Dear all,
Abbreviated version of a reply I sent to Samantha...
Email archiving (without deletion rules) was implemented just as I started at TfL to save several millions of pounds in storage costs, to de-duplicate information and to enhance e-discovery through centralised search. Now we are about to bring in a deletion policy for archived emails (7 years, reducing over time to 2, beginning on 1 April 2011) to further reduce costs and improve compliance.
Further to this, I've been publishing and preaching best practice guidance in email management similar to what Samantha describes ever since I arrived at TfL, but have come to the conclusion that the only way to enforce said best practice is the stick of deleting emails in the archive after a set period, meaning that if staff don't want to lose business critical information they will have to save it into its appropriate business context.
I'd be interested to hear how others who have brought in flat deletion rates for archived emails have managed the inevitable complaints and desperate cries for exemption from users who, understandably, are annoyed that they will have to spend time (in some cases copious quantities of time; P.A.s especially will suffer) copying business critical emails from the archive into the appropriate storage area and are worried that they will not be able to identify such information in time to meet the deletion deadline. I say "understandably" because many (most?) people have had little or no training on best practice in managing their mailboxes appropriately and there has never been a recognition that to do this work does take time. I don't mean in TfL specifically; it has been a major problem wherever I have worked. It is also clearly a serious issue for Legal departments, who rely heavily on individuals' mailboxes as source material for e-disclosure and are concerned that important information will be lost if individuals don't manage to store it outside the archive in time.
Clare
Clare Cowling
Senior Information Governance Adviser
Corporate Governance Directorate
Transport for London
Windsor House, 42-50 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0TL
T: 020 7126 4236
F: 020 7126 3185
E: [log in to unmask]
Mobile: 07545200429
-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Records Management mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eldin Rammell, Rammell Consulting
Sent: 16 February 2011 12:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Email Policy - to archive or not to archive
Hi Samantha,
I am pleased that your preference is NOT to adopt an "archive-all" approach. Organisations rarely employ such a policy for records in other formats so why go down this route for emails. Imagine the scenario.... "Let's archive everything that comes through the post in yellow envelopes".
In terms of what other organisations do, I have worked with several that follow the approach you suggest. They have a policy of automatically deleting emails that are located in a user's Inbox or other mail folders longer than a defined period of time. The most common time period I see is 90 days. A user therefore has 90 days within which to either delete the email himself/herself or to file the email in the relevant document management system. A server-end process runs every night deleting emails that are older than 90 days.
Those organisations that follow this approach usually also adopt related policies to prevent the creation of Outlook PST files, local storage etc. This prevents users from avoiding the email retention rules simply by storing them in unofficial locations.
Regards,
Eldin.
Eldin Rammell
Managing Director, RAMMELL Consulting Ltd
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