Copyright© 2007 by School Services of California, Inc.
Volume 20 For Publication Date: August 17, 2007 No. 18
How Long Is a District Required to Retain Its E-Mails?
Q. With the close of the fiscal year, we’re boxing up prior year’s reports to send to our offsite storage. How long should a school district keep its e-mails?
A. E-mails and any other electronic records should be kept according to the same retention timelines that your district has established for your paper records, so it is dependent on the subject matter. For example, assume that your district has established a record retention policy for its property records, and it states that the detailed information related to the previous owner of a building, the title company, and other parties in a real property transaction are to be kept permanently. In this case, an e-mail to the district’s Facilities Department from a title company with information critical to the purchase of a building would be categorized as permanent and would need to be treated as such.
The key is being able to retrieve and print the e-mail upon request, as well as ensure that the electronic files are appropriately backed up in case of damage to the storage media or other system issues that can occur over a number of years.
When it is time to purge the electronic records, any records containing personal information, such as social security numbers or addresses for employees, must not only be deleted from the storage media, but must be made unrecoverable from that storage media. Your district’s technology department should be able to provide assistance in this area.
—Lewis Wiley, Jr.
.