IT Policy Documentation

(Includes supporting information for the University of Oxford IT Infrastructure Metric)

Hardware Policy

The College provides hardware for administrative use by Bursary staff and academic use in the college computing room. Hardware for Fellows and centre staff is normally funded through department budgets or centre funding. Under normal circumstances, funding is not available for the personal computing requirements of students or visiting academics.

Software Policy

Up to date details on the availability of software for staff and academic use are available at /computing/software.html

Network, Acceptable Use and Firewall Policies

Ethernet connectivity is provided to all student accommodation. Bandwidth availability will depend on the location and number of connections. The majority of connections are currently 100Mb/s switched. Wireless network connections are available in the Hilda Besse (ground floor) and the Gulbenkian reading room, requiring password authentication. Connections to the Internet are monitored and managed by a college firewall and OUCS. All users of the University network are bound by the rules and regulations specified by the College and University

New and Returning Machines / Patch Update / Anti-virus Policy

All personally owned computers require registration for use on the network by an authenticated 'Netreg' system. In the event of network traffic concerns the connection is blocked and user contacted. Up to date information on patching and anti-virus requirements are published at: /computing/viruses.html.

Staff, IT support and IT Awareness Policies

Up to date details on the availability of IT staff and vacation arrangements are posted at computing/help.html. IT support staff are involved with developments within the University through regular attendance at OUCS seminars, conferences and courses of relevance. Staff training requirements are reviewed as part of the College appraisal programme.

Website Policy

The college website is designed to work in graphical and text-only browsers to comply with accessibility requirements. Regular link checks and updates are made to the College website with a feedback mechanism available. Further details on the website policy are available on-line. Annual collation of log-data is performed using W3C log analysis tools and an archive 'snapshot' of the College website is also stored each year. Daily incremental backups are performed.

Security and Documentation Policy

Critical server and network hardware is in secure locations. Staff and student filestore space is available from a fileserver in a secured location.

Backup Policy

Daily off-site TSM backups are performed for all server data with weekly backups applied to all administrative computers. Local tape backups are made of critical server data and held off-site.

Policy Review

All IT policies are subject to regular review.