of information available to various categories of friends/connections. Just as with publicly posted content, employees must exercise care with semi-public personal profile data and posted content. Employees are advised to periodically review content visible to others for appropriateness, not only the employee’s own postings, photos and videos, group memberships, but also items in which the employee may have been ‘tagged’ by others.
Interacting with LFCDS Social Media Pages
Employee interactions with LFCDS official social media can assist the School in its community-building and marketing efforts. LFCDS encourages employees to comment on and interact with LFCDS social media pages (such as the Lake Forest Country Day School Facebook page) in positive and constructive ways supportive of the School’s mission and in-line with the LFCDS honor code and the following guidelines:
· Per the LFCDS Web Publishing Policy, employees should never refer to students by name in comments or posts on social media sites nor tag students in social media photos.
· Employee should exercise caution in tagging other LFCDS employees in social media photos, as such tags may lead back to employee personal profiles, which may contain private material inappropriate for association with LFCDS.
Electronic Mail
Electronic mail can be an extremely effective communications medium. However, for its impact to be preserved, its use must be constrained so that the volume of e-mail users receive remains manageable. All users of LFCDS e-mail and other electronic communication systems must comply with the following guidelines.
Distribution Group Use
Only authorized users may send messages to the LFCDS E-mail Distribution Groups.
Recipients
Senders must choose message recipients with care, ensuring that either the recipient or the school derives value from the recipient receiving the message.
Non-work/Non-school Messages
Senders must mark as low priority non-work/non-school related e-mail messages sent to distribution groups or other large recipient groups.
Commercial Messages.
Commercial messages may only be sent with the express written direction of the Head of School.
Attachments.
Attachments should be used only when necessary. Nearly all messages can be directly composed in or copied into an e-mail message, complete with sophisticated formatting, which saves both the recipients’ time in reading the message and also server storage space. When a message must include information not directly presentable in an e-mail message, the relevant documents should, in cases except when sending to an external recipient or when security or other considerations dictate, be saved to the Employee Share in accordance with the Electronic Document Filing Guidelines, and referenced in the message with a hyperlink. This practice conserves network resources by not multiplying copies of the document and allows immediate updates to be posted without message redistribution.
Graphical Stationery & Signatures.
Graphical stationery and signatures should be avoided. Such graphical attachments (especially those which are not built into the mail client software) unnecessarily consume additional server storage space and network bandwidth and are unreadable to some external clients.
Unsupported Software Installation
LFCDS trusts its employees and, within the limits set out below, allows each employee to install software on the computer assigned to him/her. LFCDS employees have the responsibility to provide the appropriate license for any software they install and to support themselves in the software's operation.
To obtain permission to install software on an assigned computer, an employee must send an e-mail to the Director of Information Technology quoting the text below.
I request permission to install software on the following LFCDS-assigned computer and agree to the terms outlined below.
FULL COMPUTER NAME: [Right-click on My Computer & select Properties. Click on the Computer Name tab to find the computer name.]
LFCDS is not responsible for providing software licenses for any software I install on its computers. I possess a valid software license for any piece of licensed software I install on LFCDS machines and am in full compliance with the terms of the licensing agreement.
LFCDS has no obligation to provide me with support or troubleshooting for software that is not on the IT Department Service Catalog. Support in using any piece of software I install on LFCDS property is entirely my responsibility.
LFCDS may remove unsupported software that I have installed at any time. (This may become necessary in the course of maintaining, upgrading, or troubleshooting computers. LFCDS will inform me of the removal of any software.) It is my responsibility to reinstall any unsupported software that has been removed.
LFCDS may forbid the installation of any piece of unsupported software. (This may become necessary if the software conflicts with other, supported, applications or adversely affects the operation of the computer or computer network, or compromises the security or privacy of other users of the network, or creates compatibility problems with similarly-featured supported applications.) I agree to not install any piece of software expressly forbidden by LFCDS.
Reporting
All violations of this Responsible Use Policy are referred to the appropriate LFCDS supervisor and will be handled through the LFCDS employee discipline system.