SUNY University-Wide Human Resources Manual
Orientation - Directory Information

last updated: Friday, October 28, 2005

Employees are responsible for providing the campus Human Resources Office with their current home address and telephone number and for keeping such information current. Such information shall be maintained for Official College purposes only

Employees should be given an opportunity to block this information from any campus directory -- printed or electronic -- as part of the preparation of such documents. Likewise, campuses should include code in their queries to ensure that information blocked by employees does not inadvertently get produced in reports when the inclusion of such information does not meet an Official Business - "need to know" standard.

Even for published home directory information, including e-mail addresses, it is a good idea for campuses to refrain from routinely giving out such information. Upon receipt of a request for home directory information for a current employee, or a former employee including emeriti, a better approach is to follow these steps:

• obtain directory information from the individual making the request including name, address, phone number and email address, if any;
• indicate that you will share this information with the employee or former employee and advise him/her that this party is trying to reach them;
• leave it up to the employee or former employee to choose to contact the individual.

If a campus makes employee directory information available on its web site, it should give due consideration to employee privacy rights. It is probably wise not to include home address or other personal information on a web site unless it is password protected on an Intranet and all employees are made aware that such information may be used only for "Official Business" purposes. Similarly, even if only campus address information, including campus email address, is published on the web, campuses should consider creating a password protected intranet for this information to protect their campus email server and their employees from spam.

Reference(s):

Directory Information (UUP)
Employees in the SUNY Professional Services Bargaining Unit currently represented by UUP, see Paragraph 17.2, Article 17, UUP Agreement http://www.goer.state.ny.us/CNA/1999to2003/uup/article_17.html (old)
http://www.goer.state.ny.us/cna/1999to2003/uuppsnu/08art17.html (new)

Form(s):

Address Change Form (generic to be modified by campuses -- campuses should follow instructions at top of form to make form campus specific)

SUNY Address Change Form (MSWord fill-in)