Government email archiving policies :

New government email archiving policies require companies and organizations to be prepared for litigation where email and instant messaging information can be used as evidence relevant to the case under the court of law. This applies to all organizations and entities that can face litigations under the federal court -? including government agencies.

Government offices are facing security issues as far as information management is concerned because they are responsible for vast amounts of personal information about every citizen in the country. All the records kept by these agencies are managed according to the rules of the National Archive and Records Administration. For this, the said agency has also amended its regulations on record keeping to cover electronic information managed by Federal offices.

Rules on archiving email

According to NARA's government email archiving policies, all government agencies are responsible for managing their electronic records. They bear the burden of identifying which email messages are classified as Federal records as well as of filing and retaining email data  and disposing of transitory emails as per the agency's records schedule. Retention periods vary across different email records.

Email archiving

Government email archiving policies follow the same regulations as in other types of organizations in the event that an archiving system is used. A proper email archiving solution should be able to accomplish these key requirements:

• The system should only archive required email. In government agencies, the senders and the recipients are responsible for classifying their email correspondence as Federal records or otherwise. Federal records are those that contain substantive information that are important for documenting or providing evidence of the agency's functions and activities.
  
  
• Content should be indexed. Email and instant messaging data should be indexed by the system to allow for easy search and retrieval as imposed by court action or regulatory audits.
  
  
• Archived data should be tamper-proof. Government email archiving policies also require that data be stored in a read-only format to ensure that information is preserved in its original form and to avoid alterations that can compromise the validity and credibility of the data.