[AISWorld] Summary of Responses to my Query on P&T Dossier Digitization.

[Kishore, Rajiv]

Dear Colleagues,

Below is a summary of responses I received in response to my query on P&T dossier digitization that I posted to ISWorld on August 24, 2013. Sorry for my slow response but I got back to the US last week after teaching in our international programs, and am still in the process of catching up.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all those who took the time and effort to respond to my posting, and provided valuable input and insights on this important issue. My original query is at the bottom of this summary. I copied the body of the responses verbatim in the summary below, and included everything except pieces of personal communication with me. I standardized the signature line, and included a respondent’s full name and university affiliation below his/her response in all responses except in cases where I was specifically asked not to divulge these details. All responses except one were from faculty members at US universities. One response from a doctoral student is appropriately identified below.

Our school will definitely benefit from these responses as we deliberate and design our process for P&T dossier digitization. Please contact me directly if you have any further questions, and I will be happy to share information on our P&T dossier digitization efforts with you.

I would still welcome your input if your school/university is involved in P&T dossier digitization/uses digitized P&T dossiers and you were not able to respond to my earlier query.

Best regards.

Rajiv

*****************************************************
Rajiv Kishore, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Management Science & Systems
School of Management
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260-4000, USA
+1.716.645.3507 (Voice)
+1.716-645.6117 (Fax)
http://www.buffalo.edu/~rkishore
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rkishore
*****************************************************

Summary of Responses from ISWorld on Query about P&T Dossier Digitization

We have had all the tenure materials in electronic format now for several years which is managed through Blackboard- only tenure committee had access to this site and it includes also all minutes and other relevant materials  such as statutes etc. I do not think that if you use Blackboard or similar systems the risk of breaching confidentiality is any larger than using normal distribution of physical materials.

Kalle Lyytinen
Case Western Reserve University

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Our school (University of Central Florida) just switched to a digital system....but I don't know the details.

I could find out.

Carol Saunders
University of Central Florida

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Our school used that process last year. I did not serve on the P&T committee but am copying two faculty, Kwasi, formed dept head and Vidya, current department head.
Hopefully, they can comment on it. All materials were posted on BlackBoard organization site. Appropriate permissions were set to restrict access to members of the team.

Lakshmi S. Iyer
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

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My university uses an online dossier system for exactly these reasons, and to reduce the administrative burden of moving large volumes of paper among the various folks with "need to know". In our context, that population includes the faculty committee responsible for Appointment, Rank and Tenure (5 members), the department chair, and the relevant dean. Access is controlled by an ACL on a shared network drive. That particular folder is open only to those individuals appropriate for a given dossier.

As a small university, we have not spent as much time and energy on the detailed planning for security. Your comments about outside letters are instructive as to the concerns, but making the process paper-based doesn't inherently prevent that information from leaking. Scanners and cameras are so cheap and accessible that if someone WANTS to make something public, sharing it only on paper is hardly a deterrent.

I've shared with you how my institution does business (please delete my name before sharing, obviously). Beyond that, it seems that "preventing download" might be somewhat doable if the dossier is web-based, but if you're allowing access to Word docs, etc., I suspect it gets harder. I know there are commercial solutions out there that address this kind of issue - you'll just need to assess whether your needs justify the expense and operational impacts. It may be that simply tightly controlling access and auditing will be sufficient to encourage "good" behavior.

Name and affiliation withheld

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The University of Cincinnati recently moved to a completely electronic system for promotion and tenure reviews.

Stacey Ritter, in our Provost's office, led the initiative and it has been very successful. I am copying Stacey here in case she is able to share some insights with you, including which product we are using.

Vivek Choudhury
University of Cincinnati

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Bentley posts everything except the letters on Blackboard on a site accessible only by the relevant department and P&T. Letters are paper.

Jane Fedorowicz
Bentley University

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Not sure whether this will help you but I read this case study some time back which has the inherent security challenges that your project will have.

