Status of Google, Doodle and other UW agreements

Friday, August 28, 2009

On behalf of campus, DoIT and the Office of the CIO are pursuing an agreement with Google for Docs, Sites, Video in the HE Apps suite. For now, this will not include email, chat or calendar. We are at the stage of clarifying details with Google.

This service will be rolled out in two phases. In the first phase, we intend to execute a "terms of use" agreement that satisfies our legal rights and institutional needs. This will allow our faculty, staff and students to use the Google tools without individually signing the standard Google click-through agreement.

In the second phase, we intend to roll out a branded Google service that uses our campus credentials for access to the Google services.

This week Google postponed a discussion on migrating existing accounts by UW personnel. We hope to talk to them next week. Once we have an agreement, we start an implementation process. Phase one will be rolled out during the upcoming semester. The second phase will be rolled out during the Winter break.

On a somewhat related note, we are also working on a UW-Madison-branded instance of Doodle [http://www.doodle.com/], a web-based schedule-syncing tool. Details are coming soon.

The campus has also developed some guidelines for use of non-UW-Madison applications such as Google Apps, YouTube, Doodle, etc. These guidelines provide issues to consider when planning to use these applications. The guidelines for instruction is available at http://www.cio.wisc.edu/policies/Non-UWAppsServicesInstruction.doc

A related document targeted for use in research projects is found at the bottom of the policy page http://www.cio.wisc.edu/policies/.

DoIT will publish more details as they become available.