How long is BISD legally required to keep work emails?
_________________________________________________
Email Retention Guidelines
All electronic mail messages sent, received, created, retained or disposed of using the Birdville ISD email system should be considered in light of these guidelines. It is the express intent of these guidelines to cause the preservation all records required by applicable federal and state laws, while maintaining technical operational capability.
• Email is a method of communication, not a type of document. It is the content of the email that determines the retention period for that particular message.
• The determination of whether to retain an email and the period of time to retain is controlled by the Record Retention Schedule in the Record Retention Policy of Birdville ISD.
• Responsibility for determining the categorization of an email lies with the sender and/or receiver of the message. It is the email user’s responsibility to manage and maintain email messages in accordance with federal law, state law, and/or district policy. The user is the subject matter expert for their particular field and the applicable record retention rules for that subject area.
• Records contained in the email system must be saved for their approved retention period by either:
1) printing and filing a hard copy of the message; OR
2) moving the message to an Outlook archive (personal folder) file that is stored on the user’s U: drive (which is actually a dedicated storage resource maintained by TIMS). This archive copy of a message must identify the sender, the recipient, and date and time of the message, as well as the message text and any attachments.
• Email should NOT be considered private or confidential. Administration has the ability and the right to view employees’ email. Emails are the property of Birdville ISD and the taxpayers of our district.
• TIMS backups of email constitute disaster recovery resources ONLY and should not be considered archives for research/discovery purposes.