Tammy,

I've made some attempt at answering your questions below. I'm in a
state-governmental environment so my needs are bit different from yours.

1. Does your company/agency have rules that mandate the length of time
email can reside in the employee's inbox before being either
auto-deleted or sent to an email repository?

-No, but we have toyed with the idea.  Of course, we would need to
deploy a true repository before putting an auto-delete procedure in
place.  The time lengths we contemplated were around 60-90 days in the
inbox before auto-deletion.

2. How long does email reside in the email repository? Do you allow
users the access to delete records once they are in the repository?

-Again, I'll throw in the disclaimer that we don't have a true e-mail
repository.  What we do have is an Electronic Document Management System
that can accept e-mails.  We're highly decentralized, and some of our
departments choose to put some e-mail records in this EDMS. We don't
allow every user deletion rights.  We generally have one "contact" in
each department that has the ability to delete records from the EDMS.
The idea is that this contact is better trained to make the appropriate
decision, or to ask for help is s/he is unsure.  In same cases this
contact is the departmental manager, in other cases it is someone with
intimate knowledge of the business processes involved and record-keeping
requirements.

3. Does anyone have a current Email Policy they are willing to share?

-If I had an applicable policy I would be happy to share ours.  The one
I can share is the Texas State Library's model.  Again, this may not
address your specific time-limit questions, etc:
http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/slrm/recordspubs/email_model.html  Section 8
may be of some help in deciding policy language, though. 

4. Any comments on the following email retention assumptions?

- Most emails have short-term business value: I can't site specific
sources off the top of my head, but the reading I've done and my
experience show this to be true.  The number of meeting notices, lunch
reminders, and personal e-mail alone probably makes this the case.

-Inboxes or personal archives should not be used as a long-term
retention strategy: Of course! I can't think of a single e-mail program
that was programmed with the intent to store e-mail long-term. My
experience is with Outlook 2003 and prior, but none of these programs
were written with classification according to a retention schedule,
disposition, or reporting in mind.  Personal archives are trouble for
those reasons and more.  PST's, for example, also have the added "bonus"
of not being searchable by administrators without third party tools.
They are also known for becoming irrecoverably corrupt at the worst of
times.

-Essential email records should be easily accessible to the business,
stored with other essential records, and managed per their retention
requirements: Yes!  I think this is true of any business record; e-mails
are no different. What's to gain?  Compliance, efficiency, and easier
retrieval (including retrieval by folks other than the person
sending/receiving the record).

Of course, these are just my opinions.  Other folks in my place of
employment may or may not see things this way.  I hope I've been of
help.

Alicia Shelton
Systems Analyst
The University of Texas System

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