policies and practices for e-mail management at the...
TRANSCRIPT
Policies and Practices for E-mail Management at the Canadian Government
Natasha Zwarich
School of Information Studies, McGill University
Montreal, April 2014
A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the
requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
© Natasha Zwarich 2014 All rights reserved
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ABSTRACT
As government agencies perform a large number of operations through e-mail,
appropriate e-mail management has become critical within the current information
accessibility- and accountability-driven environment.
The aim of this research is to understand how e-mail records are managed in the
Canadian government agencies and identify the characteristics that support the
management of e-mail records to ensure their reliability, integrity and authenticity. It
sought to answer the following research questions: (1) What are the general principles of
the e-mail management policies and guidelines within Canadian government agencies?;
(2) To what extent are these e-mail management principles implemented in the
government agencies?; (3) What are the variations and similarities of e-mail management
practices across government agencies? To what extent are they effective?; and (4) What
are the current practices to manage e-mail messages in order to ensure the reliability,
integrity and authenticity of this specific type of electronic records in government
agencies?
To answer these questions, this research uses a mixed methods approach. Three
data collection methods were used: (1) web-based survey with information management
professionals working at the Canadian government agencies; (2) in-depth interviews with
information management professionals involved in the process of e-mail management
from six government agencies; and (3) the relevant documentation. While a statistical
analysis was done on the data collection by using the web-based survey, a content
analysis combining both inductive and deductive methods has been done on the interview
data and relevant documentation.
The results indicated that e-mail is a widely used form of communication within
the Canadian government agencies. The practices to ensure the management of e-mail
across agencies tend to vary. The type of policies and guidelines developed in agencies
varies ranging from a specific e-mail management policy to a more general information
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management policy according to each agency’s organizational context. In addition, an
electronic recordkeeping system for the management, retrieval and access of e-mail
records was identified as crucial to manage e-mail and ensure their reliability, integrity
and authenticity. The results show that although several participants recognize the
importance of e-mail in their work, their agencies often lack to practice compliance to
their e-mail management policy, guidelines and system considerations. The results
suggest that to be effective, the tools developed to manage e-mail records must be
adapted to their organizational context and information flow of an organization. The
results stressed the importance of managing e-mail records to: (1) ensure the continuity of
the activities of the agencies; and (2) ensure the authenticity and integrity of e-mail
records.
These findings have led us to suggest a framework for a comprehensive e-mail
management program that includes five components: (1) legal and organizational
requirements; (2) records management requirements; (3) systems requirements; (4)
training; and (5) auditing and compliance requirements. Based on the results of the
research, we also developed an e-mail management policy model that can be adapted to
government agencies as well as different organizational contexts.
Keywords: electronic message; e-mails, e-mail management, electronic messaging systems, Government of Canada, Canadian government agencies, compliance, training, records management.
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RÉSUMÉ
Plusieurs organisations, dont les gouvernements, effectuent un grand nombre
d'opérations par le biais du courrier électronique. La gestion du courrier électronique est
aujourd’hui devenue critique, notamment dans le contexte actuel d’accès à l’information
et de bonne gouvernance.
La présente recherche a pour but de développer une meilleure compréhension de
la gestion du courrier électronique dans les agences gouvernementales canadiennes et
d'identifier les caractéristiques qui soutiennent la gestion de ces documents électroniques
afin d’assurer leur fiabilité, leur intégrité et leur authenticité. La recherche vise à
répondre aux 4 questions suivantes: (1) Quels sont les principes généraux en matière de
gestion du courrier électronique au sein des agences gouvernementales canadiennes? ; (2)
Dans quelle mesure ces principes de gestion du courrier électronique sont-ils mis en
œuvre? ; (3) Quelles sont les similitudes et les différences dans les pratiques de gestion
du courrier électronique dans les agences gouvernementales canadiennes? Dans quelle
mesure sont-elles efficaces? ; et (4) Quelles sont les pratiques actuelles de gestion du
courrier électronique afin d'en garantir la fiabilité, l'intégrité et l'authenticité au
Gouvernement du Canada?
Pour répondre à ces questions, une méthodologie mixte a été utilisée. Trois
méthodes de collecte de données ont été utilisées: (1) un sondage en ligne s’adressant aux
professionnels en gestion de l'information qui travaillent au Gouvernement du Canada;
(2) des entrevues semi-structurées avec des professionnels en gestion de l'information
impliqués dans le processus de gestion du courrier électronique de six agences
gouvernementales; et (3) la documentation pertinente. Dans un premier temps, une
analyse statistique a été effectuée sur les données amassées à l'aide du sondage en ligne
et, dans un second temps, une analyse de contenu a été effectuée sur les données
recueillies par le biais d’entrevues et de la documentation pertinente.
Les résultats de la recherche montrent que le courrier électronique est un outil de
communication largement utilisé au sein des agences gouvernementales canadiennes. Or,
les pratiques visant à assurer la gestion du courrier électronique varient entre les agences
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gouvernementales. En effet, le type de politique utilisé pour encadrer la gestion du
courrier électronique diffère entre les agences gouvernementales allant d'une politique
spécifique de gestion du courrier électronique à une politique plus générale de gestion de
l'information variant selon le contexte organisationnel de chaque agence. En outre,
l’utilisation d’un logiciel de gestion électronique des documents permettant la gestion, la
recherche et l’accès aux messages électroniques a été identifié comme étant un outil
essentiel à la gestion du courrier électronique, notamment pour assurer la fiabilité,
l'intégrité et l'authenticité des messages. Les résultats montrent également que, malgré
l’importance de la gestion du courrier électronique, un manque de conformité envers la
politique de gestion du courrier électronique ou l’utilisation du système de gestion
électronique des documents a été souligné par plusieurs participants. Les résultats
suggèrent que pour être efficaces, les outils développés pour gérer le courrier
électronique doivent être adaptés au contexte organisationnel et au flux d'information
d'une organisation. Les résultats soulignent l'importance de la gestion du courrier
électronique afin: (1) d’assurer la continuité des activités des agences gouvernementales,
et (2) assurer l'authenticité et l'intégrité de ce type de document électronique.
Ces résultats nous ont amené à proposer un cadre théorique pour le
développement d’un programme de gestion du courrier électronique qui comprend cinq
composantes: (1) les exigences légales et organisationnelles, (2) les exigences liées à la
gestion documentaire; (3) les exigences liées aux systèmes informatiques; (4) les
exigences de formation; et (5) les exigences de conformité et d’audit. Nous avons
également développé un modèle de politique de gestion du courrier électronique qui peut
être adapté, tant aux agences gouvernementales qu’à différents contextes
organisationnels.
Mots-clés: courrier électronique; gestion du courrier électronique; système de messagerie électronique; Gouvernement du Canada; administration publique; conformité, formation, gestion des documents électroniques.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii RÉSUMÉ ........................................................................................................................... iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. ix
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................ x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................ xi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................. xii
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................... 13 1.1. Problem statement ............................................................................................................... 13 1.2. Purpose of the study ............................................................................................................ 19 1.3. Research questions .............................................................................................................. 20
CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................................... 22 2.1. Electronic records: nature and characteristics ..................................................................... 22
2.1.1. Definition and characteristics of records ..................................................................... 22 2.1.2. Characteristics of electronic records ............................................................................ 27 2.1.3. Research projects on electronic records ....................................................................... 31
2.2. Government agencies as an institutional context .............................................................. 38 2.2.1. Government information and creation of e-government ............................................. 40 2.2.2. Management of federal records and creation of national archives .............................. 46 2.2.3. Information professionals in the Canadian government agencies ............................... 54
2.3. E-mail as a specific type of electronic records ................................................................. 58 2.3.1. Definition and Characteristics of E-mail ..................................................................... 58 2.3.2. Background and history ............................................................................................... 62 2.3.3. Issues regarding e-mail management ........................................................................... 65
2.4. Theoretical Framework ....................................................................................................... 76 Summary .................................................................................................................................... 78
CHAPTER III. RESEARCH DESIGN ............................................................................. 80 3.1. Rationale of study design .................................................................................................... 80 3.2. Selection of data sources and methods for data collection ................................................. 86
3.2.1. Survey .......................................................................................................................... 87 3.2.2. Interview ...................................................................................................................... 90 3.2.3. Supporting documentation ........................................................................................... 91
3.3. Pre-test of instruments for data collection .......................................................................... 92 3.3.1. Pre-test of online survey questionnaire ........................................................................ 92 3.3.2. Pre-test of interview guide ........................................................................................... 93
3.4. Data collection .................................................................................................................... 94
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3.4.1. Population and sample ................................................................................................. 94 3.4.2. Survey .......................................................................................................................... 97 3.4.3. Interviews .................................................................................................................... 99 3.4.4. Supporting documentation ......................................................................................... 103
3.5. Data analysis ..................................................................................................................... 106 3.5.1. Quantitative data analysis .......................................................................................... 107 3.5.2. Qualitative data analysis ............................................................................................ 108
3.6. Limitations of the study .................................................................................................... 112 3.7. Quality assurance of the research ...................................................................................... 113 Summary .................................................................................................................................. 115
CHAPTER IV. FINDINGS ............................................................................................ 117 4.1. E-mail management principles and implementation ......................................................... 117
4.1.1. Respondent profile ..................................................................................................... 117 4.1.2. E-mail policies and guidelines ................................................................................... 119 4.1.3. E-mail system and recordkeeping system .................................................................. 125 4.1.4. Implementation and dissemination ............................................................................ 128 4.1.5. Issues .......................................................................................................................... 132
4.2. E-mail management: current practices and variations across Canadian government agencies .................................................................................................................................... 135
4.2.1. Absence of implementation ....................................................................................... 136 4.2.2. Partial implementation ............................................................................................... 144 4.2.3. Completed Implementation ....................................................................................... 153
4.3. Results of the research questions ...................................................................................... 172 4.3.1. Results of the first research question: What are the general principles of the e-mail management policies and guidelines within Canadian government agencies? ................... 173 4.3.2. Results of the second research question: To what extent are these e-mail management principles implemented in the federal agencies? ................................................................. 174 4.3.3. Results of the third research question: What are the variations and similarities of e-mail management practices across federal agencies? To what extent are they effective? .. 175 4.3.4. Results of the fouth reseach question: What are the current practices to manage e-mail messages in order to ensure the reliability, authenticity and integrity of this specific type of electronic records in federal agencies? ................................................................................ 176
Summary .................................................................................................................................. 178 CHAPTER V. DISCUSSION ......................................................................................... 180
5.1. E-mail Management Challenges ....................................................................................... 180 5.1.1. Records Management ................................................................................................ 181 5.1.2. Legal .......................................................................................................................... 183 5.1.3. Systems ...................................................................................................................... 187 5.1.4. Users and compliance ................................................................................................ 190
5.2. Framework for a comprehensive e-mail management program and implementation ....... 193 5.2.1. Five components for an e-mail management program .............................................. 193 5.2.2. Legal and Organizational Requirements ................................................................... 195 5.2.3. Records Management Requirements ......................................................................... 197 5.2.4. Systems Requirements ............................................................................................... 199 5.2.5. Training Requirements .............................................................................................. 206 5.2.6. Auditing and Compliance Requirements ................................................................... 209
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5.3. E-mail Mangement Policy ................................................................................................. 211 Summary .................................................................................................................................. 217
VI. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 218 6.1 Summary of the research .................................................................................................... 218 6.2 Contributions of the research ............................................................................................. 221
6.2.1. Theoretical Contributions .......................................................................................... 221 6.2.2. Methodological Contributions ................................................................................... 222 6.2.3. Practical Contributions .............................................................................................. 222
6.3. Future Research ................................................................................................................. 223 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 226
Appendix 1: Ethics Certificate ..................................................................................... ccxlvi
Appendix 2: Survey Instrument – English ................................................................. ccxlvii Appendix 2: Survey Instrument – French ...................................................................... cclvi
Appendix 3: Results of Survey Questionnaire ............................................................. cclxvi Appendix 4: List of Titles/Positions of the Respondents to the Survey .................... cclxxvi
Appendix 5: Invitation Letter to Interviews Participants – English ....................... cclxxviii Appendix 5: Invitation Letter to Interviews Participants - French ............................ cclxxix
Appendix 6: Informed Consent Form ......................................................................... cclxxx Appendix 7: Interview Instrument .......................................................................... cclxxxiii
Appendix 8: Thank You Letter to Interview Participants ........................................ cclxxxvi
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1. Summary of interview activities at participating agencies……………..…...103
Table 3.2. List of collected documentation from 6 agencies…………………………...104
Table 3.3. List of collected documentation from Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and Library and Archives Canada…...…………………………………..…..105
Table 4.1. Summary of e-mail management practices and implementation at GoC…...134
Table 4.2. Summary of the six in-depth interviews on e-mail management practices and variations………...…………………………………………………………..170
Table 5.1. Recommended content for e-mail management training program………….207
Table 5.2. Recommended content of an e-mail management policy…………………...213
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1. Park’s conceptual framework on authenticity requirements and authentication processes…………………………………………………………………….37
Figure 3.1. Data sources and methods of data collection………………………………..87
Figure 4.1. Activity areas of the respondents…………………………………………..119
Figure 4.2. Importance of e-mail in business activities at GoC………………………...120
Figure 4.3. Policies and guidelines to manage e-mail records………………………….123
Figure 4.4. Implementation of corporate recordkeeping system……………………….126
Figure 4.5. Methods used to manage and save e-mail records…………………………128
Figure 4.6. Reasons for not being compliante with e-mail management policy and guidelines…………………………………………………………………..131
Figure 5.1. Components for an e-mail management program………………………….194
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
AIIM Association of Information and Image Management ARMA Association of Records Managers and Administrators CSA Canadian Securities Administrators DoD U.S. Department of Defense ECM Entreprise content management EDRMS Electronic document and records management system ERM Electronic records management ERMS Electronic records management system GEDS Government Electronic Directory Services GoC Government of Canada ICA International Council on Archives ICT Information and communication technology IM Information management InterPARES International research on Permanent Authentic Records in
Electronic Systems IT Information technology ISO International Standards Organization LAC Library and Archives Canada MAF Management Accountability Framework NAA National Archives of Australia NARA U.S. National Archives and Records Administration RDIMS Records, Documents, and Information Management System SAA Society of American Archivists SMTP Simple mail transport protocol TBS Treasury Board of Canada Secreatariat UBC University of British Columbia
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to many people who have contributed
to the realization of this dissertation.
First, I would like to thank my thesis supervisor, Dr. Eun Park, whose guidance
and encouragement helped me throughout the dissertation process. You provided me with
expert advice, professionnally and personnally, during all of these years. I am truly
grateful for your support.
My sincere thank you also go to the members of my thesis advisory committee,
Dr. France Bouthillier, Dr. Kimiz Dalkir and Dr. Doreen Starke-Meyerring, who have
improved my dissertation with their valuable suggestions. I appreciate your generosity
and donating your precious time.
I also would like to thank the information management professionals at the
Government of Canada who participated in this research and took the time to answer my
many questions. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to the Fonds québécois
de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC) for providing me with financial support
to pursue this research.
Finally, thank you to my family, especially my parents, and friends who have
endured my many existential anxieties and my constant questioning of the doctorate
process. Without their encouragement, this thesis perhaps would never have emerged. A
special thank you to Pascal and Victor who have made this journey possible. I appreciate
your understanding and patience when I had to work on my dissertation on weekends and
holidays.
Thank you to all those who helped me, one way or another, during these years of
hard work.
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CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Problem statement
Information is at the center of every function and activity of an organization. The
way that an organization manages information and records can directly affect its ability to
operate its activities efficiently and effectively as well as to comply with laws and
regulations. Records are defined as “information created, received and maintained by an
agency or organization in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transactions of
business” (ISO 15489, 2001, p. 3). Records are evidence of each activity of an
organization and different from documents. Documents are “information or data fixed in
some media, but which is not part of the official record” (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p. 126),
such as drafts, duplicates of record copies, and other materials not directly relating to
business activities.
The rapid increase in the number of records created and maintained by electronic
communication systems has presented numerous opportunities and challenges for records
managers and archivists in different organizations. Today, most records in an
organization are created using information and communication technology (ICT) and
produced in different electronic format – e-mail, word processing documents, text
messages, voicemail, images, spreadsheets, web content, etc. The percentage of records
in electronic format continues to increase. As organizations increase their dependence
upon electronic records to make strategic decisions that have an impact on stakeholders
the need for professional management of these assets also grows. Applying records
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management principles from the creation of an electronic record to its final disposition
differs from doing so with their paper counterparts. During the information lifecycle,
issues of access, authenticity, integrity, security, privacy and retention are more
challenging to manage in the evolving environment of electronic records. These issues
are critical in the age of information technology. Indeed, the ease with which electronic
records can be altered, duplicated, distributed, or destroyed has often produced poor
quality records. In addition, too many types of records, created in different versions and
formats, are unreliable. Each specific type of electronic record poses its own challenges
regarding its management and preservation. Among the different types of electronic
records, electronic mail (e-mail), with its access points, has become a major tool for
organizational and interpersonal communications these days and is one of the most
business-critical information management applications as argued by the Radicati Group:
“the majority of email traffic comes from business email, which accounts for over 100 billion emails sent and received per day worldwide. In 2013, email remains the predominant form of communication in the business environment. The majority of business email accounts are currently deployed on-premises. However, with the adoption of cloud business email services, this trend is expected to increase. In addition, the mobile email market is showing a strong growth. Anywhere access has become a common feature for all users, who now access their mail from a number of devices, at any time and from any location. Growth of mobile email use is driven by affordable and advanced mobile devices, which allow users to easily access their email accounts from their mobile devices.” (Radicati Group, 2013, pp. 3-4)
With the increase of electronic records, more organizations have made records
management a necessity when confronted with changes in regulation and laws due to
their compliance and reporting requirements. Government regulations that require
“reporting and accountability have fuelled the implementation of formal records
management programs” (Smallwood, 2013, p. 5). For example, in the United States, the
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Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) enhanced standards for corporate governance and financial
reporting. The Canadian counterpart of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has “been introduced
through various separate yet interrelated instruments and pieces of legislation by the
introduction of the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) rules that require the
certification of annual and quarterly report; audit committee, internal controls and
guidance for corporate governance practices” (Government of Canada, Library of
Parliament, 2005, p.8).
In addition, changes in legal procedures and requirements during litigation have
been noted. In the United States, in 2006, the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedures
were amended to include requirements for legal discovery of electronically stored
information. Today, according to Smallwood, e-mail has become the leading form of
evidence requested in civil trials (2013, p. 5). In Canada, the discovery process is usually
covered in provincial regulations (Hrycko and Rothman, 2009, p. 35). However, because
of the nature of electronic records, guidelines and best practices specific to electronic
discovery were introduced as well as updated to relevant existing legislations. An
increase of awareness of information governance appeared as a result of the changing
regulations. Information governance is defined by the Association of Records Managers
and Administrators (ARMA) as a “strategic framework composed of standards, policies,
business processes, roles that hold organizations and individuals accountable to create,
organize, secure, maintain, use and dispose of information in ways that align with and
contribute to organization’s goals” (2012, p. 28). The legislations have made
organizations to be more “information governance aware” and implement means to
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control, manage and secure their information as well as respond to concerns related to
business continuity when managing electronic records (ARMA, 2012, p. 29).
