Advances in information technology and the explosion in computer interconnectivity have had far-reaching effects, including the transformation from a paper-based to an electronic business environment and the capability for rapid communication through e-mail. Although these developments have led to improvements in speed and productivity, they also pose challenges, including the need to manage those e-mail messages that may be federal records. Under the Federal Records Act, NARA is given general oversight responsibilities for records management as well as general responsibilities for archiving. This includes the preservation in the National Archives of the United States of permanent records documenting the activities of the government. NARA thus oversees agency management of temporary and permanent records used in everyday operations and ultimately takes control of permanent agency records judged to be of historic value. (Of the total number of federal records, less than 3 percent are designated permanent.) In particular, NARA is responsible for issuing records management guidance; working with agencies to implement effective controls over the creation, maintenance, and use of records in the conduct of agency business; providing oversight of agencies’ records management programs; approving the disposition (destruction or preservation) of records, and providing storage facilities for agency records. The act also gives NARA the responsibility for conducting inspections or surveys of agency records and records management programs. The act requires each federal agency to make and preserve records that (1) document the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and (2) provide the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the government and of persons directly affected by the agency’s activities. These records, which include e-mail records, must be effectively managed. As used in this chapter, “records” includes all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency of the United States Government under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the Government or because of the informational value of data in them. Library and museum material made or acquired and preserved solely for reference or exhibition purposes, extra copies of documents preserved only for convenience of reference, and stocks of publications and of processed documents are not included. As the definition shows, although government documentary materials (including e-mails) may be “records” in this sense, many are not. For example, not all e-mails document government “organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities” or contain data of informational value. According to NARA, the activities of an agency records management program include, briefly, the following identifying records and sources of records; developing a file plan for organizing records, including identifying the classes of records that the agency produces; developing records schedules—that is, proposing for each type of content where and how long records need to be retained and their final disposition (destruction or preservation) based on time, or event, or a combination of time and event; and providing records management guidance to agency staff, including agency-specific recordkeeping practices that establish what records need to be created in order to conduct agency business. Developing record schedules is a cornerstone of the records management process. Scheduling involves not individual documents or file folders, but rather broad categories of records. Traditionally, these were record series: that is, “records arranged according to a filing system or kept together because they relate to a particular subject or function, result from the same activity, document a specific kind of transaction, take a particular physical form, or have some other relationship arising out of their creation, receipt, or use, such as restrictions on access and use.” More recently, NARA introduced flexible scheduling, which allows so-called “big bucket” or large aggregation schedules for temporary and permanent records. Under this approach, the schedule applies not necessarily to records series, but to all records relating to a work process, group of work processes, or a broad program area to which the same retention time would be applied. To develop records schedules, agencies identify and inventory records, and NARA’s appraisal archivists work with agencies to appraise their value (which includes informational, evidential, and historical value), determine whether they are temporary or permanent, and determine how long the temporary records should be kept. NARA then approves the necessary records schedules. No record may be destroyed unless it has been scheduled, and for temporary records the schedule is of critical importance because it provides the authority to dispose of the record after a specified time period. Records schedules may be of two kinds: an agency-specific schedule or a general records schedule, which covers records common to several or all agencies. According to NARA, general records schedules cover about a third of all federal records. For the other two-thirds, NARA and the agencies must agree upon specific records schedules. Once a schedule has been approved, the agency is to issue it as a management directive, train employees in its use, apply its provisions to temporary and permanent records, and ensure proper implementation. The Federal Records Act covers documentary material regardless of physical form or media, but until the advent of computers, records management and archiving had been largely focused on handling paper documents. As information is increasingly created and stored electronically, records management has had to take into account the creation of records in varieties of electronic formats, including e-mail messages. NARA has promulgated regulations at 36 C.F.R. Part 1234 that provide guidance to agencies about the management of electronic records. This guidance is supplemented by the issuance of periodic NARA bulletins and other forms of guidance to agencies. To ensure that the management of agency electronic records is consistent with the Federal Records Act, NARA requires each agency to maintain an inventory of all agency information systems that identifies basic facts about each system and the information it contains, and it requires that agencies schedule the electronic records in its systems. Like other records, electronic records must be scheduled either under agency-specific schedules or pursuant to a general records schedule. According to the regulation, agencies are required to establish policies and procedures that provide for appropriate retention and disposition of electronic records. In addition to including general provisions on electronic records, agency procedures must specifically address e-mail records: that is, the creation, maintenance and use, and disposition of federal records created by individuals using electronic mail systems. “a document created or received on an electronic mail system including brief notes, more formal or substantive narrative documents, and any attachments, such as word processing and other electronic documents, which may be transmitted with the message.” The regulation requires e-mail records to be managed as are other potential federal records with regard to adequacy of documentation, recordkeeping requirements, agency records management responsibilities, and records disposition. This entails, in particular, ensuring that staff are aware that e-mails are potential records and training them in identifying which e-mails are records. Specific requirements for e-mail records include, for example, that for each e-mail record, agencies must preserve transmission data, including names of sender and addressees and message date, because these provide context that may be needed for the message to be understood. Further, except for a limited category of “transitory” e-mail records, agencies are not permitted to store the recordkeeping copy of e-mail records in the e- mail system, unless that system has all the features of a recordkeeping system; table 1 lists these required features. If agency e-mail systems do not have the required recordkeeping features, either agencies must copy e-mail records to a separate electronic recordkeeping system, or they must print e-mail messages (including associated transmission information that is needed for purposes of context) and file the copies in traditional paper recordkeeping files. NARA’s guidance allows agencies to use either paper or electronic recordkeeping systems for record copies of e-mail messages, depending on the agencies’ business needs. Each of the required features listed in table 1 is important because it helps ensure that e-mail records remain both accessible and usable during their useful lives. For example, it is essential to be able to classify records according to their business purpose so that they can be retrieved in case of mission need. Further, if records cannot be retrieved easily and quickly, or they are not retained in a usable format, they do not serve the mission or historical purpose that led to their being preserved. In many cases, e-mail systems do not have the features in the table. If e-mail records are retained in such systems and not in recordkeeping systems, they may be harder to find and use, as well as being at increased risk of loss from inadvertent or automatic deletion. Agencies must also have procedures that specifically address the destruction of e-mail records. In particular, e-mail records may not be deleted or otherwise disposed of without prior authority from NARA. (Recall that not all e-mail is record material. Agencies may destroy nonrecord e-mail.) Agencies can dispose of e-mail records in three situations: First, agencies are authorized to dispose of e-mail records with very short-term (transitory) value that are stored in e-mail systems at the end of their retention periods (as mentioned earlier). Second, for other records in e- mail systems, NARA authorizes agencies to delete the version in the e-mail system after the record has been preserved in a recordkeeping system along with all appropriate transmission data. Finally, agencies are authorized to dispose of e-mail records in the recordkeeping system in accordance with the appropriate records schedule. If the records in the recordkeeping system are not scheduled, the agency must schedule them before they can be disposed of. Because of its nature, e-mail can present particular challenges to records management. First, the information contained in e-mail records is not uniform.