Email Guidelines

University departments use email in the daily conduct of business both on and off campus. Email is used to rapidly exchange information, collaborate on projects, and make announcements. Many campus units utilize email to transmit reports, meeting minutes, drafts of policies, official memoranda, and other information without realizing that their email is a public record, as defined by North Carolina Public Records Law (G.S. 132). If an email message is determined to be a record, then it must be maintained within a recordkeeping system and should either be retained or deleted according to the provisions of the General Records Retention and Disposition Schedule.


Email as a public record

• Email messages that are sent or received in the course of university business are public records.
• Non-record email messages should be deleted as soon as possible. Some examples:
  • Personal email
  • Junk email
  • Announcements of a general nature
• NC Email Retention Checklist--a quick guide to determining whether to delete or save individual messages.

• Email messages need to be filed accordingly with other records within the unit, in a manner both simple and logical. Please refer to records management guidelines or contact University Archives and Records Management Services staff for further guidance in developing a filing system.
• Some examples of unacceptable filing practices with regard to email:
  • Filing documents and email messages on a user’s local drive. Local drives are often not backed up and therefore more susceptible to loss.
  • Filing or storing email content in any format that lacks its associated metadata (i.e., sender, recipient, date, subject, and other characteristics of an email message).
  • Filing email attachments separate from their associated program records.
• Offline back-up systems are not acceptable means of managing email messages. However, if email system back-ups are retained on system back-ups, they are liable to legal discovery.
• The responsibility for filing email messages lies with each employee.
• Each university unit is responsible for the development of internal procedures regarding the management of email. UARMS staff is available to provide guidance in this area.

• The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources (NCDCR) resources on email as public records.
• The Managing the Digital University Desktop (MDUD) project developed broad guidelines for email management.