As part of ongoing efforts to improve how we manage University data and comply with University records retention policy, UITS and GCO collaborated on a process to remove or reassign employee data upon termination. This process takes legal, technical, business and functional needs into consideration. This process informs the manager of the departing employee of the following:  

  1. Options available to the manager for transferring, preserving, and/or deleting employee data and mailbox 
  2. The timeline when the employee user account will be removed and the data will either be removed or ownership of the data will transfer to the department
  3.  Key considerations to inform the manager's decision such as:
  • is any of the data subject to any legal hold?
  • is deletion of this mailbox consistent with the University’s Records Retention policy?; and
  • is there is a business need to retain the data or mailbox?

Process timing:

  1. Upon termination, the manager will get an initial email outlining the items above.
  2. 60-90 days after termination, UITS will send a reminder email to the manager to provide written instructions regarding the employee's data. If the manager does not respond to two requests in a two week span, the issue will be escalated to the manager’s department head.
  3. If there is no need to preserve or transfer data and deletion is consistent with the University’s policy and standards, UITS will permanently remove the data within one week of manager notification. 

This process will go into effect on 01/02/2019. Our objective is to make it easier for you to manage data for departing employees. If you have any questions about this enhanced process, please contact IT Support.