The University of Ottawa will conduct a privacy assessment before deciding whether to join many universities worldwide in trading in their current campus-based e-mail program for a browser-based system. The new system would give students online storage and access to group calendars and shared documents through virtually any device connected to the Internet, reports the Ottawa Citizen, but all this information would be stored on servers owned by Microsoft, making it subject to the U.S. Patriot Act. "There are risks associated," said Valerie Turner, the university's associate chief information officer, "and the purpose of the privacy impact assessment is to better understand the risks, to look at any remediation that would be required to ensure the protection of the data."
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