The proliferation of electronic records has also changed the way that government
business is conducted. Indeed, more and more governments provide services through
Internet (or web-based applications) and e-mail to facilitate democratic participation,
known as e-government. As a result, governments have established guidelines and
professional standards for the management of electronic records that were created using
electronic and communication systems. The Government of Canada (GoC) followed this
trend and has developed a “federated architecture of information systems to foster
common standards, directories, and shared approaches to electronic records management
both within and across federal government agencies” (Allen, et al., 2001, p. 96).
The growth of e-mail has presented government agencies with new opportunities and
challenges. E-mail is defined as “electronically transmitted information created on or
received by a computer system and it can be used to accomplish different activities in an
organization” (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p. 141) and it is composed of a “header, a body
message and optionally, attachments” (Park and Zwarich, 2008, p. 469). The scope of this
research emphasizes on the management of e-mail so this study excludes text messaging
and web records. At the crossroads between the telephone and traditional mail, e-mail is
not as ephemeral as it seems and is now recognized as records as a result of what is now
known as the PROFS case, a lawsuit (Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President, 1
F.3d 1274 [DC Cir 1993]) filed by Scott Armstrong, American Historical Association,
the American Library Association, the Center for National Security relating to access to
and the disposition of e-mail records. Therefore, e-mail records must be managed
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properly. As government agencies perform a large number of operations through e-mail,
appropriate e-mail and electronic records management have become significant and
critical within the current information accessibility- and accountability-driven
environments. As the GoC is moving toward the electronic record as the preferred record
to conduct business, the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) declared in 2006 that
“email messages that are created, collected, received or transmitted in the normal course
of government business and reflect the functions, business activities, and decisions of the
government are official records and must be managed throughout their life-cycle”
(Government of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, 2006). E-mail records and
attachments must be archived in order to guarantee the integrity of organizational
memory at the GoC and maintain their value as evidence of government business. To
achieve this goal, government organizations are working to provide common general
guidelines for the development of standards, tools and best practices for information
management across the GoC. The term “guideline” is defined by ARMA as being “a
recommendation suggesting a course of action but not requiring specific practices” (2012,
p. 25). Guidelines are issued and may be used by any organization, including government
agencies, to make actions to manage its electronic records more predictable and
systematic. Guidelines also contribute to define principles and common practices to
manage electronic records. The “official expression of principles that direct an
organization’s operations” is contains in a policy (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p. 300). Policies
are different from procedures “which detail how policies are implemented at the
operational level” (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p. 300). The use of guidelines, policies and
procedures aims at developing best practices that are “an improvement in a particular
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process, approach, technique, or subject matter knowledge that is good enough to replace
an existing practice and general enough to merit being disseminated widely throughout an
organization; a “good work practice” or innovative approach that is capture and shared to
promote repeat applications” (Dalkir, 2005, p. 330).
The management approach for e-mail has not yet been clearly established in the
field. A number of studies have discussed electronic records management (ERM)
principles and practices in general (Huc, 2010; Saffady, 2009; Smith, 2008). Since e-mail
management research stems from the field of ERM, fundamental concepts can be
applicable to e-mail management in the same manner (Smallwood, 2013; Saffady, 2009;
Stephens and Wallace, 2003). Electronic records are discussed in a broad context without
any specific attention to the particularities of e-mail records. Among them, only a small
number of studies deal with e-mail in government environments (Parrish and Courtney,
2007; Patterson and Sprehe, 2002). Moreover, research into the effectiveness of
developing and implementing e-mail management systems and policy guidelines within
the Canadian government has been limited to date. The management of e-mail records
has not been extensively examined by records management researchers in terms of how
to manage e-mail messages in order to ensure their reliability, authenticity and integrity.
Little archival research has been conducted that focuses on the current management and
implementation of policies and procedures of e-mail records. In particular, in government
agencies, there is no research that is directed on at the implementation of e-mail
management policies and practices in order to create, receive, maintain, preserve and
provide access to this specific type of electronic records.
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1.2. Purpose of the study
This study aims to understand how e-mail records are managed in Canadian
government agencies and to identify the characteristics that support the management and
preservation of e-mail records to ensure the reliability, authenticity, and integrity of these
records.
There are two specific objectives to this study. The first objective of this study is
to identify the general principles in managing e-mail records within Canadian
government agencies and departments and see to what extent these principles are actually
implemented in these agencies.
The second objective is to determine and compare significant similarities and
differences in managing e-mail records in government agencies and identify the current
practices in managing e-mail messages in order to ensure the reliability, authenticity, and
integrity of e-mail records.
This study fits into the research area of records management, a holistic approach
concerned with the systematic and administrative control of records throughout their
lifecycle to ensure the efficiency and economy in their creation, use, handling, control,
maintenance, and disposition (Saffady, 2009).
The Canadian government offers an interesting setting to study e-mail
management. Government agencies have a unique institutional environment due to their
regulatory function; this has an impact on the context within which the enacting decisions
are made (Horn, 1995). Nevertheless, as per the Accountability Act as well as audit
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requirements from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the Auditor General of
Canada, these organizations need to be accountable and transparent to all their
stakeholders (Allen, et al. 2001). Also, public access to government information is seen
as fundamental to democracy, particularly with the adoption of the Access to Information
Act (Eschenfelder and Miller, 2007, Chadwick and May, 2003). Government agencies
are required by laws and regulations to manage their records.
1.3. Research questions
As a first step toward understanding the objectives of this study, the researcher
formulated the following four research questions:
(1) What are the general principles of the e-mail management policies and guidelines within Canadian government agencies?
(2) To what extent are these e-mail management principles implemented in the federal agencies?
(3) What are the variations and similarities of e-mail management practices across federal agencies? To what extent are they effective?
(4) What are the current practices to manage e-mail messages in order to ensure the reliability, authenticity and integrity of this specific type of electronic records in federal agencies?
1.4. Significance of the study
The study contributes to identifying requirements to manage electronic records and e-
mail to ensure their integrity, authenticity and reliability. The research helps advance our
understanding of the administrative and procedural contexts of government electronic
21
records management. In addition, the results make contributions to building a framework
to ensure e-mail management in government agencies and to developing new e-mail
management and preservation policies and practices. The results of the research can be
used as evidence to move toward a better electronic records management and can be
applied to use in a variety of other organizational settings to meet the needs of e-mail
management.
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CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW
This literature review is divided into three sections: 1) the management of
electronic records; 2) Canadian government agencies as an institutional context; and 3) e-
mail management as a specific type of electronic records.
2.1. Electronic records: nature and characteristics
Examining and understanding how e-mails records are managed in government
agencies is the focal point of this study. The first section of the literature review
investigates the definitions and characteristics of and associated issues with electronic
records in general, since e-mails are one specific type of electronic records. In order to
comprehend the nature of electronic records basically and logically, the definitions and
characteristics of records are described from the following three perspectives: diplomatics,
archival science and records management.
2.1.1. Definition and characteristics of records
Diplomatics appeared as a science for:
“the study of the creation, form, and transmission of records, especially handwritten documents, and their relationship to the facts contained in them and to their creator(s), as a means of validating or disconfirming provenance and authenticity” (Duranti, 1998, p. 177).
Diplomatics requires examination of the internal and external characteristics of records,
such as the materials on which they are written, the script used by the writer, and the
literary style in which they are written in order to prove their reliability and authenticity
23
(Duranti, 1998). The definition of records in the diplomatics refers to “the written
evidence of a fact having a juridical nature, compiled in compliance with determined
forms, which are meant to provide it with full faith and credit” (Duranti, Eastwood and
MacNeil, 2002, p. 10). In order to be considered as a record, three prerequisites must be
present: (1) it has to be written; (2) it has to be affixed to a medium; and (3) it has to be
related to a fact taken into consideration by the juridical system within which it was
created. Diplomatics deals with the concept of record in the singular, because its analysis
is carried out at the item level (Duranti, Eastwood and MacNeil, 2002, p. 9). Since
diplomatics first originated in the seventeenth century for the purpose of proving
authenticity of documents presented as evidence in court, the diplomatics’ definition of
records is directly related to a legal perspective. In the nineteenth century, diplomatics
gradually became an auxiliary science of history, where records served as a tool of
interpretation to understand the past. Nevertheless, the definition of records is still
relevant. Diplomatics gives importance, not only to the record itself but also, to the broad
context of creation by emphasizing the significance of the legal system, the persons
creating the records, and the functions that they serve (Duranti, Eastwood and MacNeil,
2002).
Archival science shares similar objectives with diplomatics in the sense that it
defines records as evidence, although it looks at records as aggregations rather than as
individual items. The definition of records in archives is now currently accepted among
researchers and practitioners as:
“materials created or received by a person, family, or organization, public or private in the conduct of their affairs and preserved because of the enduring value
24
of the information they contain or as evidence of the functions and responsibilities of their creator” (Pearce-Moses, 2005, pp. 326-327).
Many archivists, especially those in the United States who are influenced by the
thinking of Theodore Schellenberg, follow an inclusive definition of archives, which
encompasses a wide variety of documents and records. Schellenberg also “distinguished
between the primary and secondary values of the materials; only materials with
secondary value, value beyond their original purpose, could be considered archival
materials” (Tschan, 2002, p. 180). For Schellenberg, archivists appraise records for
transfer to the archives based on their evidential, informationl or research value. Other
archivists follow the writing of Hilary Jenkinson, who argues that archives are
“documents which formed part of an official transaction and were preserved for official
reference” (Tschan, 2002, p. 178). For Jenkinson, it is the responsibility of the record’s
creator to evaluate and determine which records should be transferred to the archives.
Because Jenkinson considered that records are evidence of transactions, “he did not
recognize any collections of historical documents as archives, although he noted that
collections of personal papers were of value to historians because they complemented
archives” (Tschan, 2002, p. 179).
The concept of records can be further clarified from a records management
perspective. Records management is a specialized business discipline concerned with the
systematic and administrative control of records throughout their lifecycle to ensure
efficiency and economy in their creation, use, handling, control, maintenance, and
disposition (Saffady, 2009). Records have content and a structure/form and are created in
a context (McKemmish et al., 2005; Hofman, 1998; Bearman, 1994) and, according to
Thomassen (2001), “they are process bound information” (p. 375). Based on these
25
definitions, full and accurate records should possess the following three essential
characteristics: “(1) the content consists of the text, data, images, sound, graphics, and
other information that make up the substance of the record; (2) the structure refers to a
record's physical characteristics and internal organization of the content (the record
structure is the form that makes the content tangible and intelligible); (3) the context is
the organizational, functional, and operational circumstances surrounding a record’s
creation, receipt, storage, or use” (Öberg and Borglund, 2006, p. 57). Cox (2001) has
stated that the evidential value can only exist if the content, structure and context are
preserved. Other definitions augment this previous statement by adding that a record
needs a context, content and structure which are “sufficient to provide evidence of the
activity” and provide meaning and functionality (International Council on Archives,
1997, p. 9). Thomassen (2001) argues that these three characteristics do not make a
record unique compared to other sorts of information and that other criteria make a record
unique: (1) records are evidence of actions and transactions; (2) records should support
accountability; (3) records are related to work processes; and (4) records must be
preserved. These four criteria make records different from other types of information.
Indeed, all records contain information but not all information-bearing objects are
considered records. Records are supposed to be trustworthy. In other words, they must be
reliable and authentic to serve as evidence and support accountability. Lemieux has
shown that “the relationship between records and accountability has shown that record
creation ensures reliability, authenticity and thus their trustworthiness is a quality
essential to the giving of and holding to account” (Lemieux, 2001, p. 92).
26
The definition of records by the International Standard ISO 15489-1 Information
and documentation is “information created or received and maintained by an agency or
organization in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transactions of business” (ISO
15489, 2001, p. 3). Records management shows the importance of the trustworthiness of
a record, since records are created or received in the conduct of business activities and
serve as evidence of those activities. In an organization, records are part of the
organizational memory and are used to support its functions and activities. Records must
reflect what was communicated or decided, or what action was taken. It should be able to
support the needs of the organization to which it related and be used for accountability
purposes. In addition, by definition, records contain information that is captured in some
tangible form as opposed to memorized or exchanged verbally. Indeed, an important
notion of the concept of records is their fixity. As mentioned by the European
Commission, a record consists of “data or information that has been fixed on a medium”
(European Commission, 2001, p. 8). The characteristic of fixedness represents the quality
of content being stable and resisting change. To preserve the organizational memory
effectively, record content must remain consistent over time. The medium refers to the
physical material that carries the information. The medium is a part of the record itself.
In summarizing the definitions of records, we understand that a record is created,
received and used in the conduct of business activities as evidence of those activities.
Records support the continuing conduct of business, ensure compliance with the
regulatory environment and provide the necessary accountability to organizations. These
definitions may appear to be relatively straightforward in the paper environment. As a
27
next step, we need to examine whether these definitions and characteristics apply to
electronic records as well.
2.1.2. Characteristics of electronic records
The applicability of the characteristics of paper records to electronic records has
presented a challenge to researchers and practitioners over the last two decades. David
Bearman briefly explained the difference between paper records and electronic
counterparts:
“the essential difference between electronic and paper records is that the former are only logical things while paper records are usually thought of as only physical things. Physical things can be stored in only one place and in one observable order, logical things can be physically housed in many places but seen together. They can appear to have different arrangements depending upon the views accorded to their users. In other words, the properties of logical things are associated with them through formal, defined, logical relations while the properties of physical things are associated with them as material objects with concrete locations, attachments and markings” (Bearman, 1996, p. 1).
The nature and characteristics of the terms “records” and “electronic records”
vary slightly as presented by Bearman as quoted above. The diplomatics’ examination
shows that an electronic record is just like traditional record, since it must have:
“1) an identifiable context; 2) an originator, an author,
a writer,
an addressee,
and a
creator; 3) an action, in which the record participates or which the record supports
either procedurally or as part of the decision-making process; 4) explicit linkages to other records within or outside the digital system, through a classification code or other unique identifier; 5) a fixed form; and 6) a stable content”. (Duranti, 2009, p. 45-46).
Unlike traditional records, electronic records’ components are not necessarily
linked together since their parts can exist and be managed separately depending of the
hardware and software that are being used. Therefore, the general principles of records
management can be applied to records in any format. Regardless, electronic records raise
28
additional specific and distinctive issues. It is more difficult to ensure that the content,
context and structure of records are preserved and protected, when the records do not
have a physical existence. From Bearman’s definition, we understand that electronic
records are not simply an equivalent of traditional paper records in the 21st century. The
Pearce-Moses Glossary published by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) gives a
definition of the nature of electronic records: “data or information that has been captured
and fixed for storage and manipulation in an automated system and that requires the use
of the system to render it intelligible by a person” (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p. 141).
Electronic records can encompass both analog and digital information formats, although
the term most often refers to records created in electronic format (so called born digital)
but is sometimes used to describe scans of records in other formats (i.e. reborn digital or
born analog) and requires a system to access these records. The Government of Canada
(GoC) states that the content and business context, not the medium, defines a record so
that computerized information or data, such as e-mail, meets the definition of a
government record (Government of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat, 2007, section 3).
The growth of electronic records emphasizes the fact that they must be managed in
accordance with the business needs of an institution and its legislation and policies.
Although both electronic and paper records contain the common as well as
distinctive characteristics to serve as evidence of business activities, in practice, two
types of records may require a different approach, because an electronic record is not
tangible like traditional records but a computer file format composed of hardware and
software. One major difference between records in electronic and paper-based format is
that electronic records are not “directly human-readable, thus their physical appearance
29
alone does not provide sufficient information to identify their origin, purpose, uses or
other aspects of the context in which they were created and maintained” (International
Records Management Trust, 2009, p. 40). Maintaining content, structure and context of
electronic records becomes, therefore, more vital and difficult than with traditional
records. In addition, Duranti and Thibodeau indicated that
“an electronic record is an object that is output from a computer system, typically on a screen, when needed by a human, or in interactions between systems, but cannot be stored in the form in which it is seen or used (…). Instead, it is stored as one or more strings of bits that require processing by a computer to be seen or used again as a unit” (Duranti and Thibodeau, 2006, p. 7).
Research has shown that “preserving an electronic record consists of preserving the
ability to reproduce it” (Duranti and Thibodeau, 2006, p. 7). The information and
communication technologies that manage and preserve electronic records must locate the
different components of a record and use the appropriate software to each component to
reproduce the record. Duranti explains that
“digital components may contain all or part of a record, and/or the related metadata. For example, an e-mail containing a textual message, a picture and a digital signature has at least four digital components: the header data, which enable systems to properly route and manage the message, the text of the message, the picture, and the digital signature” (Duranti, 2009, p. 46).
The use of information and communication technologies affects the procedures for
creating, preserving, and disposing of records. It may affect the accessibility of electronic
information accordingly and result in new ways in which organizations communicate and
execute business processes. According to Meijer, the fact that many records are handled
exclusively in an electronic form may have an important impact on “the content and
quality of records kept for purposes of accountability” (Meijer, 2001, p. 261). Since an
important function of records management is to create and preserve the records in order
30
for organizations to be held accountable, the loss or alteration of electronic records can
seriously affect public accountability. Therefore, Duranti argues that the “concepts of
fixed form and stable content, however, require elaboration, as these two characteristics
of a digital record are the most problematic” to ensure records trustworthiness (Duranti,
2009, p. 46).
Indeed, electronic records should meet the characteristics of trustworthy records:
(1) reliability, (2) authenticity, (3) integrity, (4) usability, and (5) compliance (ISO 15489,
2001). Reliable records are those whose “content can be trusted as a full and accurate
representation of the transactions or activities to which it attests and therefore can be
depended upon in the course of subsequent transactions or activities” (ISO 15489, 2001,
p. 7). Records should be created at the time of the transaction to which they relate by
individuals who have direct knowledge of the facts of the business transactions.
An authentic record is one that is “proven to be what it purports to be and have
been created by the organizations with which it is identified” (ISO 15489, 2001, p. 7). To
ensure the authenticity of records, organizations should implement policies and
procedures to control the creation, transmission and destruction of records and make sure
that they are protected against unauthorized deletion, alteration and use.
The integrity of a record refers to it being “complete and unaltered” (ISO 15489,
2001, p. 7). The creation and use of policies and procedures should document any
modifications made to a record and under what circumstances to be indicated and
traceable.
31
A usable record is one that can be located, retrieved, presented, and interpreted
(ISO 15489, 2001, p. 7). A record should be directly connected to the business activity
that produced it and identify the record within the context of broader activity.
Finally, the electronic records must be managed in compliance with all
requirements arising from current business, the regulatory framework and community
expectations of the organizations activities (ISO 15489, 2001, p. 9).
Records in the electronic environment have other unique characteristics like:
“durability; lifespan; maintenance; ease of editing, copying, erasure, and reformatting (manipulability); ease of manipulation, including the difficulty of tracing manipulation; need for supporting documentation to describe the contents, arrangement, codes, and technical characteristics; need for specialized personnel for the processing and maintenance of the records, introducing a new player in the normal clique of archivist, creator, and user” (Suderman, 2001, p.2).
Therefore, a systematic records management policy is required to ensure that the
appropriate records will be available to respond to accountability needs. This involves
developing and maintaining policies and procedures for managing records. The issues
related to electronic records management have been widely acknowledged in the
international archival and records management communities.
