In an effort to save money and increase technological opportunities for students, University of Minnesota colleges will allow students and staff to switch their Internet messaging services to Gmail and other Google Apps.

Students and staff will have the option of switching to Google Apps, which includes e-mail and other services like Google Docs, in the beginning of the fall semester. The school eventually plans to make the use of Google Apps mandatory for all students and faculty as a more cost-efficient method of operating.

“In addition to increased productivity opportunities, Google Apps also will allow the university to save costs in the long-run by reducing the need to buy and support software, hardware and storage to maintain our own independent e-mail service,” according to the university’s website.

The new system is subject to the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which protects the privacy of health information, and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects student educational records, though the school is still working to clarify privacy details.

Storing some faculty and staff information does make the situation more complex, and the university said it will be doing further research to make sure that data is safe on Google’s servers.

Although other universities have made the change as well, the University of Wisconsin has no plans of giving up WiscMail just yet.

According to Brian Rust, communications manager for DoIT, the university would not benefit economically from switching to Gmail.

“[Switching isn’t] really free, because you still have to retain staff that manages the system on behalf of the university,” Rust said. “You have to draw up a contract, manage the flow of the mail, maintain servers for their mail, so it’s not as though you can just say, ‘We’re going to save hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars by switching’ because we’re still doing certain things by house.”

Rust added the university is also worried about the privacy of university and student e-mails.

Rust said he thinks WiscMail is a better alternative than submitting e-mails to a third-party vendor, though in the current WiscMail system, all e-mails are retained for a day and the university has the rights to manage the content.

“It’s like you’re entrusting someone you don’t know with copies of papers you spent many, many hours creating,” Rust said. “What could they do with that? You’d just assume nobody else be able to see or use the contents, and faculty and staff are even more concerned about that.”

Rust added Google is not responsible for lost e-mails or system failures.

Rust added the university is, however, responding to anecdotal evidence of growing Gmail popularity by restructuring the web interface for WiscMail.

This new interface will be up and running in the fall.

Officials from the University of Minnesota were not available for comment as of press time.