County approves new e-mail retention policy

Steele County Commissioners unanimously approved a new email retention policy after pulling the resolution from the consent agenda for discussion on the regular agenda.

Under the policy approved, all emails, including sent and received messages and attachments, will be automatically deleted after 14 months. Employees will be responsible for reviewing and managing their email to ensure that any messages requiring retention beyond that time “are timely saved in accordance with County guidelines and applicable records schedules.”

The resolution was removed from the consent agenda after comments from several county residents during the open comment period at the beginning of the meeting.

During the public comment portion of the meeting, Melissa Zimmerman, Owatonna East Side Corridor, asked that it be removed from the consent agenda. She said that the proposed policy relied on employees to determine what needed to be retained for more than 14 months and did not include rules on what needed to be retained.

The East Side Corridor has been involved in litigation for five years, she said, regarding emails requested through data requests.

Colin Whalen also questioned the reasoning behind a 14-month retention and said it seemed like a sudden push to delete a paper trail.

When the consent agenda approval came up, Commissioner Jim Abbe asked that the retention policy be removed and placed on the regular agenda.

During the discussion on the resolution, Abbe said that it had been discussed in committee and 14 months had been arrived at as a reasonable time length.

County Administrator Renae Fry said that the email addresses should not be used as a “file cabinet” and that any litigation holds would supersede the 14-month time limit.

County Attorney Robert Jarrett said that retention of general emails for a shorter period of time was not uncommon. He pointed to MnPrairie, which retains emails for six months, and the City of St. Paul, which retains its for 180 days.

County IT director Dave Purscell said that emails are not considered a source of record; rather, they provide the ability to transfer information.

He said that the resolution was an effort to “reduce the bloat,” as some emails involve multiple recipients and sometimes the same email is seen 12 times. There is a process to remove duplicate emails, however.

Emails involving litigation have an indefinite hold, sometimes for years – but only if they are requested before the 14 months elapses, now that the policy has changed.

The policy was recommended by Jarrett, Purscell and Fry.

“By doing this, aren’t we relieving the burden of unwanted data requests that bog us down?” Commissioner James Brady asked.

“Correct,” Jarrett said.