Dallas city official e-mails to be deleted after 90 days

jtmbls, says:

I don't see why the government does not have to follow the Sarbanes-Oxley Act just like publicly traded companies. Even though the 90 day period is in line with the least compliant option of "Save Nothing". At least they would be required to save certain information.

winkydo, says:

i think this has more to do with the idea that 3 months is less liability than 3 years of data.

wikipedia defines 'data retention' as "A data retention policy weighs legal and privacy concerns against economics and need to know concerns to determine both the retention time, archival rules, data formats, and the permissible means of storage, access, and encryption."

you cannot just throw a fry's hard drive at a corporate email system and think you have reliable data storage. but at the same time, i'm sure EMC had some very good end of 2nd quarter deals they could have extended dallas for storage space. i think the problem here is that the real reason for the policy is being hidden behind political tape.

shoshanac, says:

As defined by the Local Government Records Act, a "local government record" means: ANY document, paper, letter, book, map, photograph, sound or video recording, microfilm, magnetic tape, electronic medium, or other information recording medium, regardless of physical form or characteristic and regardless of whether public access to it is open or restricted under the laws of the State, created or received by a local government or any of it's officers or employees pursuant to law, including an ordinance, or in the transaction of public business". Any document created or received by a City employee MUST be retained and disposed of according to the schedules adopted by the City and the retention period for a record applies to the record regardless of the medium in which it is maintained- i.e. paper or electronic version. E-mails are records and subject to record retention requirements! If a record is maintained electronically, the electronic data, as well as the hardware and software necessary to access the data, must be retained for the retention period assigned to the record, unless backup copies of the data are retained in paper or on microfilm for the retention period. If the City of Dallas adopted the following record retention schedule by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, then unless a record is "exempt from destruction request requirements", records CAN NOT be destroyed without the consent of the records management committee. Destruction of local government records contrary to the provisions of the Local Government Records Act of 1989 and administrative rules adopted under its authority is a Class A misdemeanor and, under certain circumstances, a third degree felony. Anyone destroying local government records without legal authorization may also be subject to criminal penalties and fines under the Open Records Act. So go figure Dallas, figure it out!!