2.1.3. Research projects on electronic records
A number of research projects and initiatives have examined the nature and
characteristics of electronic records from conceptual, policy and implementation
perspectives. Each of these projects has made a significant contribution to the
advancement of the fields of archives and records management.
32
Until the 1990s, few publications on electronic records have appeared in the
major literature of archives, records management, and library and information science.
Even then, most of these publications dealt with only guidelines for policymaking and
policy implementation concerning electronic records. Since the mid-1990s, the literature
on electronic records has become much richer. Several research projects on electronic
records have been conducted to examine the characteristics of electronic records. Some
of those projects focused on identifying the functional requirements of what an electronic
recordkeeping system might be (e.g. University of Pittsburgh project on Functional
Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping, Indiana University’s Electronic Records
Project, Victorian Electronic Records Strategy, etc.).
As an early conspicuous project, the University of Pittsburgh’s project Functional
Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping (1993-1996) conducted a study to develop a
set of well-defined recordkeeping functional requirements which satisfy all the various
legal, administrative, and other needs of a particular organization and can be used in the
design and implementation of electronic information systems. The research team focused
on practical considerations beginning with an expert panel composed of professionals and
practitioners in the records-related fields, including lawyers, records managers, auditors,
etc. and identified evidentiary requirements for electronic records. The project team
validated these functional requirements through the use of a literary warrant and
production rules for records. The concept of literary warrant consists of statutory,
regulatory, or organizational policy requirements to create and maintain electronic
records as evidence. The Pittsburgh Project’s requirements to preserve information about
an electronic record’s content, structure, and context have been universally adopted by
33
other task forces and research projects on the design and implementation of electronic
recordkeeping systems. In addition, this project was able to provide a conceptual and
solid framework for the advancement of electronic records management programs in
different settings.
The University of British Columbia (UBC) project, entitled The Preservation of
the Integrity of Electronic Records (1994-1997), offered another conceptual perspective.
The researchers defined conceptual requirements for ensuring the integrity and reliability
of electronic records. One of the major contributions of the UBC project is an explicit
articulation of the concepts of reliable and authentic electronic records derived from the
fundamental concepts of diplomatics. Specifically, the reliability of records is defined as
their trustworthiness as “proof and memory of the activity of which they constitute the
natural by-product, that is, to their ability to stand for the facts they are about” (Duranti,
Eastwood and MacNeil, 2002, p. 25). In turn, the capacity of records to “stand for the
facts they are about” is determined by procedures that control their form and creation and
the trustworthiness of the creator in ensuring their accuracy (Duranti, Eastwood and
MacNeil, 2002, p. 27). Equally important is the authenticity of electronic records, which
the UBC project defines as “reliability over time” (Duranti, Eastwood and MacNeil, 2002,
p. 28). From this perspective, ensuring the authenticity of electronic records requires
protecting records against alteration from the moment of transmission through any
reproduction and preservation procedure. This is crucial because providing long-term
access to electronic records involves reformatting, copying, conversion, and/or migration
operations and procedures that expose the records to the risk of alteration or loss of
contextual information.
34
Based on the outcomes of the UBC project, the U.S. Department of Defense’s
Records Management Task Force (1994-1996) project outlined a set of electronic records
management requirements in order to certify records management software applications
to make sure that they meet the requirements necessary to support business activities.
These requirements were later included in the Department of Defense standard (DoD
5015.2-STD) and has become an industry standard for many state, county, and local
governments. The requirements embodied in this standard have resulted, if implemented,
in a system that will manage electronic records with the desired levels of confidence and
integrity.
Building on the UBC and DoD research projects, the International research on
Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems (InterPARES) aimed to develop the
conceptual and methodological knowledge necessary for the permanent preservation of
authentic records generated and/or maintained electronically and to formulate models,
policies, strategies and standards capable of ensuring that preservation. Composed of 14
countries, such as Canada, United States of America, Italia, Australia, Korea and others
in the InterPARES I, the research was first divided into four areas: the authenticity
requirements for the preservation of electronic records; the appraisal requirements for
authentic electronic records; the long-term preservation of authentic electronic records;
and finally, the formulation of policies, strategies and standards related to the long-term
preservation of authentic electronic records. The main contribution of this project is to
identify research methods to measure the authenticity, based on the specificities of
electronic records for long-term preservation.
35
The InterPARES II research project (2002-2006) aimed to develop and articulate
the concepts, principles, criteria and methods that can ensure the creation and
maintenance of accurate and reliable records and the long-term preservation of authentic
records in the context of artistic, scientific, and government activities (InterPARES II,
2002). These contexts produce a lot of electronic records using experiential, interactive
and dynamic computer technology these days. Scholars in the arts and sciences,
archivists, artists, scientists, and government representatives worked together to address
the challenges drawn from the incompatibility of digital systems, technological
obsolescence, and media fragility and guarantee that society’s digitally recorded memory
will be accessible to future generations (InterPARES II, 2002). As an international,
collaborative and inter-disciplinary research, researchers in each working group identified
the perspective(s), research design, and methods to be most appropriate to their inquiry.
The concepts, principles and methods developed through scientific research constitute the
essential foundation and framework of best practices. Any solution to digital preservation
problems will be situation- specific and must be devised by preservers, depending on the
cultural, administrative, legal, and functional contexts in which they operate. By
exploring different environments, the researchers were able to look at the preservation of
authentic electronic records of different nature, such as photographs, moving images and
electronic mail.
The InterPARES III (2007-2012) project attemped a more practical focus by
applying the theory and methods of digital preservation drawn from the first and second
InterPARES project outcomes into concrete practice for existing bodies of records in
archives and archival/records units within an organization. The objectives are to
36
determine: (1) how general theory and methods can be implemented in small and medium
sized archives and units and become effective practices; (2) what factors determine the
type of implementation that is appropriate for each body of records in each context; and
(3) what skills professionals will require to conduct such operations (InterPARES III,
2007). The participating teams have conducted case studies at diverse organizations in
each national team.
Park’s study (2002) examines the conceptual requirements for guaranteeing the
authenticity of records in academic electronic recordkeeping systems and examines how
these requirements are implemented to support business activities. The findings of her
research identified four requirements and their inter-relationships, namely juridical,
procedural, technological and sociocultural which are interrelated to ensure the
authenticity of electronic records. First, the juridical requirements encompass “any legal
or other external regulatory requirements for implementing and designing the students
information systems and creating, using, and storing student records, such as national and
state laws; regulations; university policy; organizational guidelines; and professional,
accreditation, and licensing requirements” (Park, 2002, p. 136). The juridical
requirements serve as a basis in each university to sustain their mission and objectives
(Park, 2002, p. 136). The procedural requirements include “procedural or functional
requirements, such as administrative mandate, organizational stuctures, business
procedures, workflow, and business processes” (Park, 2002, pp. 144-145). The
technological requirements refer to “how authenticity is ensured within the student
recordkeeping systems” by examing how the technology (e.g. hardware and software) is
implemented and used (Park, 2002, p. 154). The final component of her framework is the
37
sociocultural requirements that refer to “any social, cultural, political, verbal, or
traditional requirements used in the practices associated with input, process, and output of
a student record system in a specific environment” (Park, 2002, p. 162). With these
requirements, Park develops a conceptual framework in composing of the hierarchy of
authenticity requriements and authentication processes as shown in Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1. Park’s conceptual framework on authenticity requirements and authentication processes
Admissions Student Records
Registration/ Financial Aid
Enrollment/ Course
Grades Graduation
F u n c t i o n s
Juridical Requirements
Technological Requirements
Procedural Requirements
R e q u i r eme n t s
Sociocultural Requirements
38
In summary, as electronic records have been defined from several relevant
disciplines, they have some common components with paper records: (1) records contain
a content, context and structure; (2) records are created in the business processes and
serve as evidence of organizations activities; and (3) evidence is one of the important
aspects to keep accountability of records at the holding organization. Importantly, to keep
these features to electronic records is more difficult than paper records. The preceding
research projects have made efforts in investigating the characteristics of electronic
records and especially, identifying the authenticity, reliability, and integrity of electronic
records for long-term preservation. However, most of them tend to be conceptually
conceived without practical implementations and seem to focus on electronic records in
general, not on specific type of electronic records, such as e-mail or web-based records.
2.2. Government agencies as an institutional context
In order to understand the institutional context of e-mail management, this section
presents the characteristics of government agencies and their records management
practices. There is a large body of literature on organizational theory, organizational
culture and decision-making practices in many institutions. Among them, an important
number of studies focus on federal governments and government agencies in general.
Most of those studies agree that government agencies have a unique institutional
environment (Bertot, et al., 2009; Rainey and Steinbauer, 1999; Tirole, 1994; Perry and
Rainey, 1988, Seidman, 1954). A government is defined “as the organization through
which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and
directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects” (Allen, et al., 2001, p. 95).
There are different forms of government that vary both in theory and practices such as
39
totalitarian, communism, monarchy, democracy and so on. Horn (1995) explains that
“governments are distinctive from other types of institutions by the following reasons: (1)
they have a regulatory function; (2) the regulation has a strong impact on their context;
and (3) their enacting decisions are made as the governing authority”. Indeed, one of the
fundamental purposes of a government is the maintenance of security and public order by
the creation and enforcement of laws and regulations. The Canadian government is
organized as a constitutional democracy. Democracy is a “political form of government
in which governing power is derived from the people” (Government of Canada, Canada’s
System of Government, 2011). Even though there is no specific, universally accepted
definition of democracy, equality and freedom have been identified as important
characteristics of democracy. These principles are reflected in all “citizens being equal
before the law and having equal access to power. The freedom of its citizens is secured
by legitimized rights and liberties that are generally protected by a constitution”
(Government of Canada, Canada’s System of Government, 2011). While the issues
surrounding the characteristics of democracy is beyond the scope of this dissertation, our
focus is on the implications of this form of government on records management practices.
Many democratic countries, such as Canada, use federalism in order to prevent
abuse and increase public input by dividing governing powers between municipal,
provincial and national governments. A federal government is the government at the level
of the nation-state. The structure of federal governments varies from institution to
institution. Usual responsibilities of this level of government which are not granted to
lower levels are maintaining national security and exercising international diplomacy.
Basically, the federal government has the power to make laws and regulations for the
40
country, in contrast with provincial or local governments. To ensure the oversight and
administration, the government apparatus is organized in “government departments and
agencies, which are responsible for helping the federal government form and implement
policy within its jurisdictions” (Government of Canada, Canada’s System of
Government, 2011). A government agency can be defined as “a unit of government
authorized by law to perform a specific function” (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p. 84). There are
different types of agency since the autonomy, independence and accountability of
government agencies tend to vary. While the functions of an agency are essentially
executive, it is normally different from a department or ministry that focused mainly on
advisory functions, but this difference is often unclear in practice and in the literature
(Hu, et al., 2010; Luna-Reyes, et al., 2007; Dawes, Pardo and Cresswell, 2003). Agency
names may use another wording as equivalent, such as department, office, bureau,
authority or ministry. Therefore, in this research, government refers to the Canadian
federal government and agency is a generic term that encompasses all these other names.
2.2.1. Government information and creation of e-government
Information is a valuable asset that governments must manage as a “public trust
on behalf of all relevant parties, including citizens, businesses, stakeholders and political
parties” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2007, section 3).
Specifically, government information means “information created, received, used, and
maintained regardless of physical form, and information prepared for or produced by the
government and deemed to be under its control in the conduct of government activities or
in pursuance of legal obligations” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada
Secretariat, Glossary, 2003, Section G). Government information should be under its
41
control in the conduct of government activities or in pursuance of legal obligations (Hu,
et al., 2010; Eschenfelder and Miller, 2006; Chadwick and May, 2003). This is seen as
fundamental to democratic society, since “governance power is delegated by citizens or
stakeholders to government agencies and in turn, government agencies supply
information to the public” (Walters, 2005). Because of the characteristics of government
agencies, governments need to be concerned with the efficient delivery of government
information to citizens and other users to facilitate citizen assessment of agency policies
and performance. At the same time, governments are obligated to collect information on
citizens’ opinions to inform policy making (Walters, 2005; Leonard, 2003). Here,
information flow of government information is two ways and information facilitates
better governance by permitting oversight and informing policy decisions. In this view,
“citizens are acting as a counterbalance to government agencies, overseeing policy
implementations, holding agencies accountable, and providing feedback for expert
agency decision makers to use in expert decision making” (Yildiz, 2007, p. 649).
However, the government size and the number of administrative units can affect the
efficiency of the agencies (Sarapu, 2010). At the government, the agencies often work
independently and might not be aware what information exists elsewhere. That is why the
government is often considered a “non-efficient producer” (Carrick, 1988; Rainey and
Steinbauer, 1999). As a result, citizens might be confused as to when and which agencies
to ask information of and find that there is a lack of coherence between agencies. Until
the widespread of the Internet, technology was used in government to enhance “the
managerial effectiveness of public administrators while increasing government
productivity” (Schelin, 2003, p. 122).
42
In recent years, “governments worldwide are faced with the challenges of
transforming and reinventing government systems, delivering cost effective services
through information and communication technologies (ICT)”, and implementing new
ICT (Georgescu and Georgescu, 2008, p. 242). These needs come to change a lot of
aspects in government management leading up to e-government. More and more
governments provide services through Internet, specifically web-based applications, and
e-mail. E-government is defined:
“as a way for governments to use the most innovative information and communication technologies, particularly web-based Internet applications, to provide citizens and businesses with more convenient access to government information and services, to improve the quality of the services and to provide greater opportunities to participate in democratic institutions and processes” (Fang, 2002, p. 2).
E-government refers to technologies reconfiguration of the public administration and
governance and how knowledge, power and purpose are redistributed according to new
technological realities (Hu, et al., 2010, p. 6). Pardo outlined the five functions of the e-
government as follows: (1) citizen access to government information; (2) compliance
with a set of rules or regulations; (3) citizen access to personal benefits; (4) procurement
including bidding, purchasing, and payment; and (5) government-to-government
information and service integration (Pardo, 2000). Therefore, the use of ICT aimed at
improving government services and interactions with citizens (G2C), businesses and
industry (G2B), and different agencies of government (G2G). Overall, e-government was
a tool to ensure greater efficiency and better management of government services by
improving government coordination and collaboration in and between agencies,
enhancing public participation in the affairs of government and the democratic process
and bringing people and government closer together (Gauld, Gray and McComb, 2009).
43
The United States and the Great Britain have led the way in establishing a basic
informational form of web presence since the mid-1990s (Chadwick and May, 2003). In
Canada, the change towards becoming "electronic governments" has been successful,
which places the Canadian government as one of the most active governments seeking
ICT implementation (Reddick and Turner, 2012). The GoC has clearly outlined its
mission to become one of the world's most connected governments by year 2004 and was
considered one of the most innovative governments in terms of information technologies,
online services, and organizational capacity to speedily adapt information (Roy and
Langford, 2008, p. 16). For a long time, Canada was the international leader of e-
government through the constant evolution of its e-government tool, Government On-
Line initiative, “a modern citizen-centric, one-stop integrated, multi-channel tool”
(Government of Canada, Public Works and Government Services Canada, 2005, p. 1). In
the years since its creation, the GoC put a lot of work into e-government for its citizens so
they could have access to government information and services.
Nevertheless, Canada has “fallen behind” in the e-government implementation
(Accenture, 2009). Based on four criteria (i.e. cost reduction, accessibility, retrieval, and
security), Fraser showed that the GoC, although it has made “valiant strides to make e-
government in Canada a universal reality, has not yet been able to achieve the full
potential for online government” (Fraser, 2009, p.11). Therefore, as electronic
government (e-government) services are implemented, several critical questions about
digital government information management, dissemination, access, and preservation of
electronic records still remain.
Another important concept is e-governance that is under wide discussion in the
44
literature. Harris (2000) explains that e-governance is more than just installing a
government web site, offering services over the Internet, or simple access to electronic
payments. E-governance allows “citizens to communicate with government, participate in
the governments' policy-making and citizens to communicate each other and to
participate in the democratic political process” (Manohar, Rao and Mellam, 2010, p.
244). Along with e-governance, e-government is about government using information
technologies and then redefining its “social technologies” in order to remain relevant in a
more participative, interactive and informational era (Lips and Rapson, 2009). Noticeably,
e-government indicates that most of government information and records are now created
in an electronic format and electronic records became important issues to government
agencies.
Related to electronic records, one of the significant issues in government
information management is accountability. Generally speaking, accountability refers to
“informal giving that is part of everyday conversation, as well as more formal
transactions generally involving some sort of documentary support” (Munro, 1996, p. 2).
According to Kearns, accountability is a formal reporting to a higher authority and
includes expectations of performance and responsiveness to citizens and institutions
(Kearns, 1996, p. 8). This definition implies that accountability involves two parties who
render an account and judge that account. Yakel states an important point by saying that
“every setting organizes its activities to make its properties as an organized environment
of practical activities detectable, countable, recordable, reportable, tell-a-story-about-
able, analyzable—in short accountable” (Yakel, 2001, p. 234). Accountability serves as
evidence of current actions and activities and takes decisions for future actions. The SAA
45
defines accountability as being “the ability to answer for, explain, or justify actions or
decisions for which an individual, organization, or system is responsible” (Pearce-Moses,
2005, p. 5). According to MacNeil, “the principle that underlies the concept of
accountability is linked to the conveying and evaluation of information” (MacNeil, 2000,
p. 50). For corporate bodies, accountability required the development and refinement of
procedures for carrying out actions and documenting them, “to ensure that everything
was done according to rule and in proper sequence, so that administrators could
account… at any time precisely for anything that had been done” (MacNeil, 2002, p. 50).
Islam and Gronlund define accountability in public administration as “an obligation of
the government officials regarding handling of public resources and answerability on
deviating from any stated performance objectives” (2012, p. 297). According to this
definition, the responsibilities of the public administration include operational
transparency and establishing trust within the government agencies as well as with the
citizens. Institutional accountability has depended on “recordmaking, recordkeeping and
access to those records, and it has influenced the procedures and timing of their creation,
form, maintenance and accessibility” (Lemieux, 2001, p. 93).
In relation to the characteristics of records, records serve a purpose in the
accountability process and evidence of it. Records management focuses on how
accountability is achieved through recordkeeping. Accountability has become, over the
years, a significant focus in records management. Bearman (1993) states that “archives
and records management share a simple goal: providing for organizational
accountability” (Bearman, 1993, p. 14). Traditionally, the relationship between records
and accountability has rested on a “belief that the usual circumstances of records creation
46
gives assurances of reliability, authenticity, and trustworthiness of records. Therefore, it
is an essential quality to giving of and holding to account” (Lemieux, 2001, p. 92). A
systematic records management policy is required to ensure that the appropriate records
will be available for accountability processes. This involves developing and maintaining
policies, procedures, and methodologies.
