Take a look at the typical inbox and you’ll see emails of all kinds. One email from HR about a new leave policy, another from your supervisor asking for revisions to a draft, and yet another from a vendor looking to sell you the newest software package. In terms of records management, this inbox can become overwhelming. However, if you look in the General Schedule or the various program schedules for records retention for local governments, you will not find a specific item for “e-mails.” As a result, the question “Should I keep this email?” comes up often. This blog is intended to lay out when a local government employee should or should not retain an email.
Please note: The rules governing the retention of email for state agency employees are different. Please consult with your agency’s assigned records analyst for information on the Capstone program.
In the question “Should I keep this email?” there are actually two separate questions that we’ll address. The first question is whether or not an employee is responsible for retaining any given email. The second question is, in those cases where an employee is the responsible party for retaining the email, how long of a retention period does the email possess. We’ll come back to the time span question below, but first, let’s look at who has to retain any given email.
The first distinction that helps answer who needs to keep an email is whether or not you are the sender of the email. In most cases, local government employees who send emails are responsible for retaining what they sent. For example, in the case of the memo from HR about the new leave policy, HR is responsible for retaining that email. In other words, the copy of that email in their sent box is the “record copy” of the email. As the recipient of this internal email, you could retain it for any length of time that you see fit, but you are under no obligation to retain it at all.
However, recipients of email are not always free of the obligation to save emails. We’ve created the below graphic to illustrate when recipients are required to retain email. The most common example are emails originating from outside your organization, whether that is from a different government agency such as a separate municipality or a private citizen and business. The example above of the vendor email asking you to purchase new supplies is an email where the local government employee has the obligation to keep the email since the vendor is not subject to public records law.
I should take a brief moment to point out here that, while legitimate emails from vendors offering services that you might theoretically use are public records that have varying short-term retention periods (depending on if you act on the offer, if it’s a price quotation, if it’s an unsolicited solicitation, etc.), spam emails are a different matter entirely. Even though spam is coming from an external source, you are under no obligation to retain spam email for any length of time. It’s a transitory record that you can (and should) delete upon receipt.
The other case where recipients may need to keep emails are when they alter the message and then send it to another party. In the example of the draft sent from your supervisor, if you then edit the message and send it back to your supervisor, you have become the sender of the newly edited version and are therefore obliged to retain that version of the email. You’re also obliged to retain the email if you edit an attachment and then send it to someone else, even if the body of the email did not change. Similarly, if you forward a message to other employees and add comment to that email, that scenario also constitutes a change wherein you become the new sender. However, a simple forward of an internal email with no additional substantive comment does not constitute a new email. In that case, the original sender is still responsible for retaining the email.
Now that we know which emails you need to retain, we can turn to the second question of how long you need to retain that email. As stated earlier, e-mails do not appear on any local government records retention schedule on their own. Therefore, you cannot make any blanket statements such as “retain email for ten years.” Instead, you should evaluate each email based on its content. In fact, the General Schedule does call out some examples of common record series where we think the records you’re creating might exist as emails.
In this example, records relating to specific projects have a retention period of three years after the completion of the project unless that record has historical value, in which case the record is retained permanently. However, not all emails will have a lengthy retention period. Take for example invitations to attend an upcoming event.
In this case, the emailed invitation becomes eligible for destruction after the event occurs. There is no additional time placed on the retention, as with the project files, so any invitations you’ve sent or received from external parties for events that have already occurred are eligible for destruction.
One additional note regarding retention: Occasionally, the retention schedule specifies that you should retain an item until it no longer has reference value.
As you can see in the disposition for Grant Proposals, you can destroy rejected or withdrawn grant proposals when reference value ends. When exactly does reference value end? That’s a decision made in your agency. When your agency adopts a retention schedule, that process includes decisions on how long to keep each item marked as “reference value” in the retention schedule. Consult with your agency’s records management staff to figure out what length of time was decided for any given “reference value” item. If your agency does not have those times decided, it’s a good idea to standardize those time spans as soon as possible to ensure consistency across the agency, especially in terms of what records should still exist in the event of a public records request, litigation, or audit.
We understand that having to evaluate every email individually for its content can become time-consuming, so here are some strategies that can help mitigate that burden:
- Create a filing system for your inbox and sent mail that sorts content with similar retention periods together (Project_Files, Invitations, Leave_Requests, etc.).
- Try to stay proactive with your emails that you receive AND those that you send. If you file them as you send/receive them, or even on a daily or weekly basis, it’s much less burdensome to filter through your emails to find those emails having long-term value six months from now.
- If your email client allows for filters for incoming emails, set up filters that automatically place some emails into your filing system. For example, if you regularly receive price quotations for contracts, ask your contacts to add “price quote” to the subject and then filter all “price quote” emails into one folder in your Inbox. You can also set up filters for specific vendors and listservs.
- Since you need to evaluate each email based on its respective content, it’s a good practice to make sure that all messages in a thread relate to the same topic. If you receive a message in an existing thread that actually creates a whole new topic of discussion, and likely might create a whole new record, it’s probably a good idea create a new thread that includes the emails on the newly-introduced topic. Implementing this strategy will make filing much easier. As a side benefit, it will also help maintain clear communications for all stakeholders.
You can find more information on tips for managing your emails in our best practices documents concerning email, found on our website. If you’re ever unsure about the retention period of a particular email, feel free to contact any of the records analysts who can help you figure out where the email fits on the retention schedule.
The G.S. 132 Files 