Ruth wrote:
"It is my understanding that even if you are destroying e-mail records
according to a legally validated retention schedule, those e-mails can
still be retrieved in court cases etc since they never really go away,
just sitting out there somewhere is cyberland waiting to be caught."

Jesse replied:
"There is no practical way to delete emails and ensure they are "really
destroyed"... .  ...but if you sent it to me, I have a copy I can do
with whatever I want."

We can only manage what is under our control.  This has been true for
years.  In the past (pre-email), we had no control over the retention or
destruction of copies of letters or memos or reports sent outside the
organization.  The same is true of emails.  The main difference being
the volume and assortment of repositories where the email reside.  The
rules we set for email is for our own organization.  It is important to
find all the repositories within our organization (somewhat like looking
for all the hidey holes for paper records over the years) and making
sure the retention rules get applied. 

What I have found is that IT folks would prefer to establish rules that
are compatible with the computers' (hardware and software) doing all the
work - selecting the emails to destroy based on the rules, finding all
instances of those emails, and then deleting all those emails in all
instances.  Nice concept, but not very practical.  So it is easier to
just keep it all rather than have to design something new or (heaven
forbid!) do some manual tasks to make it happen.

Ginny Jones
(Virginia A. Jones, CRM, FAI)
Records Manager
Information Technology Division
Newport News Dept. of Public Utilities
Newport News, VA
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