Effective 26 March 2006, NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) changed email retention policies.
From the Federal Register:
NARA is revising our regulations to provide for the appropriate management and disposition of very shortterm temporary e mail, by allowing agencies to manage these records within the email system.
This applies to Agencies, such as the EPA (quite scandal-prone), CIA, and NSA (can you say Plamegate? can you say Iraq War emails?). The full list of federal agencies is here.
On November 3, 2004, at 69 FR 63980, NARA published a proposed rule pertaining to the disposition of electronic mail records with short retention periods. In response, we received comments from nine Federal agencies and two public interest groups.
Discussion of Comments Received
Five of the Federal agencies concurred without further comment.
One Federal agency concurred and requested that we not limit the definition of shortterm to 180 days or less, but extend it to up to 3 years. As this rule is meant to apply only to records of fleeting value, we will not amend the definition to include records retained beyond 180 days.
Ok--what does records of fleeting value
mean?
Transitory Records
Records of shortterm (180 days or less) interest, including in electronic form (e.g., email messages), which have minimal or no documentary or evidential value. Included are such records as:
- Routine requests for information or publications and copies of replies which require no administrative action, no policy decision, and no special compilation or research for reply;
- Originating office copies of letters of transmittal that do not add any information to that contained in the transmitted material, and receiving office copy if filed separately from transmitted material;
- Quasiofficial notices including memoranda and other records that do not serve as the basis of official actions, such as notices of holidays or charity and welfare fund appeals, bond campaigns, and similar records;
- Records documenting routine activities containing no substantive information, such as routine notifications of meetings, scheduling of workrelated trips and visits, and other scheduling related activities;
- Suspense and tickler files or ``todo'' and task lists that serve as a reminder that an action is required on a given date or that a reply to action is expected, and if not received, should be traced on a given date.
Destroy immediately, or when no longer needed for reference, or according to a predetermined time period or business rule (e.g., implementing the autodelete feature of electronic mail systems).
The problem here is this is totally arbitrary. Two years ago, I researched the Nixon Papers at the National Archives. Almost 95% of the papers that I came across could be put under this category. Furthermore, things that I thought were not transitory could have been easily seen as transitory by someone 30 years ago.
Didn't anyone object to this rule?
Two Federal agencies and both public interest groups disagreed with our proposed rule.
One Federal agency and one public interest group raised the concern that this regulatory change could unintentionally result in the destruction of important email records with longterm or permanent value.
The commenters did not dispute that, in a perfect world, this rule is both legally permissible and potentially harmless. Their concern was that, in the words of one commenter, this new rule will ``help foster the attitude that email generally is a disposable, `off therecord' category of communication whose loss or destruction is of little concern to NARA or to the public.'' They pointed out, and NARA recognizes, that many agencies and their employees do not properly maintain all email records for their prescribed retention period, such that valuable records are being lost prematurely. The solution, they believe, is that all Federal employees must be required to print and file or copy to an electronic record keeping system every email record, to diminish the possibility that longterm records will be automatically deleted as transitory.
NARA fully agrees with these commenters' objective of wanting to improve the Government's retention of email records for their full duration. However, based on long consideration and experience, NARA does not believe that the commenters' recommended solution will have that result. To require the creation of a record copy of all of these email messages is not only extremely costly and burdensome,
Of course, it is really really a pain to keep those records!! Damn rules! Um, but wait--isn't more time spent deleting emails and deciding what is really important?
but [also] may also be partly responsible for any current noncompliance with existing email retention requirements: i.e., the largely pointless exercise of expending significant time and effort to print and file hundreds of transitory email messages every week may be a contributing factor to what leads many Government employees to forego printing any of their e mail messages.
Indeed, rules foster violation of rules!! Oh, what a clever hand wrote this!! How ingeniously they imply that record retention involves laborious printing and filing rather than just keeping a small electronic copy on the email server!
If this isn't a bureaucratic *%&^#!!! %%^^#! to Congress and the American people, I don't know what is. It will certainly make any investigation of the Iraq war problematic, at best.
According to Sarbanes-Oxley act, businesses have to retain emails for at least five years:
The emails should be classified by dates (months and years) to make it less complicated for auditors to access such information. If the emails are disorganized, the auditors may have to dig deeper and they might find improprieties.