Blackberry Cell Phones

HKS Policy for Wireless Handheld Devices

The following describes the school’s reimbursement and support policy for faculty and staff at HKS as it relates to cell-phones, PDAs and other wireless handheld devices.

Eligibility for HKS Reimbursement

All staff and faculty are eligible to have their wireless voice and/or data service paid for by the school if it is determined to be essential to have such service to effectively perform one’s job. For staff to be eligible, they must have the approval from their Department or Center Director who confirms there is a business need for the individual and that their Department or Center is willing to pay for the service. For faculty, a request for service, which is charged to their faculty support account, must be made through and approved by the Office of Financial Services. It is suggested that to qualify as essential business use, the individual must meet at least one of the following criteria:

• The individual performs the majority of his or her activities outside of their office which limits their access to a landline telephone.
• The individual’s job responsibilities require immediate access in the event of an emergency
• Part of the job responsibility is to be regularly “on-call” to respond to urgent requests.
• The individual’s job requires frequent out-of town travel.

Purchasing and Payment Process

To have your device and monthly service paid for by the school, all new purchases and contracts must go through the University program, which is currently with Verizon. Once approved, the individual can contact the UIS Telecommunications Office at UIS_wireless_phones@harvard.edu and choose from a range of available devices and plans. HKS IT can provide advice on the various options, if desired. At the time of the order, the individual must also provide UIS with a 33-digit billing code that will be used to charge the purchase cost and the monthly service charge. When using Verizon, all billing will go directly to and be administered through UIS. Please note that Harvard retains ownership of the device and upon termination of employment must be returned to the school. Departments will be responsible for monitoring monthly usage and ensuring that calls on those devices are exclusively for university business. Employees will be personally liable for any inappropriate usage including excessive personal use.

If for some reason, an approved individual absolutely requires to purchase service through a vendor other than Verizon, then the individual must purchase their own service in their name, pay the monthly invoices and put in monthly requests to the Office of Financial Services for reimbursement in compliance with IRS Accountable Plan rules.

Security Compliance

All content and data, which is transmitted through a wireless handheld device, whether it be text or voice, needs to be viewed as sensitive and handled in accordance with University and HKS security policies and guidelines. All HKS users will be required to sign an annual acknowledgement to document their understanding of their personal data security responsibilities.

IT Support of PDAs

For all Blackberry users the IT Department will provide wireless integration between the Blackberry device and the user’s HKS e-mail, calendar and contacts. At this time similar integration is not provided for other PDAs (e.g. iPhones, Palm Pilots, or Windows mobile devices), however in the future added support is likely for iPhones and Windows Mobile 6.0 devices.