Managing the ever-increasing volume of e-mail traffic has become a difficult job for many, further complicating the legal requirements of government document retention. A recent study, Legal Obstacles in E-mail Message Destruction -- conducted by John C. Montana, J.D., looks at the issues and cites requirements from a multitude of countries and jurisdictions. The study, funded by the ARMA International Educational Foundation, asks the question: "Is your company or government agency breaking the law with its e-mail retention policy?"

The study goes on to cite regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States which specifies retention periods for certain business communications, including e-mail. It also looks at policies and laws in a number of countries and jurisdictions, including Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the UK, Canada and others.

"Managing e-mail to exploit its usefulness while minimizing its risk is one of the most difficult information management challenges facing organizations," says the study, which then looks at some legal principles around which effective management can be organized.

In section 42, for example, "E-Mail as a Government or Public Record" the study addresses various archives and records laws and the complexities of e-mail distribution to agencies with different policies and restrictions on the handling of public records. "It can be stated as a general rule," says the study, "that e-mail, whether internal e-mail from and to government employees, or e-mail received from outside parties, is a government record, provided that it records government activities or business. In the United States federal arena, this was definitively established by Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President, and subsequent implementing regulations."

The also study quotes from Minnesota's Electronic Record Management Guidelines: "The medium is irrelevant. The content of the message determines whether it is a record or not; the content determines to which records series the message belongs; and the content determines how long the message needs to be retained."