HarvardSites Platform Information Gathering Practices Statement

This statement discloses the information gathering practices for the HarvardSites platforms, which are used by the Harvard community to build websites. The Harvard Web Publishing team in Harvard University Information Technology is the provider of the HarvardSites platforms. The websites with which you interact may collect additional information, including both information that you provide directly through the website and information collected automatically through the use of cookies, pixels, web beacons, session replay and similar technologies. These websites may publish a privacy notice with additional detail.

Gathering and Use of Information 

We use third party tools such as New Relic, Splunk, and Google Analytics to glean insights into the performance of our platforms and service delivery. The specific third party tools we use to gather these insights change from time to time. 

We collect information on the infrastructure and performance of our Drupal-based and WordPress-based website building platforms to monitor and analyze performance issues. The data we gather includes metrics such as server response time, page load speed, database performance, and network latency. This information is used to troubleshoot any performance issues that may arise and to ensure optimal website performance for our users. 

We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our website by identifying (1) which parts of our site are most heavily used, and (2) which portion of our audience comes from within the Harvard network. We link IP addresses to other metrics collected about your usage of this site, but not to information such as name or other similar identifiers. Our focus is on monitoring the technical aspects of our website building platforms to improve their performance and user experience. 

As noted, individual websites running on the HarvardSites platforms are governed by their own site-specific practices, which may include additional data collection, use and disclosure. You should refer to any privacy policy posted on the website for additional information. 

Effective Date 

The effective date of this statement is February 22, 2024.