Freedom of Information Act : questions to ask your email administrators 4 of 5

Freedom of Information Act

Legislation & Email Archiving : an update
Executive Summary
Key aspects of the act
Code of practise on 'The Management of Records by Public Authorities'
Questions to ask your email administrators
References

Questions to ask your email administrators

IT management needs to be able to comply with the various agreed good practise and legal requirements surrounding email storage and retrieval. Below is a list of questions, ask them of your organisation. If you cannot answer these questions satisfactorily, you do not comply with the public authority code of best practise in email management, and you will not be able to meet your obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, which comes in force on the 1st January 2005.

Can we retrieve emails via a query search?
Would it take longer than 20 days to search all historic emails to find information contained in one of them?
Is access to historic email audited?
Can we search for information held in email attachments?
Can we prove that the results of any search of our current systems also include emails deleted or revised by users?
If we change our email system at any stage in the future, will that cause us any problems? Will we have to buy a new archive solution for the new mail system and have to maintain two archive systems? Will we have to, or even be able to, import all of the data in our existing archive into the new one?

Reference Points

http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/20000036.htm
Ref (http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/codemanrec.htm#part4)
Ref (http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/codemanrec.htm#part7)

Standards Accepted in Records Management

British Standards (BSI)

BS 4783: Storage, transportation and maintenance of media for use in data processing and information storage
BS 7799 / ISO 17799: Code of practice for information security management
BS ISO 15489-1: Information and Documentation - Records Management - Part 1: General
BSI DISC PD 0008: Code of practice for legal admissibility and evidential weight of information stored on electronic document management systems
BSI DISC PD0010: Principles of good practice for information management
BSI DISC PD0012: Guide to the practical implications of the Data Protection Act 1998

Public Record Office standards for the management of public records

The Public Record Office publishes standards, guidance and toolkits on the management of public records, covering their entire life cycle.