Enterprise Directory Oversight Process

To address challenges concerning storage, management, change, retrieval, and use of directory information, institutions can establish a campus group to provide guidance and oversight of the service.

The companion Core Principles document outlines the philosophy, developed to guide the implementation and management of the enterprise directory. The Oversight Process described below addresses the institution’s commitment to appropriate use of the directory through the establishment of a campus-wide oversight team.

Oversight Role

Although the benefit of using an enterprise directory server increases with the number of applications that use it, all data on the server is considered private by default. In addition, as more users become aware of privacy issues and additional privacy-based legislation is passed, the University must accommodate the needs of our constituents and mitigate legal risk. Institutions should have a group whose charge is to keep abreast of changes in the technology, data policy, user needs, and university requirements.

This oversight group will address on-going governance issues, and will set up procedures to manage the service use and changes. These procedures will address:

• Access and use of the data, and compliance with institutional policy and core principles;
• Access and use of service for performance and security implications;.
• Dissemination of directory maintenance information and changes;
• Guidance to appropriate use of the directory, and requirements for connecting to it;
• Documentation of applications and attribute use.

Once established, this group will review changes in institutional requirements, procedures, and applications using the directory at least once per year.

Oversight Structure

A sample oversight team could include the following members:

• Data custodians from departments with data in the directory,
• Office of Student Records and Registrar,
• Human Resources Department,
• Academic representative,
• Application developers,
• Internal Auditor or representative,
• Administrative Database administrator,
• Directory Service manager,
• Security specialist, and/or
• Campus Card technical staff.