Digital Legacy Clinic OIT Fieldwork & Policy Research
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About the Project
Project Overview
The CU Boulder Digital Legacy Clinic is modeled on law schools that offer pro-bono legal support from students, providing dedicated, compassionate support for those navigating digital estate planning, recovering data, memorializing social media accounts, and creating clear plans for a digital legacy. The average internet user has more than 190 accounts and produces more than 850GB of data per year, which makes this work increasingly critical, and increasingly complicated once a university is one of the institutions holding that data.
This project documented fieldwork outreach to CU Boulder's Office of Information Technology to understand how the university actually handles faculty digital accounts after death or incapacity. The clinic needed verified policy, not assumptions, to guide clients like Dr. Jane, a theoretical faculty case the clinic was working through, and until this fieldwork, the clinic simply had no way to answer that specific question with confidence.
Over the course of 14 professional emails, the clinic established a working relationship with OIT contacts Jennie Brucker and Melinda Easter, producing platform documentation covering IdentiKey, Microsoft Productivity Suite, MyCUInfo Portal, and Canvas. The project also delivered a complete case file, a record of communication, and a project handoff document, so the relationship and the findings would carry forward to the next clinic team instead of starting over each semester.
The Issue
The Digital Legacy Clinic had documented how external platforms like Google and YouTube handle digital legacy, but had no documentation on what happens to university-managed accounts when a faculty member dies or becomes incapacitated. That gap sat directly in the clinic's blind spot: the accounts a working professional touches every day, their university email, their course platform, their institutional file storage, aren't consumer products with public terms of service, they're governed by internal university policy that isn't published anywhere a student researcher could simply look up. For a case like Dr. Jane's, a theoretical faculty case the clinic was working through, this gap was significant in a very concrete way, when a client asked what would actually happen to a deceased faculty member's Canvas courses or institutional email, the honest answer the clinic could give was a guess dressed up as guidance.
There was no established relationship between the clinic and OIT going into this project, no existing contact, nothing to build on. Underneath that sat a deeper knowledge gap: no clear understanding of account deprovisioning timelines, no clear picture of which roles were actually authorized to access a deceased person's accounts, and no operational understanding of what the actual process looked like versus what the university's public-facing policy implied it might be, two things that are frequently different at any large institution, and without someone inside OIT confirming which version was real, the clinic had no way to know which one to trust.
Key Objectives
Document CU's existing policies for handling faculty digital accounts after death or incapacity.
Establish a professional relationship between the clinic and CU Boulder OIT.
Map account deprovisioning timelines across IdentiKey, Microsoft, MyCUInfo, and Canvas.
Produce platform documentation covering six categories of digital account management.
Create a case file, communication record, and handoff document for clinic continuity.
Identify future opportunities including Canvas outreach and faculty-facing checklists.
My Role & Impact
Stakeholder Outreach
Initiated and managed the full outreach process to OIT, navigating an introduction through Kate Davis and building a productive working relationship with Jennie Brucker and Melinda Easter.
Policy Research & Correspondence
Authored 14 emails clarifying scope and following up as new information surfaced, investigating CU's Acceptable Use Policy, account deprovisioning timelines, and institutional access rules.
Platform Documentation
Synthesized OIT responses into the CU V3 platform documentation page covering six categories across four university systems, translating complex policy answers into structured, clinic-wide reference material.
Project Handoff
Created a comprehensive handoff document with action items, key contacts, access requirements, and guidance for the next clinic team to continue the work.
The Process
- Initial outreach was facilitated through Kate Davis, a fellow master's student in the Information Science program, who introduced the clinic to Melinda Easter at OIT. The introductory email scoped the inquiry around three core questions: documented policies for deceased faculty, authorized institutional roles, and Canvas course reassignment. Starting with a scoped, specific ask rather than an open-ended request was deliberate, a vague inquiry to a university IT office risks getting deprioritized before it reaches anyone with real answers.
- Melinda looped in Jennie Brucker from OIT, who provided detailed responses on the Acceptable Use Policy rewrite, access limitations, and the Digital Hygiene guidance initiative already underway. That first round of answers surfaced more questions than it resolved, which is normal for fieldwork like this, so follow-up emails went out to gather operational timelines specifically for IdentiKey, Microsoft, MyCUInfo, and Canvas deprovisioning after a faculty death.
- Response delays were managed with polite follow-up nudges, given Jennie's part-time schedule, rather than letting the inquiry stall. What came back was worth the wait: detailed findings on deprovisioning timelines, IdentiKey requires manual disabling, Microsoft licenses are retained 30 days post-death with full deletion after 189 days, and MyCUInfo is deprovisioned quickly once affiliation ends. Each of those numbers came from a real person inside OIT confirming actual practice, not a published policy document that may or may not reflect what happens in reality.
- All findings were synthesized into platform documentation and deliverables for the clinic's Confluence knowledge base, turning fourteen emails' worth of scattered policy detail into one structured reference document that the next person could act on without re-reading the entire email thread.
The Solution
Produced the CU V3 platform documentation page covering six categories, Delete, Memorialization, Archive Account Data, Transfer Ownership of Account, Transfer Ownership of Data, and Stewardship, across four systems: IdentiKey, Microsoft Productivity Suite, MyCUInfo Portal, and Canvas. The findings were specific enough to act on: IdentiKey is not automatically disabled after death and requires a manual request, Microsoft's account automation retains licenses for 30 days post-death before full deletion at 189 days, and MyCUInfo is deprovisioned quickly once affiliation ends, a much shorter runway that matters for anyone assuming they'd have months to act. Spouses and executors currently have no established access pathway at all, though OIT confirmed a policy change addressing that exact gap is under legal review.
Beyond the documentation, the project delivered a complete case file capturing the full investigation, a record of communication preserving all 14 emails, and a project handoff document laying out scheduled tasks and direct advice for the next clinic team. Canvas documentation remains the primary outstanding task, with Luke Prather already identified as the next point of contact, a deliberate choice that reflects the actual scope here: this project was meant to build a working relationship and a documented foundation, not close every open question in one semester, so the next team starts from a warm contact and four systems' worth of verified groundwork instead of from zero.
Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Fieldwork that turned assumption into verified university policy, giving the Digital Legacy Clinic its first real guidance for faculty digital accounts.