Effective September 22, 2022, Harvard will replace the term “Person of Interest” (POI)—used to describe roles that grant individuals temporary access to the University’s digital and physical resources for administrative or scholarly purposes—with a new term, “Harvard Sponsored Role.” 

What is changing?

All references to “Person of Interest” (POI) have been updated to “Harvard Sponsored Role”. Please note that this term refers to individuals with temporary access to Harvard systems and resources for administrative or scholarly purposes. The term sponsored in this context means the individual with temporary access is supported by an individual at Harvard who approves their access to systems and resources. This terminology is unrelated to sponsored activities occurring at Harvard.

To reflect the new Harvard Sponsored Role term, HUIT will be updating its systems, trainings, and documentation, including:

• The POI Policy, which will be re-issued as the Harvard Sponsored Role Policy
• The POI Portal, which will be renamed as the Harvard Sponsored Role Portal
• The POI Policy Training on the Harvard Training Portal
• Other HUIT-managed systems that use the term POI (including MIDAS and Grouper)
• HUIT knowledge articles

What do I need to do?

If you or your department owns / is responsible for systems, websites, trainings, or other documentation that use the term POI or Person of Interest, please update them to reflect the new Harvard Sponsored Role term. Ideally updates would be complete in early October, though we recognize constraints on capacity due to the start of the academic year. For more information and help, please contact your local implementation manager.