2.2.2. Management of federal records and creation of national archives
In order to manage accountable and effective government records, most
governments have established national archives whose main mandate is to ensure the
preservation and management of federal government records and serves as the continuing
memory of the government and affiliated institutions. Over the years, the national
archives have become a “centre of expertise in creating, managing and preserving official
information and helped government and public sector bodies manage and use information
more effectively” (Government of the United States, National Archives and Records
Administration, 2007, General Information Leaflet, Number 1). The National Archives
and Records Administration (NARA), in the United States, was one of the first
government institutions to develop tools for other agencies so that they can manage their
records in electronic form. NARA is a federal agency whose primary responsibility
consists of: managing the records of all three branches of the United States federal
government; providing guidance to federal agencies on records management policies and
practices; and preserving records of permanent historical value to the United States in
both federal archives and presidential libraries (Government of the United States,
National Archives and Records Administration, 2007, General Information Leaflet,
Number 1). The electronic records management initiative is a part of the “e-government
47
management agendas that aimed at making it simpler for citizens to receive high-quality
service from the federal government, while reducing the cost of delivering those
services” (Government of the United States, National Archives and Records
Administration, 2002). The US government has recognized that records management is
an important part of the infrastructure as one of 24 government initiatives in the States,
which will make e-government work. The electronic records management initiative has
provided guidance on electronic records management applicable to government-wide
agencies and enabled the agencies to transfer electronic records to NARA in a “variety of
data types and formats so that they may be preserved for future use by the government
and citizens” (Government of the United States, National Archives and Records
Administration, 2002, p. 3).
Also, the National Archives of Australia (NAA) has created several kinds of
procedures and policies to enable the strategic management of information. Especially,
the NAA accords a great deal of attention to the management of electronic records. For
example, the Strategic Information and Records Management Framework provides an
“approach to managing information and records; to reduces business risk; increases
accountability and improves operational efficiencies” (Government of Australia, National
Archives of Australia, 2014c). This approach to information and records management
implies focusing “on an effective information governance framework; adhering to
standards and legislation; allocating roles and responsibilities; and linking business to
records” (Government of Australia, National Archives of Australia, 2014c). More
specifically, the Government's Digital Transition Policy “aims to move Australian
Government agencies to digital recordkeeping for efficiency purposes” (Government of
48
Australia, National Archives of Australia, 2014a). With the implementation of the e-
government, new types of electronic records started to appear such as e-mail and web-
based records and accordingly the NAA has declared those records as a new form of
evidence. As a result, the federal government started to develop and implement policies
that cover these types of records as well as completed policies on the preservation of
these records such as Archiving Websites: Advice and Policy Statement (Government au
Australia, National Archives of Australia, n.d.) and Managing Email (Government of
Australia, National Archives of Australia, 2014b).
In this context, the GoC has also made an effort in playing a leading role in
Canadian government agencies. In the past, government agencies worked separately and
government information was managed by each agency according to their own needs. In
Canada, in 2001, the Chief Information Officer’s Branch (CIOB) of the Treasury Board
Secretariat engaged in a Strategic Infrastructure Initiative (SII). “SII was based on the
development of a federated architecture of internal information systems – to foster
common standards, directories, and shared approaches both within and across federal
government departments” (Allen, et al., 2001, p. 96). The Canadian government created
and implemented policies and procedures to manage their records that were created
electronically. In the GoC, information is protected as a “public trust and managed as a
strategic asset to maximize its value in the service of Canadians” (Government of
Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2007, section 3). This vision was
achieved through the implementation of the GoC Information Management (IM)
Strategy. The GoC IM Strategy is a “coordinated approach that ensures that the
appropriate enterprise-level governance, direction, information structures, processes,
49
tools, and skill sets are in place across the GoC to support the effective management of
information” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2007,
section 6).
The GoC IM Strategy was crucial for managing the volume of information
produced, and the increasing number of available access points for its creation and
communication. At the same time, “complex issues such as national security required that
government establishes policies and procedures that often cut across the mandates of
several federal departments and agencies. Concurrent with this growing need for
horizontality, there were increasing demands by Canadian citizens for an integrated and
responsive government that can leverage information to make effective decisions that
support the delivery of high value programs efficiently, transparently and accountably”
(Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2010). The Treasury
Board of Canada developed general information management policies and procedures
that each department or agency could use to create their own policies for managing their
electronic records (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2007,
section 6).
The Library and Archives Canada (LAC) was established to take on the
responsibility of managing government records and documents. Its mandate is to
facilitate the management of government information and provide leadership in the
government community by working collaboratively with the central agencies,
departments and agencies and develop standards, tools and best practices for information
management. In 2007, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) adopted the
Policy Framework for Information and Technology. This policy encourages all
50
departments and agencies to treat information as a critical resource that needs to be
managed, shared, and protected. The policy provides strategic direction for management
of information in the GoC, and facilitates implementation of information-related
provisions in legislation and policies (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada
Secretariat, 2007, section 6). As a common body of practices, this framework ensures that
agencies share principles but maintain the capacity to adapt it to their organizational
contexts. Accordingly, different standards and tools have been created to implement the
framework and answer to the various needs and issues depending on the types of records
(Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2007, section 6). For
instance, a metadata scheme for the governmental resources, policies for the management
of web-based records and e-mail management policies were all developed.
In 2009, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat adopted the Directive on
Recordkeeping that shows the importance of appropriate records management practices at
the Government of Canada. Recordkeeping is defined as “a framework of accountability
and stewardship in which information resources are created or acquired, captured, and
managed as a vital business asset and knowledge resource to support effective decision-
making and achieve results for Canadians” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of
Canada Secretariat, 2009). The objective of this directive is to “ensure effective
recordkeeping practices that enable departments to create, acquire, capture, manage and
protect the integrity of information resources of business value in the delivery of
Government of Canada programs and services”, thus establishing recordkeeping as a core
function within the Canadian government (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of
Canada Secretariat, 2009). The Directive on Recordkeeping also defines responsibilities
51
for stakeholders involved in the creation and management of records. As such, “each
public servant has the responsibility to preserve and manage the information resources
created and used in their work” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada
Secretariat, 2009) while information management senior officials are responsible for
“overseeing the implementation and monitoring of this directive in their departments,
bringing to the deputy head's attention any significant difficulties, gaps in performance,
or compliance issues” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat,
2009). In order to ensure the appropriate implementation of this directive, the information
management managers and operational managers are asked to collaborate. Consequences
for non-compliance to the Directive on Recordkeeping are defined and vary depending on
the nature of the infraction, ranging from additional training to disciplinary measures
(Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2009). According to
Buhlmann (2011), this directive marks as a paradigm shift in order to ensure
accountability, decision-making and governance.
In addition, with the increase of electronic records, electronic records
management systems (ERMS) have become important to e-government because of their
capacity of centralizing within a repository, managing and accessing government records
(Hu, et al., 2010, p. 7). Moloi and Mutula (2007) argue that an electronic records
management system support “agencies decision-making and performance” and report that
the “effective use of an ERMS can mitigate the key information gaps with enhanced
transparency, accountability, and governance” (pp. 302-303). To ensure the management
of electronic records of the GoC, the TBS has established the Records, Documents, and
Information Management System (RDIMS) as the suite of applications for records and
52
document management in the federal government as part of the Shared Systems
Initiative. RDIMS is an electronic document and records management solution designed
to manage documents and records throughout their lifecycle and facilitate the sharing of
information within agencies and across the GoC. However, Roy and Langford (2008)
have shown that, in the Canadian government agencies as well as within other
government agencies worldwide, the implementation of ERMS has been uneven in the
context of e-government services. Moloi and Mutula (2007) have shown that in many
government agencies the slow implementation of ERMS is mainly due to the lack of
adequate policies, while Hu, et al.’s study (2010) explains that that “agencies usually
have considerable autonomy and indeed exhibit varying latitudes in the system choices
and implementation pace making it difficult to enforce ERMS on all agencies in a top-
down fashion” (p. 14).
To overcome these challenges and be more effective, the GoC is currently moving
forward in its commitment to enhancing transparency and accountability by
implementing open government efforts in order “to foster greater openness and
accountability to provide Canadians with more opportunities to learn about and
participate in government, to drive innovation and economic opportunities for all
Canadians and, at the same time, to create a more cost effective, efficient and
responsive government” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada
Secretariat, 2012, p. 1). The GoC has consulted the population and experts, in 2011, to
explore their views on how to increase government openness, transparency and
accountability. The GoC continues to work to give Canadians the opportunity to access
public information in more useful and readable formats, empower citizens to participate
53
more directly in the decision-making process and use new technologies to strengthen
governance. The Open Government Initiative is structured along the three streams of
the Open Government Strategy: Open Information, Open Data, and Open Dialogue
(Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2012). The objectives
of the Open Information stream are to “releases information, including on government
activities, to Canadians on an ongoing basis. By proactively making government
information available, it will be easier to find and more accessible for Canadians”
(Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2012, p. 6). In order to
achieve these objectives, the GoC has created an advanced government-wide
recordkeeping system for use by government agencies called GCDocs. GCDocs is the
government new document and records management system from OpenText that will
ensure that “information is safeguarded as a public trust and managed as a strategic
asset; providing a comprehensive approach to increasing IM capacity, sharing best
practices, and reducing redundancy, provide consistent policies, standards, best
practices, guidance, and tools to departments to support the effective delivery of
programs and services and finally, foster alignment and ensure linkages with other
related enterprise-wide activities (e.g., security, identity management, service strategy,
etc.)” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2012, p. 3) by
managing all information coming from different channels such as e-mail records in
hope that this new solution will be more easily implemented than the RDIMS. The
implementation of this new government-wide recordkeeping system highlighted
difficulties in maintining the different agencies e-mail messaging systems. Indeed, “the
Government of Canada currently has over 100 separate email systems used by more
54
than 300,000 government employees and maintaining these individually, given the
varying types and numbers of systems, is neither cost-effective nor is it conducive to
collaboration across government” (Government of Canada, Shared Services, Canada,
2013). As a result, the agencies have adopted different practices to manage their e-mail
systems. Starting in 2015, the GoC is planning to “consolidate and modernize email
services to reduce costs, increase security and enhance program delivery to Canadian
citizens and businesses” (Government of Canada, Shared Services, Canada, 2013) by
implementing a standard e-mail system to improve communication efficiency and
productivity in the agencies as well as make it easier for citizens to communicate with
the government.
2.2.3. Information professionals in the Canadian government agencies
The increase of electronic records had an impact on training programs offered by
schools on information science that had to introduce courses in digital technologies, but
also on the vocabulary used to appoint information professionals. According to Leroux,
Lemay et al. (2012), “this movement is the result of two dynamics: one is specific to job
families and the progressive systematization of knowledge in information management;
the other is external: the evolution of information media; after incorporating the
development of newspapers, the explosion of the "paperwork", the rise of audiovisual and
now, even more radical change with digital, Internet and the web” (pp. 28-29).
In 2011, Gartner, as reported by the Association of Information and Image
Management (AIIM), stated that
"the vast majority of organizations see the need to manage information as an enterprise resource rather than in separate 'silos,' departments or systems, but they don't know how to begin to address the challenge, as it is so large...Professional
55
roles focused on information management will be different to that of established IT roles…An 'information professional' will not be one type of role or skill set, but will in fact have a number of specializations” (2012, p. 4).
AIIM agrees that information professionals
“provide a wide range of services in the areas of: classification systems, taxonomies, tagging structures, thesauri, retention schedules, assessment criteria, information audits, knowledge audits, information research, information resources planning and acquisition, training programs for people using information, information and knowledge literacy campaigns and other 'finding and organizational aids and approaches” (2012, p. 9).
The Special Libraries Association defined information profesional as being
“a professional that uses information in her/his job to advance the mission of the organization. The information professional accomplishes this through the development, deployement and management of information resources and services. The information professional harnesses technology as a critical tools to accomplished this goal” (2003, p. 1). While “information professionals can play a number of roles in organization,
only a few professionals currently have information professional as a title” but have the
management of information ressources as the main part of their job description (AIIM,
2012, p. 10). Some job positions for information professionals include: archivist, chief
information officer, knowledge or records manager, librarian, web manager, etc (Jordan
and de Stricker, 2013, p. 9). AIIM specifies that information professionals can be “found
among those whose primary focus is governance – e.g., information architects and
managers or, as do the new wave of information curators and community managers who
currently focus primarily on curation” (2012, p. 7).
According to Jordan and de Stricker, the “information management work in the
Government of Canada is carried out by librarians, archivists, web content manager, and
information technology professionnels” (2013, p. 5). In brief, a combinaison of
professionals involved to some extent in information management. In 2007, the Treasury
56
Board of Canada Secretariat adopted the Directive on Information Management Roles
and Responsibilities to identify the roles and responsibilities of all agencies employees in
supporting the effective management of information in their agency. Managing
information is an “essential component in the effective management of business of an
agency and using and managing information is part of how the Government of Canada
conducts business” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat,
2007b) In addition, the directive put forward information technology (IT) is a “key
enabler to achieving well-managed information in support of policies, programs and
services” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2007b). The
directive identifies 4 levels of information management roles and responsibilities within
the GoC: senior executive of each agency, manager, employees and IM functional
specialists. The senior executive for each agency is responsible for information
management. As such, the senior executive is “responsible for ensuring the appropriate
management direction, processes and tools are in place to efficiently manage information
under the control of the department to support the department's business and to retain the
quality of information throughout the information life cycle” (Government of Canada,
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2007b). Specifically, the senior executive must
collaborate with IT for all information management activities; co-ordinate resources and
implementation of information management activities including: service delivery,
internal development of policy instruments, training and development for staff; monitor
departmental information management resource and training requirements; ensure the
effectiveness of the IM policy and its instruments is regularly assessed against objectives
within the department (e.g., every three years) (Government of Canada, Treasury Board
57
of Canada Secretariat, 2007b). The managers in agencies seem to
“have the role of managing resources, tools and processes in order to achieve assigned deliverables and outcomes. Managers are responsible for managing information as an integral part of their program and service delivery and as a strategic business resource by: analyzing the business process and conveying information requirements to information management functional specialists; applying information management policy, standards, procedures, directives, guidelines, tools and best practices, in the performance of the manager's duties, to ensure the authenticity and integrity of the information; identifying information issues and requirements of information management” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2007b).
The employees at the GoC are responsible for managing the “information they collect,
create and use as a valuable asset in their daily activities by applying the information
management policy, standards, procedures, directives, guidelines, tools and best
practices” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2007b).
Finally, the information management functional specialist is defined as:
“employee who carries out roles and responsibilities that require function-specific knowledge, skills and attributes related to managing information such as those found in records and document management, library services, archiving, data management, content management, business intelligence and decision support, information access, information protection and information privacy. The roles and responsibilities of information management functional specialists support departmental objectives and programs with planning, tools or services which provide accurate, reliable, current, and complete information to the appropriate people, in the appropriate format, at the appropriate time” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2007b).
Overall, information management in the Canadian federal government is “complex and
can involved many professions such as librarians, archivists, records managers and IT
professionnals” (Jordan and de Stricker, 2013, p. 3). In this research, the term information
management professionals is used to include the different professions involved in
information management and whose main responsibilities include: supporting business
activities; lifecycle management; policy and procedures development; dissemination,
58
training and monitoring of information management activities, and more specifically e-
mail management.
In summary, as the challenges to effectively manage government information are
growing, so are the requirements to better align information exchange across and between
government agencies and departments and respond to public demands for enhanced
government information management. Different policies and procedures were created to
manage government records, more importantly electronic records including e-mail.
However, these policies are in most cases only conceptual and provide little information
on the implementation of these policies. Without a coherent, explicit, enterprise-wide
strategy to address these horizontal and government-wide issues, individual departments,
agencies and even the GoC as a whole will face increasing difficulty in meeting their
accountability commitments.
2.3. E-mail as a specific type of electronic records
Most of organizations today use electronic mail (e-mail) with all kinds of access
points (e.g. web-based, mobile, proprietary platforms) to conduct business activities. This
medium of communication has grown uncontrolled into one of the largest corporate
information repositories now. As e-mail becomes more popular in organizations rapidly,
a review of e-mail management is necessary. This section describes the definition and
characteristics of e-mail and discuss the key issues related to e-mail management.
2.3.1. Definition and Characteristics of E-mail
The term e-mail contains a conceptual duality. It refers to: “1) a computer system
59
that enables users to create, transmit, receive, file, and respond to message electronically;
and 2) a message or messages sent or received in electronic form” (Government of
Canada, Library and Archives Canada, 2008, p. 16). The term e-mail is analogous to the
term mail, which indicates both the postal mail service and the letters themselves.
Regarding the former concept, ARMA International defines e-mail as being “in its
simplest form, e-mail is a ‘store and forward’, network independent, electronic messaging
technology that permits individuals to send and receive information without the use of, or
intervention by, internal and/or external mail distribution system” (ARMA, 2012, p. 18).
E-mail consists of messages sent or received by means of an e-mail messaging system.
The Society of American Archivists (SAA) also gives some technical precisions
regarding the messaging system: “an email system requires an application, sometimes
called a mail user agent (MUA), client or reader, that incorporates a simple text editor
used to compose messages and to send and receive messages” (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p.
121). The system also requires a mail transport agent (MTA) to store and forward
messages. However, an e-mail system typically “formats messages using the RFC 2822
Internet Message Format or Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) standards
when the messages are to be exchanged with another system” (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p.
121). E-mail systems commonly transmit messages using the “simple mail transport
protocol (SMTP) as an integral part of e-mail. Many MUAs and MTAs are based on
either the Post Office Protocol (POP3) or Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)
standards to keep interoperability between different e-mail systems” (Pearce-Moses,
2005, p. 121). E-mail system is considered an “individual-centric application”, meaning
that it can be customisable by an individual (Lappin, 2010, p. 259).
60
Regarding the latter part, the concept of e-mail also includes the message itself.
“E-mail message is composed of a header, a message body and, optionally, attachments”
(Park and Zwarich, 2008, p. 469). The header includes “information that enables the
message to be delivered and additional metadata to identify, classify, and contextualize
the message”, such as sender, addressee, subject and date (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p. 121).
Routing information identifying the message sender, the recipient(s), and the date and
time distributed is generally considered a key element of e-mail use, providing the proper
context for understanding the message content. The message body can be notes or more
formal and substantial narrative documents. The message can contain “data in any
conceivable form such as ASCII text” (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p. 121). These days data
consists increasingly of images, text processing files or multimedia files. Attachments
may be “in any format, such as word processing documents, spreadsheets or media files”
(Pearce-Moses, 2005, p. 141). E-mail message goes “through an asynchronous process of
delivery” which involves a certain number of steps during which a message is stored by
an intermediate server on the network, to be forwarded at a later time, until it finally
reaches its destination. The delivery depends on the availability of connections on the
network (InterPARES 3 Project, 2011).
ARMA specifies that “electronic messages are potentially complex in that, in
addition to content and structure, they may comprise several sets of metadata (e.g.
identity, transmission, security, content-type, content-transfer-encoding, or format
metadata)” (ARMA, 2012, p. 2). Metadata consists of “structured information that
describes, explains, locates or otherwise make it easier to retrieve, use or manage
information resources” (Gilliland, 2008, p. 3). Electronic messages provide embedded
61
information (metadata) by which those records are located and managed. In addition,
metadata serve as a mechanism for documenting the lifecycle of records; document how
electronic records behave its function, use, and relationships to other electronic records
and preserve the context of creation of an electronic record as well as support searching
and retrieval. Metadata are used to ensure the authenticity, reliability, integrity, and
usability of the record (Zeng and Qin, 2008, p. 7). The most common metadata in e-mail
messages are the addresses including senders and recipients that can refer to an
individual, a group, or a list, and the sender may be unaware of the type of address being
utilized (ARMA, 2013). Also, conversational threads are an important characteristic of e-
mail messages, which are a mechanism for linking related messages (InterPARES 3
Project, 2011). It may show a real conversation or provide information related to other
messages or conversations. Finally, the subject is an important metadata as subject
metadata can contribute to record’s management throughout its lifecycle, including
classification and search. E-mail messages are considered being semistructured data,
since they have well-defined header fields and an unstructured text body.
