Download Draft - the United Nations Office at Nairobi

Dated: 19 May 2008
Guidelines on the Use of
Electronic Mail, Web and Shared File Services
This document is a "work in progress" and the latest version is available at:
http://www.unon.org/e-Mail-Internet-Use-Guidelines.doc
The purpose of these “Guidelines” is to provide guidance on the acceptable use of
E-mail, Web and Shared File Services within UNON, UNEP and UN-HABITAT.
1. Access to e-mail, Web and shared file services will be provided to all regular and
temporary staff members working at the United Nations Offices in Nairobi,
provided that they have access to personal computers and have proper accounts to
access the departmental Local Area Network (LAN) servers. It can also be
provided to affiliated contractors under the respective contractual arrangements
governing their work for the Organization.
2. The use of e-mail, Web and shared file services is provided primarily for
conducting official business for the United Nations. Limited personal use of email and the Web is permitted provided that it does not interfere with professional
responsibilities, work time and does not adversely affect the delivery of network
services.
3. The use of e-mail and the Web is not permitted for any purpose relating to
pornography, gambling, drugs, violence and hate sites. To this end, UNON/ITS
will install software that will automatically block access to these categories of
sites. Furthermore, e-mail may not be used for sending junk e-mail (i.e. mail sent
unsolicited and is not wanted by the recipient, e.g. adverts, political and religious
tracts) or chain e-mail (variant of junk email that exhorts you to pass it to other
people; often contains warnings of the dire consequences if you don't pass on the
message).
4. E-mail is largely an informal mode of communication. It is the responsibility of
the sending and receiving offices to determine the extent to which e-mail
communications can be accepted as formal correspondence. This is also true when
communicating with outside parties connected to the Organization’s e-mail
system.
5. Because of the nature of the Internet, staff members should know that the security
and stability of Internet connections cannot be guaranteed. If security-sensitive
messages are to be exchanged over the Internet, both parties, sender and recipient,
should understand these limitations.
6. In order to avoid serious problems in the flow and delivery of e-mail messages,
staff are requested to minimize the length of e-mail messages. Downloading
bandwidth hungry services like ‘real audio’, ‘real video’ and movies via the web
are denied by default and only enabled for SMs who are involved in information
dissemination.
7. Any file created on a personal computer can be transmitted as an attachment to an
e-mail message. Owing to system constraints, the total size of attached files for
official United Nations business should not exceed four megabytes (10,000,000
bytes). Staff are encouraged to use space reducing utilities like pkzip or winzip in
order to minimize the size of attachments. For transmitting larger files, a File
Transfer Protocol / Web site has been established and details on its use can be
found in Annex 1 of this document.
8. Staff members are advised to keep their total mailbox size to within 200
megabytes. The e-mail system is configured to do a monthly system level archive
which transfers all messages older than 18 months to the user’s archive mailbox
on the archive server.
9. Broadcasting of e-mail messages to all e-mail users at the United Nations Office
at Nairobi or to all staff members of an agency is supported provided that the
messages relate to office policy matters or contain time critical information and
that the subject matter is not controversial. Details on sending broadcast messages
can be obtained by contacting the ITS/Helpdesk, however, staff members are
advised that the content of such messages are previewed prior to being released.
Staff are encouraged to make use of the UNON Bulletin Board for broadcasting
messages that do not contain time critical information.
10. Network File Services are provided to facilitate sharing of files among staff and to
ensure reliable backups of staff members’ data files. Each user is provided with
100 megabytes of personal network file storage space (for UNEP, H:\"Office or
Division"\"Username"; for Habitat, H:\habitat\"Username") which is only
accessible by the user. Each division is provided with 100 gigabytes of shared
network file storage space in drive K which is different for every division. and
accessible to all staff members within an Office or Division. Staff are encouraged
to regularly delete unwanted files from Network Storage File Systems. In addition
to network file storage, staff members are encouraged to use CD-Writers for file
sharing and storage.
11. All e-mail, Web and shared file services are supported at the United Nations
Offices in Nairobi only during regular working hours. Any problems may be
reported to the ITS/Helpdesk at extension 6065. Should support or availability of
the e-mail, Web and shared file services be required outside regular working hours
for a special event such as a conference, the respective department or office
should submit a request via e-mail or in writing to the Chief, ITS.
12. For the purpose of capacity planning and for generating usage statistics, all e-mail
transfers and Web access are logged on the server. The following data is stored for
each e-mail transfer: date/time of transfer, sender address, recipient address, size
of message and status of transfer. Regarding web access, the following data is
stored: name of PC form which access was initiated, name of target site, date/time
of access, file (URL) that was accessed and size of file accessed.
Annex 1
Instructions for the use of the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and /or Website for
transmission of large files
1. The ftp site which will allow anonymous ftp access is ftp://ftp.unon.org SMs
wishing to transmit large files are advise to first compress the file using PKZIP or
WINZIP and save it in h:\ftppub\outbox and then send an e-Mail to the recipient
advising him/her of the file name and the site name as ftp://ftp.unon.org/outbox