Governors and use of School email address

[maxrebo]

Hi,

I'm just wondering what other school do with regards to Governors and their email addresses, we have created a school email address for all Governors but none of them use it, reverting to their personal address.

Which is fine until there's a Governors meetings and it causes all kinds of confusion trying to join MS Teams meetings with none Microsoft accounts (not that its very confusing!, but seems to be for many!), suggesting to use their school O365 account has fallen on deaf ears.

 

Whats your policy with this? Do you force all communication to Govs through a school address or let them use their own personal one?

 

Thanks

[LeMarchand]

One of mine has recently realised that life would be easier/more secure if the governors all used school addresses. Yay!

 

The others have yet to wise up to this.

[ICT-Joe]

All of the Governors here use a College email address, and this has really only been in place since September. A couple use their personal email address every now and then, but the PA is usually there to remind them to use the correct address! Edited May 11, 2020 by ICT-Joe
Grammar

[Andycat]

We stopped Governors using school email addresses, they have their own managed system in place. They aren't employed by us, and some work for other schools. Any emails to All Staff were going to them, possibly allowing data breaches so they sit separately now.

[mavhc]

I set them up with emails, that's where all their gov emails go, after about 6 months almost all of them have managed to log on. So much winning.

 

Just have to not allow anything else

[Edu-IT]

We insist on the use. It's not too much to ask.

[robyholmes]

Named accounts on the school system. It's school data not public so why allow it to leave your system.

[Pickle17]

We have insisted that all school governors use school emails for all school correspondence. This way we know it is secure through the school email system. Our governors use Microsoft Teams for their meetings as well.

[Ditto]

Some aspects of this topic have been covered in detail in a recent thread - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/data-protection-information-handling/211699-generic-emails-governors.html

 

For me in summary, if you go for governor accounts, educate the governors before rolling out and get them onside. Our school has school managed accounts but it was very poorly rolled out and was a bit of a disaster. Since then, most governors have set up auto-forwarding to personal accounts. The MS Teams meeting is an interesting point (we have our first post lock down committee meeting shortly so we'll see how it goes, but is there anything stopping non-domain users joining an online teams meeting?

[mavhc]

The settings that you enabled to stop that happening for protection of children

[Ditto]

The settings that you enabled to stop that happening for protection of children

I guess I should add 'invited' non-domain users - these are governor meetings . All the governors I volunteer with, know safe guarding is the number 1 priority.

[maxrebo]

Some aspects of this topic have been covered in detail in a recent thread - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/data-protection-information-handling/211699-generic-emails-governors.html

 

For me in summary, if you go for governor accounts, educate the governors before rolling out and get them onside. Our school has school managed accounts but it was very poorly rolled out and was a bit of a disaster. Since then, most governors have set up auto-forwarding to personal accounts. The MS Teams meeting is an interesting point (we have our first post lock down committee meeting shortly so we'll see how it goes, but is there anything stopping non-domain users joining an online teams meeting?

As long as you allow Guest access then they should be able to join.

The trouble we have had is the Governors having to create a MS account off the back of their Non MS email tenant, its been a slow process!

[Ditto]

As long as you allow Guest access then they should be able to join.

The trouble we have had is the Governors having to create a MS account off the back of their Non MS email tenant, its been a slow process!

Thanks - that's a useful point. Whilst I always find it annoying to be forced to register for any reason with a new account, I guess as you are using their product, it needs to be accepted. For my school, all the governors do have a school MS account, so whilst they have not wholeheartedly adopted the email, for MS Teams meetings, they'll accept using it. I'm going to also suggest we consider recording to overcome the post meeting minuting, which traditionally ends up with 'can you remember what was said'. I'm going to suggest the recording is retained until the minutes are signed off, before deletion. It'll be interesting to see if they are any objectors.

[Steve21]

Again, we force gov to use ours. End of day when they leave it also means you got the data/proof of things being sent etc

 

Steve

[Ditto]

Again, we force gov to use ours. End of day when they leave it also means you got the data/proof of things being sent etc

 

Steve

I agree the use of controlled accounts is the better way, whether using the school administered account or even a separately administered by governors (something I've only seen rarely - e.g. governorhub). However, the 'forcing' of process/procedures by operational employees on strategic governors is not enforceable and in our case led to some passive resistance due to inconvenience rather than any other reason. I maintain the best way to get to this point is by educating and persuading the governing body that the benefits of administered outweigh the disadvantages.

[birchanger]

Just say GDPR to them.

 

But seriously, if there is a SAR that may require a Governor's emails to be searched (e.g. it may related to another governor or a staff member) then it's much easier and less intrusive if the search scope

is limited to the governor's school email account rather than his/her personal one.

[Ditto]

Just say GDPR to them.

 

But seriously, if there is a SAR that may require a Governor's emails to be searched (e.g. it may related to another governor or a staff member) then it's much easier and less intrusive if the search scope

is limited to the governor's school email account rather than his/her personal one.

Absolutely and it's one of the biggest reasons why I think the balance is to have managed accounts.

[pete]

Governors have a school email account and are encouraged to use them for school/trust business by the clerks. It's partly for accountability and audit, but mostly for GDPR compliance and some semblance of order.

[jezi55]

We used to have all Governors using their personal emails, now they all have a domain email account and use that. I have setup some rules in o365 that alerts their personal email when they have a domain email but due to GDPR we had to just allow domain emails.

[maxrebo]

Thank you everyone for your views, I will now start the process of convincing the Head that this is the way to go (They're already setup, they're just not instructed to use them)

[Zoom7000]

At my Trust we require all governors to use school emails (G Suite). However, the school that I am a parent governor at chooses to use personal emails (which I totally disagree with!) They do now use Governor Hub for storing of documents, but these still get shared around on personal emails, which is definitely not good practice.

[mavhc]

A small thing to tell how many unread emails a mailbox has would be useful, so they know when to check their email.

[leegcvcc]

I mentioned this and have tried to enforce use of school email accounts, and was told using personal email addresses was for their convenience and nothing sensitive is sent to those accounts so GDPR wasn't a concern. They have joined the Gov teams with personal accounts. No doubt, something will be sent that is sensitive and when that happens I will highlight it and then get the Head to state it's a custom mitigated risk for GDPR. We'll see

[elsiegee40]

GDPR and governance:

 

While much of what governors do is confidential, most of it IS NOT sensitive personal data from a GDPR stand point. Do not confuse confidentiality with data protection. They’re different.

 

Data dealt with by governors should always be anonymised. We are strategic. We don’t get into operational detail.

 

Where personal information is handled by governors it will be a select few (normally 3 governors) for pay panel and for panels for exclusions and staff disciplinary.

 

Pay panels are twice a year (one teaching, one non teaching) and the others infrequent. My experience of panels is that the shear volume of paperwork means it is impractical to send electronically. The same paperwork pack must be sent to all parties to the meeting which might include parents, a supporter, someone from the LA, a union rep, etc... none of whom has a school email. The pack is always photocopied and sent by snail mail with a signature or picked up from school.

 

Steps can be taken to ensure that personal data is NOT sent to personal accounts on the few occasions governors deal with it and, while school accounts are recommended, the use of personal accounts by governors ISN’T necessarily a problem..

 

Also, many boards are now storing their papers on cloud based systems... there are bespoke systems for governors as well as the regular Google/M$ offerings. What’s emailed to governors is the notification that stuff is available to read online... not the actual data!

Edited May 13, 2020 by elsiegee40

[mavhc]

with cloud email it's all online anyway, question is mostly can you remotely delete it if needed, you can delete an email sent by mistake to your own domain but not to a personal email