Hi !
A few weeks ago, we held an advisory webinar with Kristiansand Municipality on managing a constantly changing system like Google Workspace for Education. This involves creating a system to detect and assess changes, but it's about more than just change managementâit's about long-term management.
We say "advice," but this was less "advice" and more of a "sofa chat" among those already managing Google Workspace for Education, namely Kristiansand, Bergen, and Stavanger municipalities.
The recording has been published for a while, you can find it here!
In this newsletter, we summarize the key takeaways from that conversation.
Education and IT Must Collaborate More on Management
This is a truth with many modifications, but some municipalities have experienced that the traditional IT department is disconnected from education solutions like Google Workspace for Education. These types of systems are often seen as just one of many that don't require much management or IT involvement.
Considering the number of users in a system like Google Workspace for Education, many of whom are minors (thus deserving special privacy protection), it becomes clear that the school owner, as the data controller, must handle this type of solution professionally.
There might just be a need for a professionalization of how we manage these types of solutions more broadly across municipal Norway.
And then IT or another internal organization responsible for system management needs to be more connected.
You who are tasked with managing Google Workspace for Education are probably an educator. There's no doubt that you've learned a lot and are now also really good at the technical management of the solution. In fact, you probably know more than most technicians in the IT department.
Yet, there's still a need to better connect them. It's about ensuring you're not handling this alone, considering this is a system with many users (all students in the municipality, not to mention teachers and other staff), and many users will stop being users within a few years.
So to you who feel targeted by this, here are some questions that might help you:
- What do you need help with?
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What would it take for IT to be more involved?
- Do some leaders need to talk for this to happen?
- Do you need to invite yourself somewhere?
There's no one-size-fits-all answer. Think about what YOU need to be able to manage Google Workspace for Education (or a similar solution) effectively.
When managing a system like Google Workspace for Education, it's about setting things up systematically so you can detect when changes occur and assess whether those changes mean YOU need to do something (like update your record of processing activities or other compliance documents).
But it also means that you need to be able to handle the predictable tasks that come with this type of system, like ensuring all new students get user accounts at the start of school, that accounts that need to be deleted are actually deleted, and that all students download their documents from the system before they leave school.
There's no definitive guide on how to work to achieve this. You simply have to decide what YOU need to handle these tasks. But we can say a few things about what's smart.
You need access to expertise that you don't have yourself. This could be technical, educational, or legal expertise. We've mentioned the IT department in the municipality as one place where you can find help. Data protection officers or privacy advisors could be other examples. Maybe you even have digital educational advisors?
If you're very alone in managing Google Workspace for Education in your municipality, can you find colleagues in other municipalities who have the same tasks and whom you like to collaborate with? It will make the job less lonely because you will have someone to tell you that you're not completely off track.
The point is: there is no definitive guide on how to do it, so base your approach on what YOU need to do this job.
The most important advice we can give? Just start!
In the webinar, Bergen and Stavanger municipalities talked about how they have systematized management. Specifically, how they systematically document all changes that come in Google Workspace for Education.
This is a system that Bergen and Stavanger municipalities have been working with for years. For you who haven't been working with this as long, this might sound really overwhelming.
We're here to tell you that everyoneâincluding Bergen and Stavanger municipalitiesâwas a beginner once. They had to start somewhere, and so do you.
So just start. Try things out. And know that any adjustments you have to make along the way don't mean that what you did first was wrong.
It's easy to think that. But all it means is that you've now learned more or that you've become more mature through this process, so you now have different needs. And that's okay.
I wish you a wonderful, privacy-friendly week-end!
Best regards,
Ida Thorsrud
Project manager national DPIA
This newsletter was translated from Norwegian to English with assistance from ChatGPT by OpenAI. While it guided our translation, we made independent editorial choices. Any discrepancies result from this combined approach.