For the general public, a laptop is often seen as a generic office tool—a digital typewriter for emails, spreadsheets, and browsing. If that laptop breaks or is replaced, it is a minor inconvenience.
But for the academic and technical community at a university like Twente—ranging from Assistant to Full Professors, PhD researchers, and our specialised lab technicians—the laptop is something entirely different. It is an extension of our mind. It is a portable laboratory, a simulation deck, and a repository of years of intellectual history. It travels with us to conferences, runs complex simulations over the weekend at home, and contains the specific, intricate software environments required to write the code that drives our research.
The policy disconnect
This reality is now under threat. The new Central Procedure for Workplace Equipment, effective as of 1 January 2026, aims to enforce a ‘uniform lifecycle approach’ for all university hardware. While the policy promises ‘greater efficiency’ by mandating that all devices—even those bought with project funds—be centrally handled, the practical implementation risks enforcing strict ‘managed device’ protocols that cripple research workflows. This includes mandatory formatting, blocking the use of Migration Assistant (which saves days of setup time), and enabling remote management.
These measures are undoubtedly well‑intentioned—aimed at cybersecurity and standardisation—but they represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the work performed by scientific staff and technical support personnel. We fully support baseline security measures like full‑disk encryption, strong authentication, and timely updates; our concern is about the bureaucratic seizure of the research instrument, not the avoidance of security.
Here is why this approach, if implemented without nuance, risks putting the university’s mission in jeopardy.
We are not ‘standard’ users
Standardisation is an excellent strategy for administrative workflows. It ensures that finance, HR, and secretarial support have reliable, uniform tools. However, applying this same logic to computer scientists, engineers, and technical experts is like telling a brain surgeon to use the standard plastic knife provided for hospital meals, simply because it is safer to handle and inventory than a scalpel.
Our labs are run by a diverse team of experts. A technician maintaining a complex robotic setup, an Assistant Professor debugging code at 2 am, and a Full Professor writing a multi‑partner EU proposal all share one thing: we rely on a customised digital ecosystem. We often work with experimental software, multiple operating systems, and legacy data that cannot survive a standard ‘wipe and re‑image’ protocol. To lock down these tools would be to dismantle them.
The ‘Shadow IT’ Risk
There is a paradox in IT security: if you make the official tools unusable, users will simply bypass them. If researchers cannot trust their university‑managed laptop to retain their data or configurations, they will inevitably switch to personal, unmanaged devices to get their work done.
By trying to control everything, the university risks controlling nothing. A secure environment is one where technical experts are trusted partners in security, not treated as potential liabilities to be policed. We teach these technologies; we are aware of the risks.
Suffocating the Engine
Research funding does not appear by magic. It is the result of years of strategic effort, late-night proposal writing, and resilience in the face of constant rejection. We endure this to secure the best possible tools for our scientific vision. When the university seizes control of the machines acquired with these hard-won funds, it feels less like standardisation and more like a betrayal.
If the reward for bringing in millions of euros is a loss of autonomy, the incentive to be a ‘rainmaker’ collapses. Why fight for a grant if the equipment you buy is treated as a liability rather than an asset? By signalling that you do not trust us with our own tools you are suffocating the beating heart of the organisation. The result will not be safer laptops; it will be an exodus of talent and funding to institutions that still understand the value of academic trust.
A Call for Differentiated Policies
We are not asking to be above the law. We are asking for a policy that recognises the diversity of roles within a university. In particular, for Linux and macOS laptops used by scientific staff, self‑management must remain the default: we keep them secure and updated; IT does not take control of the instrument.
The University of Twente is a high‑tech institution. Its strength lies in its specialised knowledge. We need an IT posture that reflects that sophistication.
Trust the Experts: Allow scientific staff and technical support personnel to fully manage their own environments and implement by themselves baseline security measures.
Support, Don’t Dictate: IT should be a service that enables research, not a barrier that restricts it.
A university is not a corporation where employees execute a top‑down vision. It is a community of experts—from the young researcher to the senior technician and the tenured professor—pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Please let us keep our tools sharp so we can continue to do just that.
