Taking control of e-mail with uniform retention rules.

• Author: Saffady, William

Compared to schedule-based retention, the uniform rule approach to e-mail retention is easier to understand, requires less decision-making and interpretation by mailbox owners, and can be implemented quickly with a minimum of employee training, according to this excerpt from E-Mail Retention and Archiving: Issues and Guidance for Compliance and Discovery.

Schedule-based retention of email is consistent with half a century of records management practice for other types of written communications, but its practicality is questionable. Given the large quantity of e-mail sent and received by an organization's employees, it is not reasonable to expect that mailbox owners will dedicate a significant portion of each workday to deciding how long individual messages must be kept.

Unless a schedule-based retention decision is made immediately after a message is sent or read, it may not be made at all. Pressured by a heavy workload, a well-intentioned but busy employee is unlikely to set time aside for daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly mailbox cleanup. Mailbox owners need retention rules that are easily implemented with a minimum of labor-intensive decision-making.

The Uniform Retention Approach

As an alternative to schedule-based retention, the uniform rule approach is straightforward.

A single predetermined retention period applies to official copies of most e-mail messages with exceptions for certain messages that need to be retained for a longer or shorter amount of time as determined by legal, operational, or historical considerations.

A message saved on e-mail servers will be deleted automatically, without action by or notification to the mailbox owner, when the uniform predetermined retention period elapses--unless the message has been identified as relevant for pending or ongoing litigation, government investigations, arbitrations, audits, or other legal or quasi-legal proceedings.

Manual deletion at the end of the uniform retention period is required for messages that are saved apart from an e-mail server on local or network drives as well as for messages that are transferred to e-mail archiving systems, records management applications, or other digital repositories. Manual purging is also required for messages that were printed for fifing as official copies.

Attachments can be separated from messages at any time and stored apart from the e-mail system. If this is not done, the uniform retention period will apply to attachments, which will be deleted with their associated messages when the uniform retention period elapses.

(Note: If a message merely conveys an attachment that must be kept longer than the uniform retention period, and the attachment is considered the official copy for retention purposes, it should be saved elsewhere--in a content management or records management application, for example--or printed for fifing. If a message contains contextual information that is essential to an understanding of the attachment, the message and the attachment should be retained for the same amount of time.)

Compared to schedule-based retention, the uniform rule approach to e-mail retention is easier to under stand. It requires less decision-making and interpretation by mailbox owners, although some effort will be required to identify messages that need to be retained longer than the uniform period, as explained below.

The uniform rule approach can be implemented quickly with a minimum of employee training. It can be applied to an organization's existing accumulation of messages, including messages of former employees. To be effective, however, the uniform rule approach must specify a broadly applicable predetermined retention period. Exceptions must be clearly identified and kept to a minimum.

Determination of Uniform Retention Period

As defined above, a uniform retention period will be the default for official copies of all messages except those that are specifically designated for longer or shorter retention. A uniform retention period must be long enough to satisfy an organization's legal and operational requirements for most messages.

The longer the uniform retention period, the fewer the required exceptions, as explained below, but more messages will be kept longer than necessary. This can compromise the performance of e-mail servers and client software, and it will require more storage. Longer retention can also increase an organization's discovery burden.

A short uniform retention period will reduce the quantity of messages in user mailboxes, thereby minimizing performance problems and possibly reducing discovery costs, but it will require more exceptions to fully satisfy legal and operational requirements.

Acceptable uniform retention periods for official...