We do not currently have any policy for electronic documents beyond an
unwritten rule to print and file any emails that may be company records.
The IT dept backs up the email server every night, but that only keeps
whatever is in all user's inboxes at the time of backup (they have the
system set up to automatically empty the deleted items folder upon
shutting down Outlook). Because of a few recent requests for older
emails that were not able to be located from the backups or in the
files, the CFO has now asked the IT department to find some kind of a
program that will capture and backup all emails before they go to user's
inboxes. From what I can ascertain, this is just in case someone deletes
an email that should have been kept. Personally I think this is a very
bad idea. The IT department spends few resources on attempting to filter
spam and I know that fully half of my emails are spam -- low cost
mortgages, on-line pharmacies, lotto contests, Nigerian scams and "male
enhancement" pills (some with graphic before and after photos) seem to
be the most popular. I'm sure many others in the company have similar
spam ratios. I don't think the company really wants to spend resources
on saving all that junk, nor do they want some of the graphic emails to
be saved on our company servers at all. 
 
I think a far better plan would be to train employees as to what emails
constitute records and have them save those emails to a designated
place, while we work toward implementing a full EDMS program. They are
not against this per se, but I think they realize that such a plan will
take time and they want to capture everything now. Seeing as IT is going
forward with looking for this capture software anyway, is there anything
I could or should do in regards to retention? Or should I just treat
this as a more thorough backup and not worry about it.
 
Nolene Sherman
Records Manager - CJ Segerstrom & Sons
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