The IT department imposed one on us, and I don’t like it. The retention time of any record is dependent on the subject matter classification of that record, not the format. Emails are no different. Many emails contain a subject matter that means they do not need to be retained for legal, regulatory or business purposes, but this kind of system keeps them anyway. Conversely, records that must be retained for legal, regulatory or business purposes (i.e. anything listed in your retention schedule) are at risk of being destroyed earlier than they should be unless you put a system in place to ensure owners can identify them for archiving.

 

The ideal is to have a much shorter automatic destruction period (maybe six months) – but backed up by a robust and reliable process to ensure users classify and identify (by moving to appropriate folders) those business critical emails that must be retained. You cannot simply impose an arbitrary time period (however long it is) without this.

 

You would also have to ensure that the IT department recycle any backup tapes/disks appropriately. If backups are kept for longer than the record retention times, and this becomes known to the opposition, then they are fair game in any legal discovery exercise – thus rendering your retention schedules pointless for electronic records. Even if there is no “dirty linen” for the opposition to find, just the sheer cost in time and expense of having to provide these should be avoided.

 

So to your question – shortening it is good (and two years is a pretty good compromise) but you need that process to ensure that critical records are retained.

 

Neil.

 

 

Hello all,

 

Here at TfL we are reviewing the retention policy that we apply to our corporate email archive.  Currently we apply a retention period of 7 years, but are looking to decrease this, possibly down to 2 years. 

 

I wondered if those of you on the list that also have a single retention policy applied to a corporate email archive might be able to share with me what that period is?  This opportunity for benchmarking will be incredibly useful for us as we go through our decision making process.

 

With thanks and best wishes,

Rebecca

 

 

Rebecca Florence | Information and Records Management Adviser

Information Governance | General Counsel | Transport for London

Windsor House, 42-50 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0TL

T: External 020 30547950 Internal 87950 | E: [log in to unmask]

 

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