Electronic messages can vary in their purposes. E-mail messages have also been
defined based on their functions and value. In Canada, the Department of Natural
Resources defines e-mail messages as “e-mail records […] are required by the
Department to control, support, or document the delivery of programs, to carry out
operations, to make decisions, or to account for activities” (Government of Canada,
Natural Resources Canada, 2004, 6. Policy Requirements). This definition identifies e-
mail records as an important tool to conduct business operations. Indeed, electronic
messages should accurately reflect the purpose of intended communications, decisions or
62
completion of actions. Retained as records, they should support the needs of the
organization to which they relate and be accessible for accountability purposes. However,
e-mail messages which contain information not pertaining to the conduct of business
activities is defined as being a non-record by the GoC (Government of Canada, Library
and Archives Canada, 2008, p. 16). While transitory e-mail messages are “an e-mail that
has little or no documentary or evidential value and that need not be set aside for future
use” (InterPARES and ICA, 2012, p. 10). Transitory e-mail messages do not include
information that has archival value or that is required by organizations to support their
activities or make decisions. In the literature, that are three terms that are used in mixed
way: e-mail, e-mail message and e-mail record. In this dissertation, e-mail record is
adopted and used.
In summary, an e-mail message is a document created or received over a
computer network. The data of an e-mail message includes header information, text body,
metadata and attachments. Based on its content, the value of an e-mail message can vary.
An e-mail message that contains information related to the conduct of business activities
is an e-mail record versus non-record e-mail message.
2.3.2. Background and history
Researchers started gaining interest in e-mail communication in the late 1980s
and, in the 1990s, more research studies have emerged (Daft and Lengel, 1986; Rice and
Bair, 1984; Eklundh and Macdonald, 1994; El-Shinnawy and Markus, 1998; Herring,
1996; Markus, 1994; Nickerson, 2000). According to Gimenez, the main “contributions
to the field have concentrated on the relation between organizational practices and e-mail
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communication” (2006, p. 156). For example, El-Shinnawy and Markus (1998) examined
user’s choice of medium in organizations and concluded that organizational medium
choice is dictated by social factors and technology. This study has found that users
generally preferred “electronic mail over voice mail for most communication purposes
because of the different useful features offered by e-mail, such as retrieving, preparing
messages, organizing, working in group settings, improving the overall effectiveness of
professional work and the quality of working life, etc” (El-Shinnawy and Markus, 1998,
p. 242). Also, some of these advantages of e-mail communication are found in the
“changes in structure and function that e-mails have undergone to accommodate to the
new exigencies made by international business communication” (Gimenez, 2006, p. 156).
Many organizations are now more geographically dispersed as a “consequence of
globalization and changes in the business environment” (Gimenez, 2006, p. 156).
According to researchers, these changes have had an impact on the way that
organizations communicate. For example, Hinds and Bailey have shown that “situations
where it is easy to handle in face-to-face meetings or over the telephone have become
more complex, when they are managed by geographically distributed workforce” (Hinds
and Bailey, 2003). Therefore, the new dynamic of business communication requires the
use of a medium that is more flexible and collaborative such as e-mails (DeSanctis and
Monge, 1999; Maznevski and Chudoba, 2000; Walker, Walker and Schmitz, 2002).
As mentioned in the previous section, an important issue in the context of this
new business communication dynamic is related to the organization accountability and
decision-making (Luo, 2000). Gimenez’s research (2006) have shown that the functions
of e-mails has evolved “turning the whole chain of messages into an internal record that
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can easily be stored, referenced and retrieved and be kept as records of corporate
activity” (p. 167). Related to accountability, organizations are now being required to keep
records of the “processes they have gone through to reach a final decision as a means of
monitoring their activities” (Gimenez, 2006, p. 157). In this process, organizations have
adopted and preferred using e-mail as a quick and convenient way than traditional
communication methods to engage in a variety of business activities. As a result, e-mail
is the most frequently used form of communication in organizations due to the ease and
speed of sending and receiving information electronically as well as cost effectiveness
(ARMA, 2012). However, at the same time, organizations are also facing problems
resulting from the explosive use of e-mail, such as e-mail overload, user time
consumption, storage burden, knowledge sharing, etc. (Yuan et al., 2013; Mano and
Mesch, 2010; Thomas and King, 2006). E-mail messages, when transmitted through an
organization’s e-mail system, come to be managed importantly as any other information.
In the United States, in the early years of litigation, the government argued that e-
mail systems did not produce official records. Rather, e-mail messages were considered
primarily a “surrogate for telephone-tag types of communications that allowed an e-mail
creator to send a message at any time of the day or night and a recipient to read and
respond to it at his or her convenience” (Groover, 2012, p. 714). In 1989, the National
Security Council, as well as other agencies, routinely destroyed e-mail, which according
to the National Archives did not meet the standard of a "record" (Government of United
States, National Archives and Records Administration, 2007). That was the year the
American Historical Association joined Scott Armstrong and other plaintiffs in seeking a
temporary injunction to prohibit the destruction of the National Security Council's
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electronic mail. This legal case, frequently refered to the PROFS case because the
electronic mail system used by the National Security Council was IBM's Professional
Office System (PROFS), dragged on for six years (Skupsky and Montana, 1994). In the
Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President’s case (1995), the court rejected the notion
that e-mail could be defined as a non-record because in the absence of a policy excluding
them as records and finally, the court decided to treat e-mail messages as records. The
court further concluded that the paper record of an e-mail did not provide all of the
information contained in the electronic document (Baron, 2003; Skupsky and Montana,
1994). Through this litigation, e-mail technology and management has become
significant as official records in any context where an official record is produced
(Wallace, 2001). As a result, other governments recognized “e-mail messages sent or
received in the course of business transactions as official records and must be retained for
as long as they are needed for Government and community requirements” (Government
of Canada, Department of Justice, 2009, Access to Information and Privacy Office). The
rise of e-mail as a fundamental business tool has presented organizations with new issues
regarding their management.
2.3.3. Issues regarding e-mail management
E-mail has indisputably become a great tool for any organization that wants to
improve communication. While the management approach for e-mail has not yet been
clearly established in the field, the five key issues regarding the management e-mail
records have been discussed in the literature: (1) legal issues; (2) system issues; (3)
business-related issues; (4) user issues; and (5) records management issues (ARMA,
2000).
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Firstly, legal issues refer to the organization’s legal and regulatory framework. E-
mail management needs to consider issues such as compliance with laws and regulations,
access issues, copyright restrictions, and privacy issues (ARMA, 2000, pp. 1-2). One of
major legal concerns related to e-mail records is electronic discovery (Lange, 2002).
Electronic discovery refers as “the process of identifying, preserving, collecting,
processing, searching, reviewing and producing electronically stored information that
may be relevant to a civil, criminal, or regulatory matter” (Grossman and Cormack, 2013,
p. 15). If a request is made, the organization must make electronic records, such as e-
mail, available or “face the potential accusation of spoliation of evidence” (Hrycko and
Rothman, 2009, p. 39). In addition, the cost of producing these records may be important
as records may be kept in different place such as the organzation’s servers, on personal
computers, in a backup system, or in an electronic records management system. Lange
also found “that organizations may mitigate these risks by developing and implementing
an e-mail management policy” (2002). McEvoy and Ciko (2004) have studied judicial
and legislative trends in regard to electronic discovery. One of these trends is “towards
increasing the accountability of corporations in ensuring the preservation and production
of electronic records, such as e-mail, for litigation” (p. 35). They provide further
explanation of this trend with the use of a legal case: Zubulake v. UBS Warberg LLC, 02,
Civ. 1243. In this employment discrimination case, “the defendant failed to produce e-
mails that were important to the litigation, and subsequent investigation revealed that
employees had deleted at least 45 e-mails after the case had been filed” (Robichaud and
Gilinsky, 2004, p. 2). According to McEvoy and Ciko, other evidence suggested that the
“company (UBS Warberg LLC) failed to give clear instructions to employees regarding
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e-mail retention and failed to preserve back-up tapes containing relevant information”
(2004, p. 35). Based on these circumstances, the court set forth four mandates regarding
an organization’s responsibility to preserve electronic evidence:
“(1) document preservation notices must be sent to employees on a periodic basis – once is not enough; (2) the corporation must involve its IT department in preservation efforts to ensure that back-up media containing potentially relevant evidence are identified and preserved; (3) it is not sufficient to merely direct employees to preserve evidence; rather counsel must actively monitor the employees to ensure compliance with the request; (4) outside counsel cannot rely on in-house counsel to ensure preservation; rather they should communicate directly with all relevant employees” (McEvoy and Ciko, 2004, p. 35).
These mandates indicate that the organization has the responsibility to preserve electronic
records in legal proceedings. In addition to the increased accountability described above,
some studies have shown that electronic discovery also applies to backup tapes that
contained electronic documents that might be admissible in court (DiGilio, 2001; Sedona
Conference, 2007). The underlying rules for electronic discovery are the same rules that
pertain to paper records discovery and are governed by regulation that also covers
electronic records (Government of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, 2008, p. 9).
Arkfeld (2004), as reported by Reavis, reinforces the “similarities between discovery
requests for paper-based information and electronic information by suggesting that the
scope of a request for electronic information should not be different than the scope of a
request for other types of information” (Reavis, 2006, p. 23). Regarding compliance, e-
mail record poses specific difficulties with the application of legal holds. A legal hold
consists of the suspension by an organization of “its routine retention and disposition
rules for those records that are relevant to current or anticipated litigation, audit, and/or
government investigation” (ARMA, 2013, p. 26). Under the rules of discovery, parties in
a legal matter can request all relevant records, including electronic messages. The failure
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to preserve and present relevant records can result in fines or sanctions. Following the
resolution of the legal matter, the legal hold is lifted, and the records may again be
managed according to the organization’s records retention and disposition procedures
(Hrycko and Rothman, 2009, p. 90). The duty to preserve relevant evidence requires that
parties involved in litigation make reasonable efforts to identify and manage the
electronic records, but the parties must also be allowed to continue to manage their
electronic information in the best interest of the organization (Montana, 2004).
Secondly, system-related issues pertain to properly functioning software
applications to organize, manage, store, and retrieve e-mail messages (ARMA, 2000, p.
2). System issues related to e-mail records may be grouped into two major areas of
research: electronic systems and security issues. The former domain of research concerns
electronic recordkeeping system. Indeed, without properly functioning electronic
recordkeeping software, it can be difficult to capture, manage, preserve and access e-mail
messages for a long period of time. Willemin (2006) argues that even if it is possible to
organize the information contained in e-mail messages by creating folders, the integrity
and evidential value of e-mail cannot be ensured. The integrity is one of the requirements
that must be met to ensure the “recordness” of an e-mail. A small number of case studies
present the implementation of electronic recordkeeping system to manage e-mail in
different organizational context. For example, Loussouarn (2006) shares, in his study, the
experience of implementing an electronic system for managing paper and electronic
records, including e-mail records, at the French Ministry of Justice’s in order to improve
control and management consistency. Loussouarn also discusses the situation prior to
implementation of the “new MESSAGER electronic (workflow) system and the inherent
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problems and concludes that the system has brought office improvements in mail and file
management, more efficient handling of business, as well as better service to those
seeking justice in the justice system” (Loussouarn, 2006, p. 91).
The second preoccupation when managing e-mail records is the security issues.
Different types of information can be exchanged by e-mail. While some might be public,
others might also be confidential or sensitive information. Considering the type of
information and attachments that can be exchanged by this mean of communication, the
fact that the system is secure becomes even more important. Some studies present that the
ways to avoid security breaches and facilitate the development of electronic
communication at any given organization, either governmental or private, can implement
such as a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). This approach enables documents in electronic
form to be encrypted and carry a digital signature (Moecke and Volkamer, 2013; Kwon,
Jeong and Lee, 2009; Machanick, 2005; Eisenschitz, 2002).
Thirdly, business issues relate to improving productivity and communications
within an organization (ARMA, 2000, p. 2). One of the main concerns is dealing with e-
mail overload. Since e-mail has become the main tool of communication within
organizations, the volume of e-mail messages has increased exponentially. Researchers
have shown that employees tend to omit important information, when they are
overloaded, resulting in making the decision-making process more difficult (Szostek,
2011; Sumecki, Chipulu and Ojiako, 2011; Schuff et al., 2007; Thomas and King, 2006;
Sproull and Kiesler, 1991). In addition, one research has shown that e-mail volume can
cause an important amount of stress on organizations personnel (Jerejian, Reid and Rees,
2013). Another concern regarding business issues is the misuse of the e-mail system by
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employees in organizations. Indeed, the misuse of e-mail may lead to inefficiency in the
workplace as employees may spend more time dealing with e-mail rather than doing
other aspects of their jobs. Burgess, Jackson and Edwards (2005) concluded that e-mail
training is the solution of the e-mail misuse in organizations. Their study shows that
organizations are now becoming aware of the problems associated with e-mail use and
misuse and are keen to reduce these defects. These e-mail defects, according to the
authors, relate to the “ineffective way that e-mail is used within organizations, and are not
only limited to the volume of e-mail that is sent and received, but also the quality of the
e-mail content” (Burgess, Jackson and Edwards, 2005, p. 71). The study reports on the
effectiveness of e-mail training in reducing the defects associated with e-mail use. The
monitoring of employees is another solution presented in the literature to contain the
misuse of e-mail in businesses. Firoz, Taghi and Souckova (2006) argue that “security
and privacy have been heating up and that companies are under increasing pressure to
monitor employees’ electronic activities and workers should assume that their every key
stroke is being watched”, since e-mail messages are evidence of business activities
(Firoz, Taghi and Souckova, 2006, p. 71). Ackermann and Britz (2005) indicate that
employers should issue simple directives regarding the uses and misuses of e-mail in the
workplace. Employees should understand that abuse of the e-mail messaging system can
lead to the waste of valuable resources as well as affect the employer liability. As such,
employees should know their professional e-mail accounts may be monitored by the
employer (Ackermann and Britz, 2005, p. 30). The researchers concluded by mentioning
that through “regular monitoring, the employer will be able to cope with pitfalls during a
possible disciplinary process and avoid possible employer liability” (Ackermann and
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Britz, 2005, p. 30).
Fourthly, user issues refer to their responsibilities, e-mail etiquette and
compliance with e-mail management policy (ARMA, 2000, p. 2). Users behaviours and
interactions with e-mail communication system have interested numerous researchers. As
such, Marulanda-Carter and Jackson (2012) have studied the effect of e-mail
interruptions on tasks and the concept e-mail addiction within the workplace. The results
of this study highlighted many problems that are associated with e-mail use within
organisations and concluded that “e-mail interruptions have a negative time impact upon
employees as a typical task takes one third longer than undertaking a task with no e-mail
interruptions” (Marulanda-Carter and Jackson, 2012, p. 82). As a result of the misuse of
the e-mail systems by some employees, numerous organizations have developed some
tools to raise the users awareness to their responsibilities toward e-mail. Indeed, the
majority of the studies on e-mail management present the results of surveys or case
studies concerning the users responsibilities toward this mean of communication as “e-
mail is often mistakenly considered a form of ephemeral communication” (Meijer, 2008,
p. 447). As mentioned previously, e-mail is now considered official records and can serve
as evidence of business activities. As a result, employees must be aware of their
responsibilities regarding e-mail etiquette and compliance with e-mail policy. For
instance, as early as 1998, Hacker et al. have conducted a case study that investigates
employee attitudes toward e-mail and e-mail policies in a university library. The results
indicate differences in attitudes based on job position and frequency of e-mail usage. In
addition, the study indicates that “those who use e-mail more frequently have more
favorable attitudes about it than less frequent users. They are more opposed to policies
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that regulate their e-mail communication” (Hacker, et al., 1998, p. 422). The results show
that “employees generally prefer guidelines than restrictive policies for e-mail
communication” (Hacker, et al., 1998, p. 422). One of the biggest challenges facing e-
mail is that they are created, received and stored from the user’s computer. The users
must understand that they have the same responsibilities in managing e-mail, as they have
in other recorded information systems. Winget, Chang, and Tibbo (2006) conducted a
survey that seeks to understand the way in which Duke University and University of
North Caroline at Chapel Hill employees currently manage, interact with and think about
electronic files, particularly e-mail. Capra, Khanova and Ramdeen (2013) have provided
a comparison of use behaviours between work and personal e-mail accounts. The results
showed that the context (either work or personal) has an impact on the management of
messages. In work contexts, e-mail may have more importance as a means on
documenting records of activities and decisionmaking. Therefore, users tend to engage in
more “keeping and managing behaviours” (Capra, Khanova and Ramdeen, 2013, p. 34).
Organizational policies may influence the retention of e-mail messages. While in
personal contexts, “e-mail exchanges serve ephemeral purposes and retention tend to be
more ad-hoc” (Capra, Khanova and Ramdeen, 2013, p. 34). Seow, Chennupati, and Foo
(2005) conducted an exploratory survey on e-mail usage, policy, and technical
considerations among 76 corporate e-mail users in Singapore. The results showed that “e-
mails are recognized as important business records and that the establishment of an e-
mail policy and guidelines defining use of e-mail, as well as systems for managing them,
are deemed essential” (Seow, Chennupati, and Foo, 2005, p. 43). Most employees
recognized that e-mail records are important in the conduct of business activities.
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Therefore, compliance to the organization’s e-mail management policy and systems are
considered critical. Although several studies have been conducted to date regarding e-
mail communication, use, and policy-making in organizations, implementation and
practical guidelines for e-mail has not yet been clearly established in the field.
Lastly, records management issues concern managing e-mail messages and
require identifying the characteristics of records, their content, and their function within
the organization in order to preserve pertinent information (ARMA, 2000, p. 2).
Enneking (1998), in one of the first studies published on e-mail management, attempted
to define the state-of-the-art in sound records management and archival practice as
applied to e-mail messages. She investigated, by conducting a survey, the ways that
private and public industries and institutions implement e-mail records management
practices from both technological and policy perspectives. The results identified three
approaches to managing e-mail as a record: printing to paper; managing e-mail records
within the e-mail system; and integration of e-mail messages into a records management
system. Pennock (2006) argues that the successful management of “e-mail messages
requires effort across the entire lifecycle to ensure that e-mail records are identified,
captured, managed, preserved, and made accessible in a manner that safeguards the
authenticity and integrity of the records and any associated attachments” (p. 1). Unlike
other researchers, she gives guidelines on how to manage e-mail messages that are not
records. In order to manage records properly, other issues need to be identified,
understood and addressed such as technical, legal, organizational and cultural challenges.
In addition, she highlighted the importance of collaboration with all stakeholders
involved in the management of e-mail records such as the creators, IT staff, and
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managers. Pennock concluded that an “approach that integrates e-mail management into
overall digital records management is likely to be most successful, although some explicit
measures in the areas of policy and education are required to ensure that e-mails records
are afforded records status and treated appropriately by users” (Pennock, 2006, p. 1).
