Travis County could, by policy and/or technology, retain all email records indefinitely. That could mean retaining all emails for five years and revisiting the issue during the next decade. The first step down this path is to define the word "everything" in a useful and legal way. IT and the Travis County Attorney's office may be called on to help define "all emails" as "all emails that reach users' in-boxes." Email connections that are refused, or fail to penetrate the spam filters, are excluded from this definition. A variety of IT products are available that could capture all of the existing email and store it in a central repository. The staff cost of responding to litigation discovery and open records requests would be limited because IT would be in a position to electronically search a single database by key words instead of directing users to search several different email archives on various PCs and servers.
A policy that assigned permanent retention to all emails could be automated. Users could be made aware of a simple policy that would not require them to become records management experts. The staff cost of responding to litigation discovery and open records requests would be limited because Travis County would be in a position to electronically search a single database by key words instead of directing users to search several different email archives on various PCs and servers.
The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) says that it costs about 20 cents to buy 1 GB of electronic storage, but an average of $3,500 to review 1 GB of storage. If every Travis County email that is a government record were retained permanently, the storage cost could be very low, at least for five years. A policy that used lots of storage and saved review time could contain staff costs devoted to reviewing stored emails. It would obviously improve compliance, since it would eliminate the risk of alienation of electronic records if users improperly deleted emails. The exposure to additional legal risk due to retaining records that could have been destroyed is difficult to quantify but generally thought to be small.
Still more video: What if your boss said you had to give up either your email or your phone? Steven conducts a thought experiment with records management in mind.
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Or send me an email: shawn.malone@co.travis.tx.us