Archiving EMail Drivers and Barriers

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Archiving E-MailDrivers and Barriers

• Carys Thomas
• Garry Booth

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E-mail Archiving

• Where we were in 2003
• JISC Funded Project (2003)
• Follow-up surveys where are we now?
• Barriers
• Current Loughborough implementation project

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Background -- 2003

• Much University business conducted by email
• Individuals decided which emails to dispose of
  and which to keep
• The University backed up email for disaster
  recovery but when staff left, it was deleted
• Data Protection Freedom of Information
  legislation affecting the management of email

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JISC Project Bid - 2003

• Study of the Records Lifecycle - Specialist
  Electronic Studies examining Institutional Email
• Examine current working practices
• Develop policies for the retention and disposal
  of email
• Evaluate technical options for archiving email
• Inform University and UK HE sector of the
  findings

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Main Tasks

• Carry out interviews with staff
• Conduct a survey of other institutions
• Draft an email retention and disposal policy
• Research technological solutions

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Findings Staff Interviews

• Email is an essential tool of communication
• Decisions and responsibilities agreed by email
• Job responsibilities affect email management
• Staff often kept paper copies of important emails
• Staff had different levels of skills and
  expertise
• Wide variety of practice
• Staff wanted control of any archive

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Findings External Review

• 21 institutions responded
• Only general policies were evident
• Respondents were backing up their email rather
  than archiving it
• No institution was identified which had a well
  defined email archiving policy

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Retention and Disposal Policy

• Template produced by the project for use by
  institutions
• E-mails are owned by the institution
• Individual staff responsibility to decide what
  emails to archive capture these as records and
  retain in accordance with retention schedule
• Institution responsibility to provide the
  technology to do it plus guidance and training

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Project Deliverables

• http//www.lboro.ac.uk/computing/irm/index.html
• Resources include
• Template policy (in your pack)
• Final project report (in your pack)
• Technical report (email c.m.thomas_at_lboro.ac.uk
  for a copy but note its now 3 years old)
• Thanks to Michael Norris, Project Officer

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Survey, October 2004

• 26 Universities and Colleges
• 22 not archiving email
• 4 in progress
• Two taking a copy of all email
• Other two focus was management of mailbox sizes

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Survey, March 2006

• 28 Universities and Colleges
• 1 has implemented
• 7 in progress
• 20 not archiving email
• Movement towards installing such systems
• Focus is technical management of storage, not
  records management

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Barriers What is archiving?

• To records managers and archivists it means
  selection of emails to be preserved in accordance
  with retention schedule
• To IT industry - removal of old material off
  the fast storage media
• In US in particular - keep a copy of all email
  for legal compliance - tamper proof.
• Users - take email off the central servers

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Barriers Whose e-mail is it?

• Does it belong to the institution or the
  individual?
• There are drivers for institutional ownership of
  e-mail records
• But users see e-mail as their own personal
  property
• There are issues of academic freedom and
  intellectual property rights
• When staff leave what happens to their email?

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Barriers Different styles

• Some people like to organise things
• Others dont

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Barriers why bother?

• The business case is not easily made
• No high profile legal cases in our sector (yet)
• Doesnt appear to move anything forward
• No staff productivity gains (on the contrary)
• Staff indifference (at best)
• or resistance
• Zzzzzzzz

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Barriers - Management Buy-In

• Needs senior management engagement for
• Formal adoption of policies
• Championing
• Monitoring, enforcement
• Funding
• But its not high on their list of priorities
• Is it clear whose responsibility it is?

