Steven and Shawn get schooled

Today's post begins with excerpts from an email we received from Patricia Kay Galloway, Associate Professor, Archival Enterprise and Digital Asset Management, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin. She wrote:

"We would like to think of mindful recordkeepers gracefully dealing with their records ... [A]utomation is promising, but if I were the public and you proposed to me that you would do automatic classification using a proprietary method of some kind that even you don't know, I would be very disturbed (and I say to my IR colleagues, it's all very well for you to use these fancy algorithms, but you can always go back to the corpus of records to test whether you are right -- once it's gone, we can't) ... keep it all is my favorite, especially for government records -- we're all supposed to be transparent, right? .... If you don't get pushback from elected officials and can somehow manage to deal with privacy and confidentiality statutes by either time-based restriction or redaction, then why not? It's almost to the point that you can get a terabyte of storage for $100. But the snag is not the email texts, it's the attachments in zillions of formats, and what to do with them?"

Many thanks for Professor Galloway for her feedback! We are still soliciting comments and advice from the records management community and other stakeholders, and continuing our conversations ...

Specifics on our retention schedule

It's been suggested to Steven Broberg and me that we should describe the retention schedules that we apply to email more thoroughly. Section 441.158 of the Texas Government Code says that the Texas State Library and Archives Commission shall adopt record retention schedules for counties in Texas. These schedules apply to all of our electronic records, including email.

Consider, for example, this description for a certain records series:

Correspondence and Internal Memoranda (includes incoming and copies of outgoing correspondence and internal correspondence and memoranda).

Retention Note: The minimum retention period for correspondence or internal memoranda in categories (a) and (b) directly linked to another record series or group listed in this or other commission schedules is that assigned to the other group or series. For example, a letter from an external auditor regarding an audit of a local government's financial records should be retained for the retention period given under item number 1025-01(e); a letter concerning a workers compensation claim should be retained for the period given under item number 1050-32, etc. The retention periods that follow are for correspondence and internal memoranda that do not readily fall within other record groups.

a) Policy and program development - Correspondence and internal memoranda pertaining to the formulation, planning, implementation, modification, or redefinition of the policies, programs, services, or projects of a local government. RETENTION: 5 years.

Retention Note: Review before disposal; some correspondence of this type may merit permanent retention for historical reasons.

b) Administrative - Correspondence and internal memoranda pertaining to or arising from the routine administration or operation of the policies, programs, services, and projects of a local government. RETENTION: 2 years.

c) Routine - Correspondence and internal memoranda such as letters of transmittal, requests for publications, internal meeting notices, and similar routine matters. RETENTION: AV. (Exempt from destruction request requirement)

So, the retention on an email categorized in this series might be zero (AV, or Administrative Value), 2 years, 5 years, or permanent, depending on the content. This is one of more than 1,500 series in the twelve schedules that apply to Travis County government records. The application of these schedules to email records is discussed in today's video:

What about the big bucket approach?

David Gaynon, CRM has been active in ARMA since 1981. He writes:

Hi Shawn,

I must stress that the following represents my own personal views and not that of my employer.

What if you use a big bucket approach for the management of email. For non managerial employees you provide the option of: (a) immediate purge for information of limited importance; and a defined retention period --say 6 months or 2 years for working papers. For managerial employees they would be provided with the same categories plus a third of 5 or 10 years for business planning. It may be that management will tell you that they will need additional categories such as external communication. This of course drives how you are using email in support of your governance model. This I think will wash out through deployment.

It is useful to consider that correspondence about a business function should not have the same retention as the function itself. For example I believe that all correspondence about the general ledger does not need to be kept as long as the general ledger itself. One may consider that such correspondence is really backup -- a form of drafts which would normally be disposed of once the final version is issued. This of course is difficult to manage at the user level. That is why I have come to believe that the simplified version of email retention that I lay out above is the way to go.

I think sometimes that records managers make a mistake when they seek the perfect solution that eliminates all risk of error. This is most likely not possible and attempting this could prove most expensive. The goal of risk management is not to eliminate risk but to manage it consistent with an organization's tolerance for risk.

I hope this helps. Good luck in your efforts.

David B. Gaynon, CRM
Records Retention Manager/General Affairs
Yamaha Motor Corporation, USA

One vendor's view

As responses to our report are received, they are incorporated into this blog. This post is based on feedback received from Davin Cooke of GWAVA, who offered the following:



"I think you nailed the main reason to hold all email approach - Fancy algorithms and artificial intelligence exist but the criteria for retention is always a moving target, making management of the rules or maintaining a dictionary of terms by category difficult. By keeping all email, and ensuring that there is no rogue archiving on desktops or elsewhere, you can set a global policy and never be caught 3.5 years from now when you discover you should have kept something thanks to a misinterpretation of a message.


"Organizations reap tangible benefits by having retaining all email well beyond compliance. Three additional reasons are:


"1. Intellectual Property Reasons - For both Public and Private sectors, email forms a large percentage of the intellectual property, and its contents reflect the culture of their organizations and once indexed is an excellent resource for decisions. [It] is often paramount in settling internal HR and legal issues.


"2. Email Portability - As well keeping the email in a portable format outside of the messaging system will be very important should you decide to switch platforms or acquire newer technology to leverage its contents.


"3. Less Cost and Waste - Another valuable benefit is the ability to store email in cheaper storage and with less space. Systems like Exchange and GroupWise do not de duplicate as effectively as an archiving solution as messages are stored per PostOffice or MTA Message store. In a multi-post office environment you'd get substantial savings over just keeping it all in the email system."


Our thanks to Mr. Cooke for providing his review of our report.

Records Managers, your assistance is sought

Help Travis County Records Management perfect a recommendation regarding retention of electronic mail records.

Your comments will be incorporated into future blog posts here.

Thanks for your participation!