Email

1
E-mail Records Management Issues

• Sara Davidson, Angela Ryan, Donna Waye
• 2 June 2003
• Records Management
• LIBR 516
• Instructor S. Bradley

2
What is e-mail?

• Refers to personal communications and electronic
  messaging services
• May mean short text messages or complete
  documents, composed of text, data, images, and
  other forms of information

3
What is a record?

• records information, regardless of medium or
  characteristics, made or received by an
  organization that is useful in the operation of
  the organization (Ricks et al. 1997, 531)
• not necessarily physical entities that are
  located in a single place or that are always
  stable over time (Menkus 1996).

4
What is an electronic record?

• Fulfills that definition of record
• AND contains machine-readable information
  consisting of text, data, or image files (Ricks
  et al. 1997, 526).

5
Why does e-mail have to be managed?3 reasons
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1) Many e-mails are considered records.

• E-mail just like traditional paper documents can
  be records showing evidence of business
  transactions.

7
2) The volume of e-mail calls for some type of
management.

• World-wide 30 billion e-mails are sent each day
  (McKenna, 2003).
• U.S. businesses created over 1.4 trillion e-mails
  in 2001 (Electronic Evidence . . . , 2003).

8
3) Keeping e-mail records is a legal requirement.

• Not managing these records properly can lead to
  major problems.

9
Examples to show why managing e-mail is
important

• J.P. Morgan Chase and Co., and Enron
• Wall Street firms
• Boeing
• Winter 2002 Olympic Bid

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How have organizations been managing e-mail?
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Quite simply They dont.

• Staff may be left on their own to determine if
  and when e-mails will be retained.
• No policy is available.

12
Printing e-mails

• An effort to incorporate electronic records into
  the traditional filing system
• Controversial topic

13
A policy is in place, but it is not followed.

• Staff may not be trained.
• There may not be support from management or
  sufficient funds.
• The task may seem overwhelming.

e.g. U.S. Energy Department and Microsoft
14
Saving or destroying all e-mail.

• Often arises from no clear definition of what
  constitutes a record
• Either strategy can be costly.

15
What are some of the major concerns surrounding
e-mail records management?
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Obsolescence of Hardware and Software

• Concern about losing email information because
  the technology to create and/or view e-mail and
  its attachments may become obsolete
• Migrating e-mail to current technologies can be
  costly

17
Duplication

• Estimates that there at three copies of any one
  e-mail on a corporate system at a time (EDU COM).
• How many are in the system, printed or available
  externally???
• Can be a liability e.g. Natural Resources Canada
  warning

18
Security Confidentiality

• Like paper records, electronic records are
  susceptible to physical threats like fire or
  theft, as well as additional threats like viruses
  or hackers
• concern about the integrity
  of records

19
Metadata

• Data about an e-mail e.g. sender and recipient
  information, date sent, cc, and bcc info.
• Public Citizen v. John Carlin
• Re General Records Schedule 20

20
Links Attachments

• It is easy to attach extra information to e-mails
  like hyperlinks, voice, video and document files.
• Can they be accessed both now and at a future
  date?
• Will the context be retained?

21
Provenance Ownership

• information on successive transfers of ownership
  and custody of a particular record
• in archival theory, the principle that the
  archival records of a given records creator must
  not be intermingled with those of other records
  creators
• From B.C. Archives lthttp//www.bcarchives.gov.bc.c
  a/arcs/index.htmgt

22
What are some solutions for better e-mail records
management?
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Clearly defined policy and procedures

• Require a clear policy on managing e-mail.
• Supported by administration
• Address issues and more e.g. appropriate/inappropr
  iate e-mail messages, responsibility for records
  etc.

24
Staff Training

• Instruct staff on how to determine if an e-mail
  is a record.
• Correspondence protocol e.g. writing style and
  format
• Note its importance and make it easy.

25
Incorporate Software Solutions

• Variety of capabilities
• E.g. asking a user if the e-mail is a record
  before the message is sent

• Message goes to a server, where
• it is categorized and assigned a
• a retention period
  
• Indexing capabilities for easy
• retrieval

26
Conclusion
To effectively manage their e-mail records,
organizations have many issues to consider. Yet,
this task is becoming more important and cannot
be ignored.
27
Laws and Policies in Canada Related to
Information Management

• Taken from Appendix A of Natural Resources Canada

28
Policy on the Management of Government
Information

• requires government institutions to manage their
  records throughout their life-cycle and account
  for them

29
National Archives of Canada Act

• government and ministerial records cannot be
  destroyed without the consent of the National
  Archivist.
• Institutions are also required to transfer
  information holdings determined to be of
  historical or archival importance to the National
  Archives in accordance with schedules or
  agreements

30
Access to Information Act

• provides Canadians with a right of access to
  federal government records except for some
  limited circumstances

31
Privacy Act

• gives anyone the right to examine or obtain a
  copy of the personal information that federal
  institutions have about him/her, and the right to
  ask for a correction of inaccurate information.

32
Government Security Policy

• identifies requirements to ensure that all
  classified or designated information of the
  federal government is safeguarded in an
  appropriate manner

33
Works Cited

• Electronic Evidence, Electronic Records
  Management, and Computer Forensics, Canisius
  College, n.d., lthttp//telecom.canisius.edu/470/
  week10article.htmgt 23 May 2003.
• McKenna, Ed. Saving the Message. Federal
  Computer Week. March 17, 2003. lthttp//www.fcw.com
  /print.aspgt 23 May 2003.
• Menkus, Belden. Defining Electronic Records
  Management. ARMA Records Management Quarterly.
  30 (January 1996) 38.
• Ricks, Betty R. and others, Information and Image
  Management A Records Systems Approach, Canadian
  3rd ed. Toronto International Thomson
  Publishing, 1997.
• CLIP ART
• All clip art is from Microsoft Office Online
  lthttp//office.microsoft.com/clipart/download.aspx
  gt