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Barriers a bigger picture

• Electronic document management systems encompass
  e-mail as well as other electronic documents and
  scanned images of paper documents
• Undoubtedly better (more organised, more
  elegant)
• But more expense, complexity etc the case is
  even harder to make
• Delays considerations for e-mail

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Barriers - Technology

• Cost
• Complexity
• Integrating with institutions e-mail platform
  limits choice of solutions
• Catering for diverse user base further limits
  choice
• Users expect freedom not standardisation

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Barriers Technology 1
Disks Near line storage

• Complexity

Archiving appliance
User
Postbox Inline storage
Portable media offline storage
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Barriers Technology 2

• Cost
• Software licences
• Archiving appliance cost
• Near line disk storage Loughborough currently
  accepts 50000 emails a week. If all of these are
  stored with attachments 2TB of disk space needed
  per year (excluding mail packet growth)
• Offline disk storage (tape/cd/WORM)

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Barriers Technology 3

• Integration with existing email system
• Currently most archiving solutions are heavily
  tied into specific e-mail systems and mass
  storage solutions.
• Most will support Microsoft Exchange and Lotus
  Notes
• A few are agnostic and work with RFC standards
• If you already have a mass storage device, you
  may be forced to use one archive system and one
  email system

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Barriers Technology 4

• Diverse user base
• Most universities have a range of computers using
  different operating systems. The most common are
  Windows XX, Apple MAC, Linux
• MAC and Linux users may find their options
  extremely limited as to how they can interact
  with the archiving system

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Barriers Technology 5

• Freedom
• Users dont necessarily want to be tied to one
  type of Mail client. A number of these systems
  assume Microsoft Outlook is the mail client being
  used and have written their software specifically
  to integrate with this. Non-Outlook users may
  have to use the archive appliance native
  interface to archive rather than their preferred
  e-mail client

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Barriers Rollout issues

• Ease of use - critical
• Setting up filing structures and retention
  schedule
• Setting up access policies and procedures
• End user training

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Loughborough Implementation

• Policy regarded as guideline for good practice
  not formally adopted
• Archive all or automated archive for the
  majority
• Method for selective proper records management
  archiving for pilot departments initially
  (Registry, Estates)
• Running in parallel with a change of e-mail
  server platform and storage

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User consultation

• Conducted user consultation to raise awareness
  as well as seek views we asked
• E-mail is widely used throughout the University
  as a convenient way to exchange information to
  internal and external parties. Currently, saving
  e-mail messages in a safe retrievable format
  usually involves printing off and filing
  hardcopies of the relevant documents. However,
  this can be a time consuming and arbitrary
  process, and may not always capture all relevant
  information since it is dependent on the sender
  or recipient remembering to print and correctly
  file the e-mail message without deleting it. An
  e-mail archiving system would provide mechanisms
  to allow users to store e-mail messages safely
  for a period of time, or until the record is no
  longer useful. Furthermore, the introduction of
  an e-mail archiving system is of critical
  importance to the University as increasing
  regulatory compliance requires records to be kept
  about various areas of University business. The
  University has a duty to provide an audit trail
  of these records when required.
• A central e-mail archiving system would enable
  the University to respond to any such requests
  and enable the University to comply to requests
  for information made under the Freedom of
  Information Act.
• Any access to the email archive will also need
  to comply with the Regulation of Investigatory
  Powers Act 2000, the Data Protection Act 1998 and
  Human Rights Act 1998, which offer individuals
  protection against unwarranted access to any such
  archive.
• Please identify any e-mail archiving features
  you consider necessary or desirable

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Consultation - summary

• Users wanted control over their own e-mail and
  how it is archived
• They want a system that is easy to use
• Range of understanding of the term archiving
• Considerable education will be needed on records
  management purposes, as distinct from personal
  archiving

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Consultation - example comments

• Personal folders to store archived E-mails in
• The facility to file emails electronically on
  student files.
• Needing as little additional effort as possible.
  I'd like it to be the equivalent of moving a
  message to a folder, and just as easy to
  retrieve.
• University File Structure so that user chooses to
  place emails (eg approving projects) into
  University space
• It's essential that I find a way of getting
  e-mails off the server and storing them easily...
• I already save all my mail on my machine
• I do not consider that it is right or proper for
  the university to centrally archive e-mail, apart
  from current e-mail in users inboxes for backup
  purposes

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Questions Comments