In universities, “The thing about records is they belong to the organisation, not the individual...” is slightly complicated.  As an academic I have received emails relating to my personal research, which I do as part of my University job, but which contain information which I would expect to take with me if I moved to another institution.  I have emails relating to the journal I edit, which I do as part of my University job, but which relate to the journal and not to the University.  (And similarly for conferences I organise, and academic organisations and professional bodies I belong to, etc.)  Some of these emails, such as those relating to a book project, need to be held for some years.

Tony

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I don't disagree that Outlook is seen as a place to store records, but it's incredibly poor at doing it. It's loosely the equivalent of storing your organisations files in your living room - they may be well organised and accessible to you, but it's of little use to anyone else in the organisation who needs access to them. (sorry for yet another analogy!).

“The thing about records is they belong to the organisation, not the individual...”

Donald

-----Original Message-----
From: This list is for those interested in Data Protection issues <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Danny Budzak
Sent: 16 January 2020 12:46
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [data-protection] Email Accounts

Ha! That's an interesting analogy, but not one I agree with. IMHO Outlook *is* seen by vast numbers of people as a place where they 'store records' because it is usually much easier and quicker to leave them there than to decide which ones go where in the corporate filing structure (should there be one). The OP said there are 800 million emails in the system so it does seem they are not being filed.

I have seen lots of policies which have ' users - must - file -email' - and I am aware of organisations where this works in practice. But also of lots of anecdotal feedback where there is quite a mis-match between the policy and what actually happens in practice.

One further issues is that we have effectively 2 stores of email. In the Outlook account and in the archive. Even when people delete them from their active account, they are still in the archive. Due to issues such as potential litigation etc no emails have ever been deleted from that archive, nor would it be an easy thing to do.

I am still personally uneasy about a blanket 'delete after 2 years' because that doesn't really match much of our corporate retention schedule. Unless people move to the appropriate place...and I'm not convinced that happens in a robust way in many instances.

But I may be wrong! In which case, enlightenment is always welcome...

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