Sumantra Sarkar
Doctoral student
Georgia State University

(The case study referred above was attached to the original email. The title is “Going with the Workflow” and it is a document management case study of Proctor and Gamble that was published in Baseline and posted on 2008-08-29. The URL was not provided.)

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Paper-based packages are just as tenuous, if not more so.  I have been stung more than once when the content of an evaluation letter got in the hands of the evaluatee.  As a result, I have only written positive letter over the last few years (declining to evaluate someone that I cannot be positive about). So, I would enthusiastically support the digitization of these packets (in order to ease access to them and to save on paper and copying costs).

Robert W. Zmud
University of Oklahoma

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We have been using a partial electronic dossier for some time and are in the process of creating digital one in the near future.

I do not see any security issues as one can make the dossier password projected.  The risk will be almost the same as the faculty members reviewing the hard copy dossier.

Jatinder (Jeet) N. D. Gupta
The University of Alabama in Huntsville

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My previous school (UM-Dearborn) has been doing this for about 4 years, and it has seemingly been successful. We did not have the security parts in place that you mention, and we did not include the outside letters in the electronic dossier.  The candidate created the dossier.  Faculty still had to come into the department secretary's office to physically view the letters.

A benefit of this was also instantaneous delivery of the packets to the outside reviewers.  No hassle in packet assembly/mail/etc.

Any other questions?

Andrew Urbaczewski
University of Denver

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We are currently going through a similar process right now.  I am chair of the UIndy's Promotion and Tenure committee so have an interest in this process.  :-)

The School of Business has used Faculty180 (http://www.data180.com/faculty180.php) for our annual evaluation process the past two years.  We also looked at this software for our P&T dossiers. If you like, I can provide some information on why we ended up not going this route.

I have copied a few other folks at Uindy on this email. Kevin is piloting the use of Adobe Acrobat for electronic dossiers.  He and a few other folks will be submitting their dossiers using Acrobat in a few weeks.  Stacie is chair of our Faculty Senate which will also be looking at e-portfolios this upcoming year.

Thus, they may be able to provide you some information.

Jerry Flatto
University of Indianapolis

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We use Blackboard to give members of the tenure and promotion committee access to candidates' files.  We set up a Blackboard Organization for the committee members.  This does not prevent members from downloading documents, but it does provide a certain level of security for accessing the documents.

Bob Brookshire
University of South Carolina

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At the University of Arkansas, a MS share point system is used to manage this process. Different people e.g department chair, provost etc. get access to the system at different times. Let me know if you would have questions!

Pankaj Setia
University of Arkansas

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Original Query posted to ISWorld

Dear Colleagues

Our school is considering a suggestion about digitizing promotion/tenure dossiers so anytime, anywhere access can be provided to the appropriate faculty members through the web. The rationale for this suggestion is that improved 24*7 access to promotion/tenure dossiers will allow faculty members to more fully go through the dossiers at their own convenience, and this in turn may increase meaningful faculty engagement during promotion/tenure meetings.

Obviously a major concern with such access is the confidentiality and security of the entire dossier, but particularly that of the outside letters. The dossiers should only be available to a select group of faculty members (tenured faculty only) for reading purposes only, and no one should be able to download dossiers for storage on their own devices and/or distribute them to others and/or post them on the web. It would be disastrous if outside letters somehow found their way to the web.

I have been asked by the school to prepare an initial feasibility report on this topic. I would appreciate hearing from you if your school utilizes, or earlier considered and did not adopt, a similar approach for giving access to promotion/tenure dossiers to appropriate faculty members. I would also appreciate any pointers you can provide in this context by way of suggestions for general or specific technical solutions for this problem and/or any specific issues that should be considered as we explore solutions for this problem.

Please respond to me directly and I will post a summary of the responses received to this list.

Best regards.

Rajiv

*****************************************************
Rajiv Kishore, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Management Science & Systems
School of Management
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260-4000, USA
+1.716.645.3507 (Voice)
+1.716-645.6117 (Fax)
http://www.buffalo.edu/~rkishore
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rkishore
*****************************************************








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