While the proposed policy would require the authority figure overseeing a search to notify the user when his or her account is accessed or “as soon thereafter as reasonably possible,” it leaves the University room to withhold notification in certain cases, including internal investigations, where notification may be judged impractical.
‘CRITICAL’ ACCOUNTABILITY
The report and proposal also lay the groundwork for novel record keeping and independent oversight, for which community members argued for last spring.
Specifically, the task force’s recommendation calls on authority figures overseeing inquiries to make “reasonable records and logs of the steps taken to access the information,” which are to be shared with the University Chief Information Officer and kept on record.
Those records would be made available to a University oversight committee composed of faculty members and senior administrators. The committee would not only make recommendations of policy and amendments to Faust, but also publicly report on the policy’s implementation.
The exact composition of the oversight committee has yet to be determined, Barron said, but he called faculty representation “key” and an independent set of eyes outside of the chain of authorization “critical.”
Barron also said that he expects searches of electronic communications to continue to be rare. In the last five years, there have been fewer than 15 cases of academic misconduct requiring electronic inquiries and fewer than ten cases of staff misconduct requiring such inquiries, according to the report. Still, Barron cautioned that these numbers may be incomplete due to a lack of consistent record-keeping.
According to the report, the task force met with roughly 500 members of the Harvard community, including leaders from the Undergraduate and Graduate councils, individual faculty members, staff, and administrators, and the Council of Deans. The task force also consulted the the Board of Overseers and the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing bodies. A few dozen people attended two open forums led by Barron last fall.
In a statement, Faust thanked Barron and the members of the Task Force for their effort.
“While many of the changes we face are complex and have yet to emerge fully, I believe that we now have a much clearer understanding of how we might navigate the road ahead,” she said in a statement.
Smith declined to speak with reporters about the proposal or the report. Smith has refused to answer questions about any topic related the searches since May 2013, when he last met with The Crimson in a sit-down interview.
The policy draft will be available to the Harvard community for comments on an online discussion board for the next two weeks.
—Staff writer Matthew Q. Clarida can be reached at matthew.clarida@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @mattclarida.
—Staff writer Dev A. Patel can be reached at dev.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @dev_a_patel.
—Staff writer Amna H. Hashmi can be reached at amnahashmi@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @amna_hashmi.