On Fri, 16 Oct 2009, Yves Dorfsman wrote: > Adam Tauno Williams wrote: >>> Definitely. I know of companies that specifically say DO NOT save >>> emails. Keep it for a week (or month or whatever) and then make darn >>> sure the email is gone. If you have a documented policy put into place >>> before the legal issues arrive that says "All emails are to be deleted >>> after a month" and you faithfully follow through on that policy it can >>> not only reduce the technical need to have to archive years of emails >>> but it can be legally safer since you have completely legally >>> destroyed any evidence that might be discovered. >> >> This is dubious. A judge can discard your data retention policy as >> "unreasonable", and that has happened in a couple of cases. In those >> cases the companies in question were using the >> we-just-delete-everything-right-away policy of something nearly that. >> You have to maintain communication for some "reasonable" period of time. >> If your projects, or billing cycle, etc... are a certain/average >> duration then your data retention policy should reflect that with some >> margin. >> > > Was this specific to email messages or content that **should** be saved > soemwhere else (e.g.: attached files, pdf etc...) ? > > Isn't email more like telephone calls ? We often use email to negotiate, but > the final contract / decision record will be in a different format. In the > case of only having an email, I save that particular message outside the > email system (on a filesystem in the directory for that particular project, > or these days in the document management system if the company uses one).
for legally binding contracts with other companies, yes there is normally another document. for for agreements with other department heads, no. David Lang _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
