Email Retention Policy

[c1utch]

We're a local government agency that is subject to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests.

Email retention normally circles around time, deleting emails after X amount of days/months/years. But some emails need to be retained based on content.

We're currently looking at upgrading our Email Archiver and there is an ability within this appliance to retain emails based on content. However, determining the content (or category) of an email will have to be determined by the end user through Outlook. As IT staff, we all know we can't get most end users to read a 3 sentence email with instructions let alone expect them to properly categorize their email for retention purposes.

So my question is, does anyone have any guidlines on Email Retention, or more specifically email deletion based on time line/category/etc?


Chris

 

[LeeMason]

As you never really know which e-mails you might be needing in the future the only effective way is to retain all e-mails for the maximum required period. To do this you could either use an e-mail archiving system like EAS or some sort of backup system which allows you to retain individual e-mails for the maximum required period and search and restore the individual e-mails as and when necessary.



Lee Mason
Optimal Projects Ltd

http://www.opl.co.uk

http://www.backupsanywhere.com

 

[Grenage]

We currently use MailArchiva to archive all e-mails. Lee is spot on, you never know which e-mails you are going to need. Sod's law that whatever you don't archive contain the most 'important' data.

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area" - Major Mike Shearer