In addition, some researchers studied specific functions of records management
applied to the management of e-mail records. As such, Koprinska, et al. (2007) have
studied automatic filing of e-mails into folders based on the subject of each messages.
While Alberts and Forest (2012) have developed a two-phased research project aiming to
develop a typology of e-mail classification patterns. The retrieval of e-mail records have
also interested researchers and their studies have shown that often the organizing of e-
mail records is often left to personal preference making the retrieval of e-mail records
more difficult (Weerkamp, Balog and de Rijke, 2009; Wu and Oard, 2005; Klimt and
Yang, 2004; Mackenzie, 2002). The curation and long-term preservation of e-mail
records have been discussed in the literature (InterPARES 3 Project, 2009; Pennock,
2006). For instance, Prom (2011) argues that few institutions have developed policies,
procedures and tools to ensure long-term preservation of e-mail records but that
technology, such as technical standards and software, can contribute to the “preservation
of trusted e-mail records as a systematic part of our everyday operations” (Prom, 2011, p.
38).
Numerous studies acknowledged that e-mail messages must be managed properly
so that they can preserve their evidence value. In order to do that, some researchers
mentioned the importance for private or public bodies of having an e-mail management
policy (Gurushata and Smallwood, 2012; Saulnier, 2007; Flynn and Kahn, 2003; Périat,
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1997). Saulnier (2007) presents the main elements to include in an e-mail management
policy: guidelines that direct the use of e-mail; implement prescriptions regulating the
confidentiality of, and access to information; and standardize the creation, management
and preservation of electronic messages. The development of e-mail management
policies should be holistic and consider both the information contained in e-mails as well
as the e-mail systems. However, most of these researches are conceptual and have not
been implemented in an institutional setting.
In the field of information science in general, several researchers conducted
studies at government agencies as their research setting, since government agencies
usually provide general guidelines to different types of organizations, either public or
private, in order to develop standards, tools and best practices for information
management (Cumming and Findlay, 2010; McClure and Jaeger, 2008; Meijer, 2008;
Relyea, 2008; Gil-Garcia, 2004). However, research on e-mail management in a
governmental context has been rare to date. An important number of studies discuss
records management principles and practices in order to create, receive, maintain,
preserve and provide access to electronic records. Since e-mail management flows from
electronic records management (ERM), a number of concepts and issues surrounding
ERM are applicable to e-mail management (Smallwood, 2013; Saffady, 2009; Parrish
and Courtney, 2007; Stephens and Wallace, 2003; Swan, Cunningham and Robertson,
2002; McClure and Sprehe, 1998). However, most of them are discussed in a broader
context without any specific attention to the particularities of e-mail records. Only a small
number of studies deal with e-mails in government environments. Patterson and Sprehe
(2002) discussed the challenges of electronic records management in order to preserve
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authentic, usable and retrievable records, including e-mails in the United States federal
government, and emphasized the importance of integrated system design and total
information management to manage different types of electronic records, such as e-mail
and web-based records. A small number of studies examine the management and
implementation of policies of specific types of electronic records in government agencies
(Chebbi, 2013; Bertot, Jaeger and Grimes, 2010; Lips and Rapson, 2009; Zwarich and
Park, 2008). Research into the effectiveness of developing and implementing current e-
mail management systems and policy guidelines at the Canadian government has been
rare to date.
2.4. Theoretical Framework
In order to study e-mail management at the Government of Canada, this research
draws upon conceptual frameworks and models relating to electronic records
management, specifically e-mail management. While records management was
considered as a professional discipline, the development of electronic records research
gave rise to “a relevant body of theory and knowledge” (Yusof and Chell, 2002, p. 65).
Records management policy models and frameworks have been developed by national
archives institutions, professional records management associations as well as records
management scholars. However not many theoretical models and frameworks on
electronic records management research are available in the field, this study draws upon
the framework of Park’s study (2002) for the identification of requirements to ensure the
authenticity of electronic records because this study is closely relevant, theoretical and
feasible. The four requirements identified include: juridical, procedural, technological
and sociocultural requirements. As presented previously, the juridical requirements refer
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to the compliance of the organization to laws, regulations, policy and organizational
guidelines to sustain their mission and objectives (Park, 2002). The procedural
requirements include the analysis of business processes and the administrative context of
the organization (Park, 2002). The technological requirements refer to the
implementation and use of technology to ensure authenticity (Park, 2002). The
sociocultural requirements include the analysis of the organizational culture and practices
within in an organization. These four requirements provide the basis of identifying the
components of this research.
In addition, ARMA International has been a main contributor to existing
knowledge on records management and e-mail management. This research focuses on the
five issues developed by ARMA (2000, pp. 1-2) in its standard for the creation and
maintenance of e-mail records. These issues include: legal, system, business, user and
records management aspects. The legal issues refer to “compliance with the laws and
regulations of the organization” (ARMA, 2000, p. 2). The system issues include
technology used to ensure the management of e-mail records such as e-mail system’s
functionalities, integrated records management functionalities, systems back-ups, audit
trail and security (ARMA, 2000). The business issues refer to the appropriate use of e-
mail to conduct business activities (ARMA, 2000). The user issues concern the “user’s
responsibility to communicate in a professional manner” (ARMA, 2000, p. 2). Finally,
the records management issues include the management and preservation of information
contained in e-mail records based on their value in accordance with the organization’s
policy and retention schedule (ARMA, 2000). According to ARMA, an e-mail
management policy should address all five issues comprehensively.
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This reaseach integrates the two studies into a theoretical framework of building
and designing this research. The four requirements of Park’s study and five issues of
ARMA will be adopted as the main components and major approaches to examine the
objctives and questions of this research as well as configurate the data collection and
analysis.
Summary
The literature review provided a context for this study based on following
research objectives: (1) to identify the general principles in managing e-mail records
within Canadian government agencies and evaluate their level of implementation; and (2)
to compare similarities and differences in managing e-mail records in government
agencies and identify the current practices in managing e-mail messages in order to
ensure the reliability, authenticity, and integrity of e-mail records.
In the literature review, we first introduced the definitions of electronic records
from diplomatics, archival science and records management. From the definitions, it is
understood that there are common components between electronic and paper records, in
the sense that they contain content, context and structure and that they are created or
received in the business processes and serves as evidence of organizations activities.
However, by investigating the characteristics of electronic records, we have seen that to
keep these features is more complex than in the paper environment. In addition, the
specific types of electronic records, such as e-mail records, pose their own challenges
regarding their management and preservation.
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The analysis of the literature on the impact of information and communication
technology on government agencies has shown that the challenges to manage electronic
government information are growing, increasing difficulties in meeting accountability
requirements. As a result, different policies, procedures and systems were created to
manage government records, including e-mail.
The literature review highlighted that electronic mail (e-mail) has become the
major tool for organizational and interpersonal communications and is one of the most
business-critical information management applications. E-mail is electronically
transmitted information created on or received by a computer system and it can be used
to accomplish different activities in an organization. However, at the crossroads of the
telephone and traditional mail, e-mail is not as ephemeral as it seems. Some limitations of
the studies mentioned above are that they are mostly conceptually conceived and deal
with issues related to electronic records in a general sense only without addressing
concerns of e-mail as a specific type of electronic records in a practical and
organizational context. E-mail records have now been recognized as an increasingly large
part of an organization’s “knowledge assets” that must be managed properly. It is
important to realize that a new direction for research on the implementation of e-mail
management should be established and put into practice in order to create, receive,
maintain, preserve and provide access to e-mail records. The next chapter presents the
methodology used for this research.
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CHAPTER III. RESEARCH DESIGN
This chapter presents the design of the research, selection of research methods
and data sources. Then, the chapter describes the data analysis methods of e-mail
management at the Canadian government.
3.1. Rationale of study design
There are two major types of social science methods that have been used in
information science research: quantitative and qualitative research methods.
In the social sciences, quantitative research refers to the systematic empirical
investigation of quantitative properties, phenomena and their relationships (Mertens,
2009). The objective of quantitative research is to “develop and employ mathematical
models, theories and/or testing hypotheses pertaining to a phenomenon” (Olson, 1995).
Quantitative research methods use techniques to collect quantitative data - information
dealing with numbers and anything that is measurable. Statistics, tables and graphs are
often used to present the results of these methods. This process of inquiry is unobtrusive
in the sense that the research is conducted while the subjects are unaware that they are
being studied and their behaviour is unaffected by the study (Lincoln and Guba, 2003).
Qualitative research is a process of inquiry that collects data from the “context in
which events occur in an attempt to describe these occurrences, as a means of
determining the process in which events are embedded and the perspectives of those
participating in the events and using induction to derive possible explanations based on
observed phenomena” (Hoepfl, 1997). A number of approaches have been introduced, in
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the literature, to describe qualitative research. Some examples include: ethnography,
grounded theory, phenomenology, participatory research, case studies. Qualitative
methods focus on observing experiences from the perspectives of those involved and
attempt to understand why individuals react and behave as they do (Mertens, 2009).
Qualitative approaches tend to be more subjective in that they draw upon human
experience and behaviour. Qualitative research aims to understand the situation as it is
constructed by the participants. Qualitative research attempts to capture what people say
and how the people interpret the world.
Since the 1990s, a third research approach has been gaining in popularity and
started being recognized among social science researchers: mixed methods research (Ma,
2012; Creswell and Plano Clark, 2007; Greene, 2006; Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004;
Sandelowski, 2000). Creswell and Tashakkori define mixed methods as
“research in which the investigator collects and analyzes data, integrates the findings, and draws inferences using both qualitative and quantitative approaches or methods in a single study or program of inquiry” (Creswell and Tashakkori, 2007, p. 4).
From this previous definition, we understand that quantitative and qualitative methods
can be used at any stage of a research project as long as both are used in the same study.
Caracelli and Greene (1993) explain that a mixed methods study is one that
“planfully juxtaposes or combines methods of different types (qualitative and quantitative) to provide a more elaborated understanding of the phenomenon of interest (including its context) and, as well, to gain greater confidence in the conclusions generated by the study.” (p. 201)
The definition of Caracelli and Greene shows that the combination of quantitative and
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qualitative approaches provides a better understanding of research problems than either
approach alone. Over the years, researchers have identified different purposes for mixing
methodologies. For example, Greene, Caracelli, and Graham (1989) identified the
following five broad purposes or rationales of mixed methodological studies:
(a) triangulation (i.e., seeking convergence and corroboration of results from different methods studying the same phenomenon), (b) complementarity (i.e., seeking elaboration, enhancement, illustration, clarification of the results from one method with results from the other method), (c) development (i.e., using the results from one method to help inform the other method), (d) initiation (i.e., discovering paradoxes and contradictions that lead to are framing of the research question), and (e) expansion (i.e., seeking to expand the breadth and range of inquiry by using different methods for different inquiry components). (Greene, Caracelli and Graham, 1989, p. 259)
Most recently, Collins, Onwuegbuzie, and Sutton (2006) identified four rationales for
conducting mixed research:
“participant enrichment (e.g., mixing quantitative and qualitative research to optimize the sample using techniques that include recruiting participants, engaging in activities such as institutional review board debriefings, ensuring that each participant selected is appropriate for inclusion), instrument fidelity (e.g., assessing the appropriateness and/or utility of existing instruments, creating new instruments, monitoring performance of human instruments), treatment integrity (i.e., assessing fidelity of intervention), and significance enhancement (e.g., facilitating thickness and richness of data, augmenting interpretation and usefulness of findings).” (Collins, Onwuegbuzie, and Sutton, 2006, p. 71)
Generally, the motivation to mix methods in research is the belief that the quality of a
study can be improved when the biases and limitations of a method following one
approach compensated for, by mixing with a method belonging to the other approach.
Different types of mixed methods research design can be used in one study. The
mixed methods approaches are defined by the ordering of application of the quantitative
and qualitative methods (simultaneously or sequentially) as well as at one point in the
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study the mixing of the methods occurs. Quantitative and qualitative data collection can
occur in (1) parallel form or (2) sequential form. The parallel form consists of using
concurrent mixed methods in which two types of data are collected and analyzed
simultaneously to answer the research questions (Creswell, 2006). Whereas in the
sequential form, one type of data provides a basis for collection of another type of data
(Mertens, 2009). This approach can be illustrated by doing a statistically analyzed
questionnaire and then follow up with some in-depth interviews to better understand the
results.
The value of mixed methods research has been widely discussed in the literature
(Ma, 2012; Reams and Twale, 2008; Greene, 2006; Creswell, 2006). According to
Creswell (2006), mixed methods research provides strengths that supplement the
limitations of both quantitative and qualitative research. The author argues that
quantitative research is weak in understanding the context or that “the voices of
participants are not directly heard in quantitative research” (Creswell, 2006, p. 9).
Qualitative research makes up for these limitations. On the other hand, qualitative
research is seen as “deficient because of the personal interpretations made by the
researcher and the difficulty in generalizing findings to a large group because of the
limited number of participants studied” (Creswell, 2006, p. 10). It is argued by Cresswell
that quantitative research does not have these limitations. It is also argued that mixed
methods research can provide stronger evidence for a conclusion through convergence
and corroboration of findings (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2007; Greene, 2006; Johnson
and Onwuegbuzie, 2004, Greene, Caracelli and Graham, 1989). It can add insights and
understanding that might be missed when using only a single method. Researchers can
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use all of the tools of data collection available rather than being restricted to the types of
data collection typically associated with qualitative research or quantitative research.
Overall, several authors agree that qualitative and quantitative research used together
produce more complete knowledge of a phenomenon (Greene, 2006; Creswell, 2006;
Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004). Despite its advantages, conducting mixed methods
research presents some challenges such as it takes time to collect and analyze both
quantitative and qualitative data. Researchers have to learn about multiple methods and
approaches and understand how to mix them appropriately. Some studies suggest that a
significant difficulty is that of merging analyses of quantitative and qualitative data to
provide an integrated analysis for better results. According to Pickard, “one consideration
that may aid the linking of analyses is not to lose sight of the rationale for conducting
mixed methods research” (Pickard, 2013, p. 18). The value of mixed methods research
seems to outweigh the potential difficulty of this approach.
In this study, to optimize the strengths of the quantitative and qualitative methods,
two methods are used. As presented in the previous chapter, the two objectives of the
study are to understand how e-mail records are managed in the Canadian government
agencies and identify the characteristics that support the management and preservation of
e-mail records. The first objective of the study is to identify the general principles in
managing e-mail records within Canadian government agencies and see how well these
principles are actually implemented in these agencies. To generate a sound
characterization and understanding of e-mail management practices at the Canadian
government, data was first collected using quantitative research methods. Quantitative
methods offers numerous strengths, such as achieving high levels of reliability of
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gathered data due to controlled observations or surveys and eliminating or minimizing
subjectivity of judgment. However, quantitative methods have some limitations that need
to be addressed: possibility to provide the researcher with information on the given
context of the phenomenon under study and limited outcomes to only those outlined in
the original research proposal due to closed type questions and the structured format.
Quantitative methods are employed to provide this study with reliable, valid, and
generalizable information on e-mail management practices at the Canadian government.
However, since the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) create and develop general
records management policies that each agency needs to adapt to its own business
processes, some background information on the context is of primary importance. Since
the different types of agencies composed the Canadian government, more in-depth data
on the agencies’ business processes was necessary because it can have an impact on how
e-mail records are managed within the given agency.
To supplement the limitations of quantitative methods, qualitative methods were
used to add more in-depth data. The second objective of this study is to determine and
compare significant similarities and differences in managing e-mail records in
government agencies and identify the current practices in managing e-mail messages in
order to ensure the reliability, authenticity, and integrity of this specific type of electronic
records. Based on data obtained using quantitative methods, we sequentially used
qualitative data collection tools to validate and add in-depth data. Qualitative methods
enable the researcher to identify contextual and setting factors as they related to the
phenomenon under study and provide individual case information. Qualitative methods
have also the advantage of allowing for more diversity in responses as well as the
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capacity to adapt to new issues during the research process itself. Therefore, in order to
obtain a richer and elaborate understanding of e-mail management in the Canadian
government agencies based on each agency specific context, the adoption of a qualitative
method provided information for in-depth analysis, confirm emerging issues, as well as
explain observed variations.
3.2. Selection of data sources and methods for data collection
Numerous strategies can be used to collect quantitative and qualitative data and
each of them has its strengths and weaknesses. Sequential mixed methods data collection
strategies involve collecting data in an iterative process whereby the data collected in one
phase contribute to the data collected in the next.
As this study examines the current e-mail management policies and practices in
Canadian government agencies, data collection that captures a portrait of the situation at
one point in time must be used to see emerging issues and explain observed variations.
This research draws on two types of data sources: (1) people (who are the information
management professionals involved in e-mail management); and (2) documents (which
are policies and/or guidelines of e-mail management as well as relevant documentation).
This study used multiple data collection methods to gather information on the
management of e-mail records and the process of implementation of e-mail management
policies. Three instruments were used to collect data and provide supplement information:
(1) an online survey; (2) in-depth interviews; and (3) supporting documents on the
government agencies or e-mail management policies. Each method is described further
below.
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Figure 3.1. Data sources and methods of data collection
3.2.1. Survey
Survey results are regularly cited in media. Surveys of human populations and
institutions are common in political polling and government, health and social sciences.
Surveys may focus on opinions or factual information depending on its purpose, and
surveys generally involve administering questions to individuals. This is a valuable
method for collecting quantitative data from a large number of individuals, often referred
to as respondents, with an appropriate number of sample subjects; the behaviour of that
population can then be inferred. There are two types of survey: descriptive surveys and
explanatory surveys. A descriptive survey aims “to describe a situation and look for
trends and patterns within the sample group” whereas an explanatory survey seeks “to
establish cause and effect relationships between variables by establishing an hypothesis”
(Pickard, 2013, p. 112). A questionnaire is the instrument used to conduct a survey; it
consists of a series of questions asked to individuals to gather information about a given
Information management professionals
E-mail management policies and/or guidelines and
supporting documents
Online Survey In-depth interviews
Analysis to extract appropriate information
Data sources
Methods of data collection
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topic (Mertens, 2009). The questions can be either open-ended or closed-ended questions.
An open-ended question asks respondents to formulate their own answer, whereas a
closed-ended question asks respondents to pick an answer from a given number of
options. The questions are usually structured and standardized to reduce bias. According
to Mertens, adequate questionnaire construction is critical to the success of a survey
(Mertens, 2009). Indeed, inappropriate questions, incorrect ordering of questions, or bad
questionnaire format can make the survey valueless, as it may not accurately reflect the
views and opinions of the respondents. Surveys need to be standardized to ensure
reliability, generalizability, and validity. However, surveys rely on individual self-reports
of their knowledge and attitudes (Mertens, 2009). In addition, when using a survey to
study human behaviour and conditions, a preunderstanding or prejudgement of the
situation in question by the researcher are deemed necessary (Ma, 2012, p. 1861).
Therefore, the validity of the information depends on the honesty of the respondent and
the researcher.
