Faculty & Staff E-Mail

Management/Archiving Policy

Summary

All employee e-mail over 180 days old will be archived weekly and retained in the archive for 7.5 years.

 

Detail

NOTE: All meetings, appointments, and reminders are handled exactly like e-mail. All references to archiving e-mail hereafter, include e-mail, meetings, appointments, and reminders.

  1. All date references are based on the date the e-mail was created.
  2. ITS automatically archives all e-mail over 180 days old (or over six months old). E.g. (on November 1, 2008, anything older than May 1, 2008 would be archived)

  3. Faculty and staff may request an automated archiving for e-mail over 90 days old, instead of over 180 days old.

  4. Archiving occurs on a weekly basis.

  5. E-mail are archived from any and all folders.

  6. E-mail are archived under their existing folder name. E.g. (Sent, Inbox)

  7. The archive holds up to 7.5 years of e-mail.  As of December 31st, 2008, this would include 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, and 2001. Note that the 2008 archives would only include the first six months. The last six months would still be in the live Vmail database.

  8. Managers may request, with Records Officer approval, an archive search for former employees. The SVSU Records Officer is the Vice President of Administration and Business Affairs.

  9. The Records Officer may request an archive search via Network Services to meet Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

 

Annual Procedures

 

  1. The oldest year in the archive is deleted.

  2. Prior to deletion, the archive is backed up to tape and held for one year.

Vmail Implementation

 

  1. Archiving policies will remain the same after the conversion to Vmail.

  2. Archives will be available to faculty and staff as a folder called "Mail-Archive" in Vmail.

Background

SVSU must meet both functional (user oriented) and FOIA requirements when archiving faculty and staff e-mail. Pending a formal records retention policy, encompassing hard copy and digital records, the above interim e-mail archiving policy has been adopted. The mechanics described will remain the same once an official policy is adopted; only the number of years involved may change.