Managed Print Policy

Policy Statement

This policy is to facilitate the appropriate and acceptable use of State University of New York (SUNY) print resources by SUNY Brockport employees (full- and part-time) and authorized individuals. The print objectives are to reduce cost, waste, print and paper, simplify and standardize the printer fleet (both single-function and multi-function printers) and secure and optimize the print environment.

In this document, the word “printer” and “device” are used interchangeably and are in reference to any locally attached device (local), single-function printer (SFP), multi-function device (MFD), or a combination of local, SFP and MFD.

Purpose/Scope

SUNY Brockport aspires to improve efficiency, sustainability, cost and security as it relates to office printing. Therefore, it is the University’s policy to:

• establish system-wide print defaults and standards;
• limit printing to items essential for academic instruction or those items required to perform and complete the University’s business needs (e.g., reports or forms for submission to Federal or State agencies, etc.); 
• direct large print jobs (100 pages or more) to SUNY Brockport’s Printing Services (email);
• achieve sustainability goals by reducing paper, energy use and carbon footprint;
• utilize SUNY-approved Beacon software to monitor print volume to better understand and improve our print practices (the specific content of a document is not captured); and
• enable a centralized print budget.

In furtherance of this policy, SUNY Brockport has established the following goals to be achieved by July 2023:

• Achieve a total cost per copy (TCC) of <$.01;
• Have 100% of print devices secure and on a campus network;
• Minimize the use of locally attached desktop devices;
• Reduce the number of baseline SFPs by more than 50%; 
• Increase the baseline usage of two-sided (duplex) printing by 100%;
• Increase baseline device utilization by more than 100%;
• Reduce baseline color print volume by 50%; and
• Reduce baseline mono volume by 40%.

Brockport Information Technology Services (BITS) is responsible for documenting acceptable print practice and equipment acquisition procedures for efficiency and optimization (i.e., digital vs. paper-based workflows), which also comply with privacy, security and regulatory requirements.  

Exceptions to this policy will be extremely limited and only in situations that involve critical business needs that are approved by the Campus President or designee.

Applicability

This policy applies University-wide. 

Definitions

Authorized users - Any person who is granted permission to use university print resources, including, but not limited to, SUNY Brockport employees, students and consultants. 

Baseline - Print data collected during fiscal year 2019-2020, pre-pandemic. 

Centralized campus print budget - The assimilated total cost of all departments’ spend on print supplies, maintenance and paper under one centralized campus budget (vs. departments using their individual budgets to track, order and pay for these items).

Critical business needs - Documents and presentations essential to the running and operation of the University that the user believes are better suited to be printed vs. shared electronically, or administrative processes which require a printed document for compliance or regulatory reasons. 

Device utilization - The amount of print volume being produced on any given device. The higher the volume, the better the utilization of that fixed-cost device. For example, if a device has a fixed cost of $100 per month and the volume is 10,000 pages per month, it is better utilized than if that same device was running 1,000 pages per month. 

Duplex printing - Printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. 

Locally-attached print device (local) - A print device that is connected directly or wirelessly to a workstation with only one user mapped to the device. Also commonly referred to as a “personal” or “desktop” printer.

Mono - Black and white.

Multi-Function Device (MFD) - A print device that can perform multiple tasks such as printing, copying, scanning, and faxing.

Print defaults and standards - Pre-set properties on print devices which may include, but are not limited to, functions such as mono (vs. color) or duplex (vs. single-sided) pages. Standards include device characteristics that SUNY has determined to be most acceptable, which may include deploying devices that only print letter (8.5” x 11”) or legal (8.5” x 14”) vs. ledger (11” x 17”) pages. 

Secured print - The process of requiring user-authentication on a print job before the features of the output device are enabled. Once “secured,” the user’s print job is held on a server (either on-premises or in the cloud) or a user’s workstation, and only released when the user is present and authenticates at the output device. Once the user authenticates, their print jobs can either be printed or deleted. This is often referred to as “pull printing” or “follow me printing,” as the user can authenticate and release print jobs from any print output device on the campus network. Print jobs will not be held indefinitely and will be automatically purged from the server on a regular basis.

Single-Function Printer (SFP) - A print device that can only perform one task, most often just printing, as opposed to just scanning or just faxing.

Total Cost per Copy (TCC) - The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), which includes the average monthly fixed cost of the hardware (either the lease, rental or depreciation charge), combined with the average monthly cost of supplies and maintenance, and divided by the monthly usage of the device (total number of printed pages, which includes walk-up copies, scans, and prints). Sometimes, paper is included in the TCO calculation.

Policy Procedures

1. Print Practices
   
   
   1. Budgets for office printing within SUNY Brockport have been centralized, per SUNY policy. Office printing budget items include the variable cost components to print, such as service or maintenance agreements, and all supplies, including toner, ink and paper.
   2. University or SUNY system-wide contracts are to be used for all supplies, service and maintenance for the printing devices, to ensure automatic replenishment and timely service.
   3. Buying supplies, including SFPs and MFDs, outside of the established campus or system-wide contract (e.g., via separate purchase order or procurement card [P-card] using any SUNY funds, e.g., cash reserves, rollovers, etc.) is prohibited.
   4. Grant proposals shall not include the purchase of printing supplies, including SFPs or MFDs, unless an exception has been approved in advance.
   5. Authorized users should be mindful of the cost of print and shall keep the usage of print and paper to an absolute minimum by adhering to the following:
      1. Limit the publication, printing, and storage of hardcopy documents and presume that information should be provided and retained in electronic format, when permitted by law, and consistent with applicable document and records retention policies and requirements.
      2. Print less than 100 pages; if the total number of pages (number of originals x pages per original) is 100 or more, consider sending the print job to the campus print shop via SUNY Brockport’s Printing Services email or webpage. Alternatives are: 
         1. providing the document as a PDF via email, or sending to a shared location (e.g., Microsoft Teams, etc.), and
         2. if hard copies are required, the use of a high-speed MFD will be the most economical and efficient way to print.
      3. Printing Best Practices
   6. While the specific content of a document is not captured, print, fax, copy and scan activity, as well as all SFPs and MFDs, are monitored by SUNY-approved Beacon software for the following purposes:
      1. Security
      2. Compliance
      3. Supplies and maintenance
      4. Appropriate usage
      5. Benchmarking and analytics to help every campus continuously improve their printing habits, carbon footprint and the cost/performance of each department.
      
      The University may review outliers (e.g., output volume, use of color, total cost of printing pages, etc.) to better understand and improve our print practices.
      
      
2. Exceptions
   
   

   Exceptions to this policy will be rare and only in situations that involve critical business needs (e.g., check writing printer), legal requirements (e.g., FOIL requests), and ADA compliance (e.g., mobility or visual impairments).

   Desktop printer exception requests will be granted on a case-by-case basis, which requires completion and approval of the Desktop Printer Exception Request Form, and subsequent visible display of an authentication sticker (issued by the Print Management Team) on the desktop printer device. 

   1. Please note that confidentiality or general convenience are not valid reasons for the need of a local desktop printer, due to the availability of secured print at any MFD device.

Links to Related Procedures and Information

Desktop Printer Exception Request Form
Printing Best Practices
SUNY Brockport’s Printing Services (email)
SUNY Brockport’s Printing Services (webpage)
System-wide Print Resource Use - Policy
System-wide Print Resource Use - Procedure

Contact Information

BITS (585) 395-5151

History (in descending order)

Approval

This policy was approved by President’s Cabinet on 2021-11-18