There are several ways of administering a survey. Researchers had, in the past, a
choice between mail and telephone. Technological advances have added a few options to
administer surveys including e-mail, social media and web-based surveys. The method
selected depends on the purpose of the survey, the nature of the data, cost factors as well
as the size and characteristics of the sample (Mertens, 2009). There are advantages and
disadvantages in using each approach. Mail surveys are a good method to collect
information in a close-ended format and the cost is relatively low, since bulk postage is
often cheap and they allow for the respondent to consult some documentation before
answering. However, there might be long delays before the questionnaires are returned
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and statistical analysis can begin. Also, it might not be suitable for issues that may
require clarification. Telephone interviews are appropriate for open-ended questions,
since the researcher can ask for additional information and it encourages persons to
respond, leading to higher response rates. However, this method is more costly than mail.
For web-based surveys, numerous advantages have been identified such as easy access to
respondents, reduced costs, faster responses and automated data collection. However,
some researchers have found that web-based surveys have a lower response rate than
more targeted surveys (Dillman, 2007; Shih and Fan, 2008; Converse, Wolfe, Huang and
Oswald, 2008). Numerous studies have shown that using mixed-mode strategies, such as
administering an online survey and follow-up by telephone, can improve the response
rates.
To generate a sound understanding of e-mail management practices across
government agencies, the researcher first collected primary data by conducting a web-
based descriptive survey with one category of subjects: information management
professionals. They can be defined as those who are involved in the creation and
implementation of e-mail management policies. The purpose of surveying information
management professionals is to collect as much information as possible that relates to
how they use, manage, and preserve e-mail records as well as their requirements to
ensure the reliability, authenticity and integrity of this specific type of electronic records.
In addition to the web-based survey, two other methods were added to collect
data.
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3.2.2. Interview
Qualitative interviews may be used either as the primary strategy for data
collection or in conjunction with other methods of inquiry such as observation, document
analysis, or other techniques (Bogdan and Biklen, 1982). The main purpose of
interviewing is to allow the researcher to take a close look into the other person’s
perspective. Qualitative interviewing utilizes generally open-ended questions that allow
for individual variations and minimizing the imposition of predetermined responses when
gathering data. Patton (2002) has identified three types of qualitative interviewing: (1) the
informal conversational interviews that relies on the spontaneous generation of questions
– unstructured interview; (2) the interview guide that consists of a list of questions or
general topics that are to be explored in the course of an interview – semi-structured
interview; and (3) standardized, open-ended interviews that requires carefully and fully
wording each questions before the interview – structured interview. These different
interviewing methods are not mutually exclusive. All three interviewing approaches
consist of asking questions that offer to the person being interviewed the opportunity to
respond in their own words and express their own personal perspectives or opinions. A
combined strategy offers the interviewer the flexibility in determining when it is
appropriate to explore certain subjects in greater depth or to pose questions about new
areas of inquiry that were not originally planned. Interviewing involves one-to-one or
group interviews with a sample of the population that are being studied. Interviews can
be administered either in person, by telephone or e-mail. The advantages of interviewing
participants are that interviews produce more elicit data and investigate the participant’s
attitudes and perceptions (Patton, 2002). Furthermore, interviews can bring out some
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ideas or issues that may have not been considered by the researcher. Also, interviews
provide the researcher with a chance to follow-up on issues that are discussed during the
interviews. In addition, the participants will be asked to supply supporting documentation
that can help the researcher with the data gathering process. However, one disadvantage
of using interviews is that due to the number of limited participants, they may not
represent the entire population of the government agencies enough to generalize the
findings to the entire governmental agencies.
Based on the online survey results, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews
with information management professionals to supplement online survey data. The
interviews provided a way to examine e-mail management practices in greater detail and
provide richer descriptions for better findings.
3.2.3. Supporting documentation
Another source of information that is valuable to qualitative research is the
analysis of documents. All organizations produce documents and records that trace their
history and current activities. These documents and records include, not only paper
documents such as official records, letters, newspaper accounts, and reports, but also
computer files and other artifacts (Mertens, 2009). From the supporting documentation,
the researcher can get necessary background of the situation under study as well as
information and insights into the functions and dynamics at the organization.
The purpose of using multiple data collection methods is to validate the data,
provide a richer understanding of e-mail management in a government setting and
supplement the data that may be missed by one method.
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3.3. Pre-test of instruments for data collection
In order to validate the research design and test the adequacy of the data
collection instruments, a pilot study was carried out. “A pilot study, is a small scale
preliminary study conducted before the main research in order to check the feasibility or
to improve the design of the research” (Teijlingen and Hundley, 2001). Pilot studies are a
crucial element of a good study design.
The data collection instruments were pre-tested in May and June 2011. The online
survey questionnaire and the interview guide were pre-tested subsequently in two phases.
The criteria for selecting participants for a pre-test may differ from those used for final
selection. The subjects studied must match the context and the research questions
(Babbie, 2005), but can be chosen for reasons of feasibility and accessibility (Yin, 2003).
3.3.1. Pre-test of online survey questionnaire
The online survey questionnaire was pre-tested in two steps: (1) with two
information management professionals that are not part of the agencies surveyed but
working in similar organizational contexts; and (2) with two information management
professionals currently holding a position at the Government of Canada (GoC). Thus, the
first step of the online survey pre-test involved two information management
professionals that are not part of the study sites, but working in the Government of
Québec. The pre-test took place in May 2011. The objectives of this pre-test were to (1)
ask the respondents for feedback to identify ambiguities and difficult questions and (2)
assess whether each question gives an adequate range of responses. According to their
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comments, the wording of some questions was revised and the order of some questions
was also changed for a better fluidity.
Subsequently, a preliminary online survey was conducted among information
management professionals of the GoC from June 6 to June 20, 2011. The questionnaire
was conducted in order to test the appropriateness of the content and structure of the
questionnaire. The questionnaires were sent to 50 information management professionals
and 31 (62%) responses were received. As a result of the pilot study, some questions
were revised for precise expression and one question was added concerning the number
of years that the information management professionals had worked in the archival field.
According to Mertens (2009), pilot studies may also have a number of weaknesses. One
of the problems is contamination. Contamination may arise: “(1) where data from the
pilot study are included in the main results; and (2) where pilot participants are included
in the main study, but new data are collected from these people” (Teijlingen and
Hundley, 2001). The main concern is that if there were problems with the research
instruments and modifications had to be made based on the comments received from the
pilot study, data could be flawed or inaccurate. That is why the data of this pilot study are
not included in the results of the main study because of some changes that have been
made.
3.3.2. Pre-test of interview guide
The pre-test of our second instrument for data collection was conducted with two
information management professionals working at the Canadian government in order to
test the adequacy of the interview guide and collect preliminary data. The interviews
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were conducted over telephone since the participants have their workplace in Ottawa.
The two interviews, lasting an average of one hour and half, were held at the end of June
2011. They allowed the researcher to control the interview guide and briefly check the
type of information collected was in line with the research questions. The interviews were
recorded, with the written consent of respondents. Their contents have been transcribed to
allow analysis. The interview transcripts were analyzed in a general way to check
whether the information obtained allowed to answer the research questions. In light of
this analysis, it emerged that the interview guide used allowed to obtain quality data.
Following this pre-test, the instrument used for in-depth interviews has been slightly
modified to adjust the wording of some questions. Since these minor changes did not
affect the intention or the type of data collected, the data obtained from the pre-test of the
interview guides were incorporated into the complete data of the study. Overall, the pilot
studies have contributed to testing the research instruments, assessing the feasibility of
the research and collecting preliminary data.
3.4. Data collection
This section explains the sampling method and the conditions under which data
collection took place: (1) for the online survey with information management
professionals involved in e-mail management; (2) for the in-depth interviews; and (3) for
the relevant documentation collected.
3.4.1. Population and sample
A population is “the entire community under investigation” (Pickard, 2013, p.
325). In order to understand the e-mail management principles and practices at the
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Government of Canada, the population of our research is information management
professionals working in Canadian government agencies. As discussed in Chapter 2, the
term “information management professionals” is used to include the different professions
involved in information management and whose main responsibilities include: supporting
business activities; lifecycle management; policy and procedures development,
dissemination, training and monitoring of information management activities, and more
specifically e-mail management.
The participants were identified using the Government Electronic Directory
Services (GEDS) available on the Internet. GEDS provides a directory of the Canadian
public service for all regions across Canada and managed by the Public Works and
Government Services Canada. The Canadian government's Information Technology
Services Branch developed GEDS to integrate the Government of Canada telephone
directories and the Email Address Exchange Service. Individual federal agencies are
responsible for maintaining information in GEDS (e.g. staff changes). However, there is
often a considerable lag-time in updating information due to the significant number of
employee changes in the federal public service. Users can search for federal employees
by surname, given name, telephone number, title, role, or organization. It is also a useful
system to learn the hierarchical structure of organizations within the Canadian public
service.
The search was executed within the current agencies that published their
personnel coordinates on the GEDS. Originally, the researcher planned to use the
advanced search options of GEDS, by using the “title” options to find the information
management professionals working at the Canadian government. However, searches by
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title proved to be complicated as the title of an employee can sometimes vary from one
agency to another, depending on responsibilities or ranking in the hierarchy of an agency.
Therefore, different persons having different titles can play a role in the management and
preservation of records, such as archivist, records management officer, information
management advisor, etc. In addition, searches were complicated due to the limited
number of search results. Indeed, the search results display is limited at 325 items, which
made it harder to retrieve the names of all the information management professionals
contained in the database. When the results entries were higher than 325 items, the
following note that appeared on top of the result page of the employee database:
WARNING: Not all entries could be returned because a size limit was exceeded. There is no way to defeat this feature, but if you know who you are looking for, try choosing the Search option listed above and specifying the name of the entry you want.
Instead, the researcher searched the database using the surnames of the employees by
taking the letters of the alphabet. This search enabled to find all the persons listed in the
directory and select the persons working in information and records management field for
all type of professions ranging from clerks to managers and directors.
There are currently more than 200 main agencies in the Canadian government and
as many information management professionals working in those agencies. Therefore, the
population for our research was composed of these information management
professionals. Researchers rarely survey the entire population for the following three
reasons: the cost is too high; it is time consuming; and the population is dynamic in that
the individuals making up the population may change over time (Adèr, Mellenbergh and
Hand, 2008). The respondents who were invited to participate in this study were selected
using a sampling strategy. The main advantages of using a sampling strategy are that data
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collection is faster. Since the data set is smaller, it is possible to ensure homogeneity and
improve the accuracy and quality of the data. This survey used a simple random sampling
method as a mean to select the respondents. Random sampling is useful, when every
member of the population has an equal chance of being included in the sample and is
deemed to be a representative of the population when selected randomly (Pickard, 2013,
p. 61; Wildemuth, 2009, p. 118). Each information management professional included in
our population was assigned a number. The numbers were be assigned sequentially
ranging from 1 to 1650. These numbers were then integrated in a random sampling
software, Research Randomizer, that generated some numbers. Based on the numbers
generated by the software, the corresponding information management professionals
were contacted and invited to participate in this study on the management of e-mail
records. The researcher contacted about a third of our population (550 information
management professionals). Some agencies which do not include information
management professionals or that the coordinates of their personel were not available in
the GEDS were excluded from this study.
3.4.2. Survey
An online survey was used to collect quantitative data on the general principles in
managing e-mail records within Canadian government agencies and see how well these
principles are actually implemented in the agencies (Objective 1 of this study). The
respondents for the online survey were selected based on the following criteria: (1)
persons who are employed in one of the Canadian government agencies; (2) information
management professionals who create, manage, use, and preserve records in their daily
operations; (3) information management professionals who hold a higher-level position in
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the government agencies; and (4) information management professionals that certainly
are involved in the creation and implementation of information management policies
and/or procedures.
A survey software and questionnaire tool, SurveyMonkey, was used to create the
online survey, send the invitations to the participants, manage the responses and provide
a descriptive analysis of the data. An electronic invitation was sent to the professional e-
mail addresses of selected information management professionals to participate in this
research. The invitation explained the objectives of this study and asked for their consent
to participate in this research. The online survey for this study was a simple descriptive
survey that enabled to describe the characteristics of our selected sample population at
one point in time. The questionnaire is comprised of 30 questions organized into the five
sections: (1) respondent profile; (2) e-mails policies and guidelines; (3) e-mail system and
recordkeeping system; (4) implementation and dissemination; and (5) issues and
suggestions (see the survey instrument at Appendix 2). Among 30 questions, five
questions are open-ended and 25 questions are close-ended to facilitate the completion of
the questionnaire and increase the participation level. Every respondent was presented
with the same questions in the same order. Since there are two official languages in
Canada, the questionnaire was available both in English and French so that the
respondents have the option to answer the questions in the language of their choice. A
total of 550 questionnaires were distributed by e-mail and the survey was administered
from September 28 to October 21, 2011. A total of 204 responses (37%) were received in
76 agencies and analyzed. As previously mentionned, researchers have found that web-
based surveys often have a lower response rate, ranging usally between 10% and 25%
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(Pickard, 2013; Wildemuth, 2009; Converse, Wolfe, Huang and Oswald, 2008; Shih and
Fan, 2008; Dillman, 2007; Sax, Gilmartin and Bryant, 2003; Griffis, Goldsby and
Cooper, 2003). Compared to the literature, the response rate obtained to our web-based
survey is higher and acceptable. Thus it increases the validity of the results of our
research. The response rate can be explained by the fact that a reminder was sent by e-
mail to the respondents to increase the response rate and that our survey targeted a
specific sample population, information management professionals working in the
Canadian government.
3.4.3. Interviews
Subsequently, interviews were used to collect in-depth qualitative data in order to
provide comparison on e-mail management between government agencies as well as
identify current practices of e-mail management to ensure the authenticity, reliability and
integrity of e-mail records in Canadian government agencies (Objective 2 of this
research). The participants for the in-depth interviews were selected, based on the
following criteria: (1) information management professionals who participated to the
online survey on e-mail management; (2) information management professionals who
agree to participate in the interview by answering positively to the question 29 of the
online survey; (3) information management professionals whose agencies represent
information-rich cases that are representative of the implementation of e-mail
management practices; and (4) information management professionals working in
agencies of different sizes.
Whereas the quantitative data that were collected using the online survey
provided more general information on e-mail management practices, the qualitative data
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provided more in-depth information to understand each agency’s legal and administrative
context and nuances that can influence their current practices of e-mail records
management. For the interviews, the participants were selected to represent six (6)
different government agencies, including: (1) two organizations that have not
implemented any e-mail management policies; (2) two organizations that have initiated
the implementation of such policies; and (3) the two organizations that have fully
implemented e-mail management policies and guidelines. The Center for American
Politics and Public Policy defined implementation as being:
“the carrying out, execution, or practice of a plan, a method, or any design for doing something. As such, implementation is the action that must follow any preliminary thinking in order for something to actually happen. In an information technology context, implementation encompasses all the processes involved in getting new software or hardware operating properly in its environment, including installation, configuration, running, testing, and making necessary changes”. Specifically, “policy implementation is the stage of policy-making between the establishment of a policy and the consequences of the policy for the people whom it affects. Implementation involves translating the goals and objectives of a policy into an operating, ongoing program” (Center for American Politics and Public Policy, 2010).
Therefore, implementation ranges from the problem identification to the evaluation of
solutions implemented. Different models exist to analyze the creation and
implementation of policy. Models are used to identify important aspects of policy, as well
as explain and predict policy and its consequences. Some examples of models are the
institutional model, the process model, the rational model, the group model and the elite
model. The policy cycle is a five-step model used in political science and management
for the analyzing and implementation of policies, namely information policy. It was
developed as a theory from Harold Lasswell's work and used in different settings. One
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standardized version includes the following stages:
1. Analysis of the situation and problem identification 2. Policy formulation 3. Adoption 4. Implementation 5. Evaluation
This standardized model inspired the researcher to determine the level of implementation
of e-mail management solutions within the government agencies. To take a close look at
the three different levels of e-mail management implementation policies, this study
accordingly included interviewees to provide valuable information on how each agency
implemented to manage e-mail records.
To ensure consistency between interviews, an interview protocol was designed
and used (See the interview instrument at Appendix 7). An interview protocol is a list of
questions or general topics that the interviewer wants to explore during each interview.
Although it is prepared to ensure that the same information is obtained from each
participant, there are no predetermined responses, and in semi-structured interviews the
interviewer is free to explore within these predetermined inquiry areas. Interview guides
ensure a good use of limited interview time; they make interviews with multiple subjects
more systematic and comprehensive; and they help to keep interactions focused. In
keeping with the flexible nature of qualitative research designs, interview guides can be
modified over time to focus attention on the areas of particular importance, or to exclude
the questions that the researcher has found to be unproductive for the goals of the
research (Lofland and Lofland, 1984). The interview protocol is composed of 33 open-
ended questions that cover the following themes: e-mail policy and guidelines,
implementation and compliance, e-mail system and recordkeeping system and associate
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issues such as preservation, authenticity and accessibility. For each of those categories,
the participants were asked to express their thoughts, opinions and experiences on
effective e-mail management, evaluate their level of satisfaction regarding their current
practices and help identify the strengths and weaknesses of the management of e-mail as
official records within the GoC.
The first contact with the information management professionals was established
by sending an invitation letter informing them of the research project in progress, the
interest in their involvement and an upcoming phone call aiming at making an
appointment with them (See the invitation letter in Appendix 5). Subsequently, a phone
call was made to ascertain their interest in participating in the project and, where
appropriate, to make an appointment. If they did not agree to participate, or were not
available, they were not interviewed for this study and another participant was selected
according to the criterka. Interviews were conducted at the participants’ workplaces.
These interviews had an ethical approval from the Research Ethics Board Office of
McGill University for research involving human subjects (See the Ethics Certificate at
Appendix 1). The researcher explained in the beginning of the interviews, they would not
be exposed to any foreseeable harms and risks. Their participation in the interviews was
voluntary, free to withdraw and confidential. Written informed consent was explained
and obtained by them (See the Informed Consent Form at Appendix 6). Each interview
lasted an average of one and a half hour. These interviews were recorded using a digital
recorder, with the written consent of participants, and subsequently transcribed. The
researcher re-listened the interviews to validate the transcript made by research assistants.
The transcriptions were made available to the participants for them to review in order to
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ensure that the answers were properly interpreted and see if there is any information that
they want to withdraw. A letter was sent to participants in the days following their
interview to thank them for their participation (See the Thank You Letter at Appendix 8).
The interviewed information was used for in-depth analysis.
Table 3.1. Summary of interview activities at participating agencies
Agency A
Agency B
Agency C
Agency D
Agency E
Agency F
Interviwees’
Title
Records
Management
Specialist
Information
Management
Officer
Head of
Information
Management
division
Director of
Information
and Library
Management
Chief
Information
Management
Director of
the IM/IT
Architecture
and Planning
Date
Feb.13, 2012
Feb.14,
2012
Feb.13,
2012
Feb. 20,
2012
Feb.21,
2012
Feb.20,
2012
Duration
1 hour and a
half
1 hour and
20 minutes
1 hour and
a half
2 hours
2 hours
2 hours
Supporting
documentation
Collected
Collected
Collected
Collected
Collected
Collected
Follow-up
No
No
No
No
Yes
Yes
3.4.4. Supporting documentation
During interviews, when participants mentioned any documentation, they were
also asked if they could provide the relevant documentation for further collection and
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analysis. Participants were open to provide the requested documents when they were in
their possession. As a result, several documents were collected, including mission
statements, annual reports, e-mail management policies, guidelines and other available
documents that relate to e-mail management and electronic records management systems.
