The Fermilab Public Zone – What information is allowed to be public
Intended for:
People who own content that needs to be shared with the general public (i.e., anyone in the world).
Scenario/Use case:
You need to determine whether your information is suitable for the public.
Contents:
Background:
No public access may be granted to Fermilab websites that contain any restricted information (information that requires authentication and does not fall into the categories listed below). Web, SharePoint or DocDB sites that currently contain both types of information must be separated into two separate sites, a restricted site intended for the Fermilab community (requires authentication) and one with public information. Each site will reside on their respective restricted/public infrastructure.
Details:
The use of the Fermilab Public Zone is governed by the Fermilab Policies on Information Categorization and Access. The Public Zone consists of:
- Public DocDB (publicdocs.fnal.gov)
- Public SharePoint (publicpoint.fnal.gov)
- Public centrally hosted websites.
- Technical Publications
Public DocDB works at the level of individual documents while the other two deal with entire sites.
- The Public Zone is the only web area offering public access to content.
- All content in the Public Zone is public.
- Content must have a demonstrated mission need for availability to the entire world for inclusion in the Public Zone.
- All content intended for the Public Zone will be reviewed to ensure it meets the requirements below before being posted.
- All sites in the Public Zone must have at least two current Fermilab employees registered as the site owners. These individuals are responsible for enforcing the rules about public content for that site, and this registration must be renewed annually.
Exclusions (see alternatives section below)
- Fermilab technical documents of any substance, or those documents suspected by the Review Team of needing Export Control or Patent review. These will be sent instead to the Technical Publications Office.
- Anything a member of the general public could reasonably think contains sensitive information. Examples include technical instructions or detailed information on a Fermilab project's organizational structure and scheduling.
- Information intended for a limited community including collaboration members, the high-energy physics community, etc. There are other mechanisms to make information available to such limited audiences.
- Personally identifiable information (PII), as defined in Fermilab’s PII Policy.
- Internal memos or other communication between Fermilab and/or DOE staff
- Other sensitive information, such as information that is controlled unclassified (CUI), official use only (OUO), export-controlled, intellectual property, sensitive research, Fermilab financial or any information that might be perceived by the public as proprietary Fermilab or government information.
- Where possible, any signatures should be redacted.
- Have a demonstrated legal, statutory, or business need to be shared with unauthenticated parties.
- Be intended for the general public (appropriate for the world to see). Documents in Public DocDB have additional requirements. They must:
- Already be stored in an existing, access-restricted DocDB instance.
- Have the version of record continue to be maintained in the access-restricted DocDB. The Public DocDB administrators can provide guidance about how to use metadata in your access-restricted DocDB document to refer to the public document.
Please see KB0014084 - DocDB - Options for public and access-restricted content for more information.
For alternative methods of sharing information and instructions for making content available to the public, see KB0014124 – The Fermilab Public Zone - how to share content with the public
See Also:
KB0014124 – The Fermilab Public Zone - how to share content with the public