You are receiving this e-mail as a subscriber to the Virginia Records Officer Listserv (VA-ROL).
#
#

We are looking at retention of tape and email backups, and would like to know what other state entities' policities and paractices are regarding these.  An except from the LVA guidelines follows for reference.

Clarence Elliott
Business Continuity & Records Manager
VHDA
Phone (804) 343-5631

Extract from the State's Electronic Records Management Guidelines:

... consider e-mail security and develop procedures to provide security for e-mail so that it cannot be altered or deleted intentionally or unintentionally. E-mail records stored online should be backed up regularly to protect them from system failures, tampering, or deletion. Backup procedures should be coordinated to ensure that no copies of e-mail records are maintained after their retention period expires. ... ensure that all copies of a record are destroyed at the end of its retention period.

E-mail that does not contain confidential or privacy-protected information may be disposed of by [simply] deleting it from the e-mail system. For e-mails containing confidential or privacy-protected information, be sure that you "electronically shred" the e-mail or wipe clean the media on which it resides. E-mail destruction should be reported on a Certificate of Records Destruction (RM-3 Form)... ensure all duplicate copies, which may reside on servers or backup tapes, are also destroyed.

... If the records in the database have a long-term retention period, they will eventually need to be extracted from the database structure and either reentered into a nonproprietary database, or transferred to an inactive table.  Database backups are often obsolete as soon as they are created, as information changes quickly. For record-keeping purposes, only the most recent database copy is considered the record copy, but other copies are discoverable for legal battles and FOIA requests.

All copies of a record (electronic or otherwise) that have reached the end of their retention periods must also be destroyed, including copies on backup tapes and in off-site storage.

State general retention schedule for IT-Records Backups:

System Maintenance Records: Records Backups
This series documents regular or essential system backups.  This series may include but is not limited to: backup tape inventories, relevant correspondence, and related documentation.

000154 Retain until superseded or obsolete then destroy. Disposal reporting on Certificate of Records Destruction (RM-3 Form) not required.

The information contained in this e-mail is confidential and/or
proprietary to the Virginia Housing Development Authority. The
information transmitted herewith is intended only for use by
the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader
of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby
notified that any review, retention, retransmission, dissemination,
distribution, disclosure, copying or other use of, or taking of
any action in reliance upon this information is strictly prohibited.
If you have received this communication in error, please contact the
sender and immediately delete this e-mail with any of its attachments
from your computer and destroy any printouts that you may have made.


To UNSUBSCRIBE, change options, or subscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-rol.html
(If using Netscape, must have version 6.1 or higher to view the above page)