Larry Medina bites HARD (but I appreciate him all the more).



With apologies to Peter Kurilecz, I'll list my answers below Larry's original text.



Best regards,



Fred

-----------------------------------------------------------

Frederic J. Grevin, Vice-President

Records Management Department

New York City Economic Development Corporation * www.nycedc.com

[log in to unmask] * w. 212.312.3903 * mobile 917.510.3016 * f. 212.618.5722



-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Larry Medina
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 11:54 AM



1)     What do you do in cases where an employee may be on medical, maternity, military or other leave and/or extended vacation?  If they're gone longer than 90 days (or even 45-60 days), does the clock still tick against their in box?

ANSWER:  the clock still ticks against their Inbox (but see #2 below). That said, I expect the Department head, or her/his direct report would take action.



2)     Which people are exempt from this- is it by title, rank, or? There HAVE TO BE some 'officials' that have a requirement that all emails (that meet the definition of a record) MUST be maintained, up to Permanently.

ANSWER:  In principle, correspondence "Documenting significant policy or decision-making or significant events, or dealing with legal precedents or significant legal issues" is Permanent. So, for example, almost anything from the Office of the President (which includes several officers) would be included.



3)     What about backups? Many/most organizations have a practice to store a 'digital haystack' or ALL incoming and outgoing messages for some fixed period, then purge those when they wouldn't be needed any longer for recovery from a failure of some type. Is the time frame LESS than 90 days on this?

ANSWER:  As far as I know, EVERYTHING gets purged after 90 days. But I'm not certain; good question for the CIO. It's a replicated backup system.



4)     AND LASTLY... what about backups from desktops? If these are routinely run (or if desktops are mirrored/replicated) and things were in the in box and hadn't been moved... how long are THESE retained?

ANSWER:  we do NOT back up desktops.



I know these questions MAY sound rhetorical, but they're not... they're legit.  In the case of #1, part of what I'm thinking is the legal side of things... if there's a case and some emails may be subject to discovery, how do you ensure you can search before they're automatically destroyed if these people have no control over what gets auto-deleted?



Also... you guys are a public agency, right?  So aren't these 'records' all subject to Public Records Law?  If you have lackadaisical staff that fails to move things from the in (or out, presumably) box to appropriate folders to extend them to the proper retention periods... aren't you at risk of destroying public records?

ANSWER:  To be answered under conditions of "plausible deniability".



Sorry to make your Friday tough =)

ANSWER:  not tough:  interesting!



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