Hi everyone.  I am a long time lurker, first time poster.  I'll do a quick intro...

INTRO:  I'm a Texas transplant who has been in Michigan for 14 years.   I went back to school for my MLIS (previously I'd been in social work) and received that in 2006.  I've been in the RM field since then, but only in the last year or so have I gotten involved heavily in what my boss would call "real records management".  I am working for a public non-profit organization that serves municipalities and their employees across the state with a goal of helping to provide affordable, sustainable retirement solutions.  I find the Listserv to be a fabulous resource, and I am planning on working for my CRM fairly soon.

SITUATION:  Our email archiving tool (Symantic's Enterprise Vault) was brought in by a previous IT manager around a year and a half ago to ease our overburdened Outlook server and increase its performance.  However, without any involvement from Records Management, and with what turns out to be no understanding at the time by the CEO and Officers of what it really meant, the ediscovery journaling portion was turned on, set to "forever" and now keeps every email created or received.   I've gone through the listserv archives, been to MER and ARMA Conferences, and have spoken to my Mid-Michigan ARMA Chapter, and have come away from these with the understanding that it is a greater risk to an organization to keep everything created or received than to allow users to delete email they don't need or want before it gets vaulted.
I am nearing the final stages of rewriting and getting approval on a new RIM Strategy, Policy, Retention Schedule, and potentially a Legal Hold and Disposition Standard (with no real support or input from Legal, though I've briefly tried to get the discussion started...no animosity, but the departments have always lived as very separate beings).  In general, employees are expected to place business email in the location it belongs based on content.  We're talking about applying auto delete to email sitting around that has not been accessed in 3 years.
Let me say that we are in a period of transition with the new CEO, so there are some major directional decisions that are still in the process of being made.  (So in the discussions that I've had so far with IT and Legal, not one of us has considered that our decision has more weight than the others.) Representatives from Legal, IT, and myself have met several times to talk about what EV settings are best for our organization.  Initially, the best compromise we could get was to keep the journaling for 6 years.  At our latest meeting, Legal conceded to keeping three years of everything created or received.  IT often uses the tool to retrieve email that employees decide they need after they have deleted them - not great when it comes to potential litigation and ediscovery, I understand, due to setting a precedence that we do this.  Legal has used the tool to check on previous employees for wrongdoing, but they have not used it for FOIAs.  While I don't personally think we should keep the journaling tool without an option to delete our trash, I'd most certainly rather it be set to three years than "forever".  My boss is unhappy with these compromises and wants to be able to delete, but while we stay unapproved to make the change, the retention still sits at "forever".  We will be meeting with our new CEO soon to discuss the subject, and my boss has asked me to find out what other companies are doing.  I know of a few through my ARMA chapter, but would like to have more examples, if possible.  So...long description, but hopefully short and easy question to answer?

QUESTION:  If anyone has a minute, I would like to know who and what your organization is, if you use the discovery tool in an email archiving solution, and if so, if any deleting is allowed prior to journaling?  My email is [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>.  I've tried to answer a lot of questions in the above "Situation".  Please be gentle in your replies...I'm doing the best I can here and am learning more all the time.

I've met a few of you and look forward to seeing you all in Vegas!

Emily Rowland, MLIS
[log in to unmask]
Lansing, Michigan

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