In addition, general policies and guidelines from the Treasury Board Secretariat and
Libray and Archives Canada were also consulted.
Table 3.2. List of collected documentation from 6 agencies
Agency A
• Museum Act • Mission statement • Organizational chart • Mandate of the Research and Collections division • Annual reports • Library, Archives and Documentation services internal
audit • Information policy
Agency B
• Privacy Act • Personal Information Protection and Electronic
Documents Act (PIPEDA) • Mission statement • Organizational chart • Annual reports • Internal audit report • Electronic Records Management Policy
Agency C
• Act of Parliament • Mission statement • Organizational chart • Annual reports • Governance Policy • Internal audit report • Electronic Records Management Policy (including draft of
e-mail management section) • RDIMS user guide
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Agency D
• Mission statement • Organizational chart • Annual reports • Internal audit report • Electronic Records Management Policy • E-mail management policy • RDIMS user guide
Agency E
• Mission statement • Organizational chart • Annual reports • Internal audit report • E-mail management policy and guidelines • Microsoft Outlook user guide • Dissemination announcement for policy • Welcoming package for new employees • Training program
Agency F
• Mission statement • Organizational chart • Annual reports • Internal audit report • Electronic records management policy • RDIMS user guide • Training program • Monitoring guidelines
Table 3.3. List of collected documentation from Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and Library and Archives Canada
Framework
• Management Accountability Framework (MAF). • Policy Framework for Information and Technology
Policy
• Policy on Information Management • Policy on Management of Information Technology • Policy on Access to Information • Policy on Government Security • Policy on Internal Audit • Policy on Privacy Protection • Strategic Direction for Government: Information Management • Policy on the Use of Electronic Networks
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Directive
• Directive on the Administration of the Access to Information Act • Directive on Information Management Roles and Responsibilities • Directive on Internal Auditing in the Government of Canada • Directive on Management of Information Technology • Directive on Privacy Practices • Directive on Recordkeeping
Standard
• Common Look and Feel Standards for the Internet, Part 4: Standard on Email
• Standard for Electronic Documents and Records Management Solutions (EDRMS)
• Internal Auditing Standards for the Government of Canada • Operational Standard for the Security of Information Act • Standard on Optimizing Websites and Applications for Mobile
Devices
Guideline
• Information Management – Guidelines • Guideline for Employees of the Government of Canada:
Information Management (IM) Basics • Guidelines For Records Created Under a Public Key
Infrastructure Using Encryption And Digital Signatures • Email Management Guidelines
In summary of data collection methods, this exploratory and descriptive research
uses a mixed methods approach based on three modes of data collection: (1) web-based
survey with information management professionals involved with e-mail management;
(2) in-depth interviews in person with information management professionals and (3)
relevant documents from the interviews. These different modes of data collection were
designed to draw from different sources in order to optimize the research outcomes and
answer the research questions.
3.5. Data analysis
This section describes the methods used for data analysis and is divided into the
three parts: (1) the analysis of the online survey made with information management
professionals working at the GoC; (2) the analysis of interviews with information
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management professionals from six Canadian government agencies; and (3) analysis of
relevant documentation.
Data analysis in mixed methods research is influenced by the design of the study.
Mixed methods research designs have mostly been convergent or sequential in nature,
with priority given to one type of data (Creswell and Plano Clark 2007; Teddlie and
Tashakkori 2003). When a sequential design is used, like in our study, the data analysis
of one type of data precedes that of the other type of data (Mertens, 2009). This research
design is employed to collect data on information management professionals’ perceptions
and satisfaction regarding effective e-mail management as official records within the
GoC. The researcher used an iterative data collection strategy consisting of two data
collection phases. In the first phase, survey data were collected; in the second phase,
interview data were collected. The survey questions are mostly close-ended. The
subsequent in-depth, semi-structured interview instruments were intended to explore
particularly interesting issues on e-mail management.
3.5.1. Quantitative data analysis
As previously mentioned, an online survey was used to collect quantitative data
on the general principles in managing e-mail records within Canadian government
agencies and see how well these principles are actually implemented in these agencies.
Statistics is the most widely used branch of mathematics in quantitative research.
Statistics is considered to be a science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation
or explanation, and presentation of data. Statistics can be thought of as being descriptive
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(e.g. the characteristics of a sample, etc.), correlational (e.g. the strength and direction of
relationships, etc.) and inferential (e.g. group comparison, etc.).
Through out our study, a survey software and questionnaire tool, SurveyMonkey,
was used to create our online survey, send the invitations to the participants and manage
the responses. The descriptive analysis of the data was done using the Statistical Package
for Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics, such as measures of central tendency
(e.g. mean, median and mode) indicated several basic characteristics and a common trend
of our sample. The analysis of the survey responses showed the general principles in
managing e-mail records within Canadian government agencies and see in what extent
these principles are actually implemented in these agencies.
3.5.2. Qualitative data analysis
In order to gain a closer perspective and understanding of the information
management professionals’ perspectives on e-mail management within the GoC, a
qualitative content analysis was conducted to analyze the information collected in
interviews and supporting documents.
Content analysis is one of major qualitative methods used to analyze textual data.
“It is a generic form of data analysis in that it is comprised of an theoretical [sic] set of
techniques which can be used in any qualitative inquiry in which the informational
content of the data is relevant” (Forman and Damschroder, 2008, p. 40). Qualitative
content analysis examines data that is most often the product of open-ended data
collection techniques aimed at detail and depth rather than measurement. The “qualitative
content analysis is to identify, codify and categorize recurring structures in the data”
(Patton, 2002). The objective of this analysis was to identify the presence in the data, of
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concepts studied, such as the implementation of e-mail management policies. Since this
study aims to determine the current practices to manage e-mail messages in order to
ensure their reliability, authenticity and integrity in federal agencies, content analysis was
an appropriate method for data analysis by using data that were collected mainly with
open-ended questions.
Content analysis requires both looking at interviews transcription as a whole and
breaking up and reorganizing the data. The first phase of the data analysis consisted of
engaging with the data in order to obtain an understanding of the whole before
rearranging it into themes for analysis. The analysis was then carried out deductively with
categories that are defined a priori from the interview guide and research questions and
inductively categories extracted from interviews outcomes. For this study, the categories
and their values were developed by combining three sources: (1) interview guide; (2)
policy and guidelines; and (3) other documentation (Miles and Huberman, 2003), such as
e-mail policy and guidelines, implementation and compliance, e-mail system and
recordkeeping system and associate issues, such as preservation, authenticity and
accessibility. The set of categories was then supplemented and improved by studying the
raw data collected. The development of categories was made in two stages (Tesch, 1990):
(1) data organization; and (2) data interpretation. Data organization was to identify the
different themes in the data, make combinations among them and come up with an
organized set of themes. This step is done iteratively starting with a subset of data
collected during pre-test to identify preliminary themes that have been used in the data in
order to clarify and consolidate the categories. By examining the data as it is collected,
the researcher became familiar with its informational content and identified new themes
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to be explored and develop analytic hunches and connections that can be tested as
analysis progresses. This approach allows to adapt the data collection for potential
sources of bias or detected deficiencies (Miles and Huberman, 2003). A first general
analysis was made at pre-test. Subsequently, the analysis was completed for all 6
interviews. As some authors suggested (Forman and Damschroder, 2008; Huckin, 2004;
Hoepfl, 1997), a ‘‘comment sheet’’ was completed immediately after each interview to
record our first impressions as well as new topics to be added in future data analysis. The
second step was the interpretation of data. That occurred when the content attached to
each theme was analyzed in order to highlight the commonalities and unique elements in
relation to the research questions.
The analysis was conducted with the use of a qualitative analysis software NVivo
10 which is a software application program developed by the company Qualitative
Solutions and Research Pty Ltd. The software allows to: “creates categories or codes for
thinking about the data and to manage the categories in an index system; explore patterns
in the data, record, in notes and memos, emerging theories and explanations of the data”
(Pickard, 2013, p. 279).
The coding gives rigor to the content analysis process. The goals of this phase are
to: “(1) reduce the amount of raw data to that which is relevant to answering the research
question(s); (2) break the data (transcripts) into more manageable themes and thematic
segments; and (3) reorganize the data into themes in a way that addresses the research
question(s)” (Huckin, 2004). The researcher first proceeded to an initial coding, based on
the themes that were identified in the interview guide and the research questions. In this
research, four units of analysis were considered, namely: (1) e-mail management policy
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and guidelines; (2) electronic messaging system and electronic recordkeeping system; (3)
implementation and dissemination; and (4) associated issues. Subsequently, more coding
was developed as the researcher analyzed the data to identify emergent themes relevant to
the management of e-mail records. The content of the interviews were analyzed to
highlight the differences and similarities across government agencies in order to specify
the categories and values. For instance, the content analysis of e-mail management policy
has defined categories such as policy development and information management
professional roles. The researcher has collected, in a codebook, all information related to
the categories, such as name and definition (Miles and Huberman, 2003). The codebook
contributed to organizing the codes that were used and ensure that they are used
consistently. The development of categories and their values have been governed by the
following main principles: “(1) the categories and their values were consistent with the
objectives of the research; and (2) the values of the categories should be exhaustive and
mutually exclusive” (Pickard, 2013, p. 82). Categories and category values were applied
to the relevant units of text, Same segment of rich text information could be encoded by
several categories and category values (Wildemuth, 2009). The categories have been
defined and refined throughout the analysis process to achieve a stable level where any
new data could be added without adding categories.
The analysis of relevant documents supplemented the data from in-depth
interviews with information management professionals on e-mail management. E-mail
management policies and/or guidelines were coded with the same categories developed
for in-depth interviews to add to the understanding of e-mail management at the GoC.
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In summary of data analysis, a statistical analysis was used for data collected
using a web-based survey with information management professionals working at the
GoC to gather basic characteristics and common trends of our sample. Subsequently, a
content analysis of both inductive and deductive analysis was used for data in-depth
interviews with information management professionals involved in e-mail management
as well as to provide an analysis of the supporting documents gathered during the in-
depth interviews.
3.6. Limitations of the study
Due to the small sampling size of participants in this study, generalizations beyond
the context of this study may not be easy to infer. Indeed, the data was first collected
using an online survey in 76 Canadian government agencies and subsequently, interviews
have been conducted with 6 information management professionals from 6 government
agencies only. The result of this study may not represent the entire population of
information management professionals in Canadian government agencies. Also, only
information management professionals were surveyed and interviewed. Other
stakeholders involved in the process of managing e-mail records were not included in this
research. In addition, this study focused on e-mail management policies and practices
within the selected agencies only so that the results may not reflect the e-mail
management policies for the whole body of Canadian government agencies. Despite these
constraints, the instruments developed for this research has enabled us to collect rich data
and provide information on the characteristics of e-mail records and practices for their
management.
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3.7. Quality assurance of the research
To ensure the methodological rigour of this research, various steps were taken
throughout the reseach process. Since our study is a mixed methods research, criteria
pertaining to both quantitave research methods and qualitative research methods were
used to measure the quality of the research (rigour and trustworthiness). Methods
contributing to the validity, reliability, credibility and transferability of the results in this
research are explained below.
Validity is defined as “the way in which a casual reslationship is demonstrated”
(Pickard, 2013, p. 22). According to Winter (2000), when “validity definitions are
concerned, two common strands begin to emerge: firstly, whether the means of
measurement are accurate. Secondly, whether they are actually measuring what they are
intended to measure”. To ensure the validity of our study, the questionnaires of survey
and interviews were designed based on the objectives of our research in order to ensure
that the data collection instruments measure what they intends to measure. To be
effective, the data collection instruments must answer the reserch questions and applied
uniformly (Pickard, 2013; Widemuth, 2009). In order to do so, we ensured to establish a
link between research questions and data collection instruments.
Reliability of research is “concerned with stability of the research findings over
time and across locations” (Pickard, 2013, pp. 22-23). It is defined in terms of usefulness,
accuracy and stability of the tools used in the research (Pickard, 2013; Wildemuth, 2009;
Winter, 2000). Reliability consists of ensuring that another researcher is able to reproduce
the same research and arrive at the same conclusions (Yin, 2003). To meet the criteria of
reliability, we developed a research protocol to standardize the research process. In
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addition, the survey questionnaire was constructed in a way that respondents can
understand the questions easily. The data collection instruments were pilot tested to
ensure their stability and ability to collect quality data. Conducting a pre-test helped to
better assess the adequacy of these instruments data collection and research issues, to
check the stability of these tools and their ability to collect quality data. It was a crucial
step in the research process since it has enabled us to control our tools and to clarify our
questions research.
Credibility is “demonstrated by the prolonged engagement with the research
participants, persistent observation of those participants, triangulation of the techniques
used to study those participants and their contexts, peer defriefing and member checks”
(Pickard, 2013, p. 21). To increase the credibility of our research, we used multiple data
sources (e.g. web-based survey, semi-structured interviews, supporting documentation),
which contributes to the quality of our results. Also, the data was collected from different
government agencies allowing for rich and diverse data. We also developed tools for
ensuring the consistency of our approach to collecting and analyzing data (e.g. research
protocol, codebook). We documented systematically our decisions during the realization
of this research. For instance, interview summary notes were created after each interview
for review by participants. In addition to these measures, we also paid attention validation
of our results by our peers. The research proposal was the subject of a presentation to the
advisory committee. Also, some of the data collected and analyzed was also subject to
peer review since the content was presented at some academic conferences.
External validity and transferability aim to assess the quality of the research in
relation to its context. External validity, according to Pickard (2013), is “concerned with
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the extent to which findings from the investigation can be generalized to the wider
context” (p. 22). Our research aims not to verify the generalization of our results, but
instead achieved what Miles and Huberman called "theoretical representativeness" (Miles
and Huberman, 2003, p. 59). To ensure transferibility, we produced a description of the
study sample. The government agences and participants in our research were carefully
selected for the representative of their role on e-mail management and the relevance of
their characteristics to the objectives of our research. In addition, the agencies studies
share common features that create a context for the study of e-mail management
practices. The sample size achieved the theoretical saturation which means redundancy in
the data collected from different respondents (Wildemuth, 2009).
Finally, to ensure the confirmability of the results, the research objectives and
procedures must be explicit. The confirmability of the results highlights the importance
of neutrality in relation to the researcher bias (opinions, disciplinary assumptions,
research interests) (Pickard, 2013, p. 22). Different strategies have been used to ensure
the confirmability of the results. To counter the effects of the researcher bias, we
developed a set of procedures such as instruments of data collection and the codebook to
make possible the reproduction of the study by other researchers (Miles and Huberman,
2003, p. 502). These tools provide stable and comprehensive descriptions and the
strategies that led to the results have been explained in the dissertation.
Summary
Our research aims to: (1) identify the general principles in managing e-mail
records within Canadian government agencies and see to what extent these principles are
116
actually implemented in these agencies; and (2) determine significant similarities and
differences in managing e-mail records in government agencies and identify the current
practices in managing e-mail messages in order to ensure their reliability, authenticity,
and integrity. This chapter has described the various methodological components of this
research project. The study is based on a mixed methods approach by using three ways of
data collection: (1) web-based survey with information management professionals
working at the Canadian government agencies; (2) in-depth interviews in person with
information management professionals involved in e-mail management from six
government agencies; and (3) the relevant documentation. A statistical analysis was done
on the data collection by using the web-based survey, while a content analysis combining
both inductive and deductive methods has been done on the interview data and relevant
documentation. Finally, various means have been taken by the researcher to ensure the
quality of research in its preparation (such as the research protocol, pre-test and use of
multiple data sources). The next chapter presents the research findings that are obtained
from the methodology previously described.
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CHAPTER IV. FINDINGS
The findings of this research are organized according to the research questions.
We draw a picture of practices of e-mail management within Canadian government
agencies and take a look at the level of implementation of these practices in agencies.
Then, the similarities and differences in managing e-mail records in government agencies
are described. Finally, answers to our four research questions are provided.
4.1. E-mail management principles and implementation
To answer the first two research questions of this research (e.g. “What are the
general principles of e-mail management within Canadian government agencies?”; and
To what extent these principles are implemented in the federal agencies?), this section
presents the results of the data analysis of the web-based survey by the following five
sub-sections: (1) respondent profile; (2) e-mail policies and/or guidelines; (3) e-mail
system and recordkeeping system; (4) implementation and dissemination; and (5)
relevant issues. The entire results of questionnaire are provided in Appendix 3.
4.1.1. Respondent profile
As mentioned in the research design of Chapter 3, 204 respondents (37% out of
550 contact persons) participated in the web-based survey on e-mail management
practices and implementation. The first section of the survey (Questions 2 - 7)
investigated general information concerning the respondents to the survey, including
information related to government agencies, position, and records
management/information management experience. Among the 204 respondents, the
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majority holds a director position (n=121, 59%) in a federal agency, while 49 respondents
(24%) are managers and 34 respondents are professionals (17%). The list of the
titles/positions of respondents can be found in Appendix 4. The half of respondents
(n=109, 53%) that participated to the survey have work experiences in the field of records
management/information management ranging between 11 to 20 years, while 51
respondents (25%) have been in this field less than 10 years. 26 respondents (13%)
mentioned to be active in records management/information management between 21 to
30 years, while a small number of respondents (n=18, 9%) have been working more than
31 years in the field.
The respondents come from a large variety of activity areas as shown in Figure
4.1. 37 respondents (18%) identified the general public services as the key activity of
their agency. 29 respondents (14%) come from health activity areas. 27 respondents
(13%) worked in agencies whose activities are related to finance and economic affairs.
26 respondents (13%) are working in agencies whose main activity are related to justice,
24 respondents (12%) from recreation and culture, 21 respondents (10%) from the public
order and safety, 18 respondents (9%) from the environment sector. 13 respondents (6 %)
come from the defense activity areas and finally, 9 respondents (5%) have identified
education as the main activity of their agency. Respondents are working in nine different
activity areas across agencies.
119
Figure 4.1. Activity areas of the respondents
The size of the agencies is variable. The majority of the respondents (n=119,
58%) work in medium size agencies (between 250 and 500 employees); 53 respondents
(26%) are from large size agencies, such as Health Canada or Treasury Board Canada,
while 32 respondents (16%) are working in federal agencies that have less than 250
employees.
4.1.2. E-mail policies and guidelines
In the online survey, questions 8 - 16 asked how respondents perceive the use of
e-mail as a business communication tool and understand the creation and implementation
of policies and guidelines to manage e-mail records in the Canadian agencies.
In Question 8, for the entire respondents (n=204; 100%), e-mail is used on a daily
General public services 18%
Defense 6%
Public safety and order 10%
Finance and economics affairs
13% Environment
9%
Health 14%
Recreation and culture 12%
Justice 13%
Education 5%
120
basis in their agency to conduct business operations, which reflects that e-mail has
become prevalent as the de facto tool for business-wide communication and
collaboration. However, the level of importance tends to vary between agencies. Indeed,
as shown in Figure 4.2, e-mail was identified by information management professionals
as a very important or fairly important tool (n = 188, 92%) of communication to conduct
business activities in government agencies. Some information management professionals
(n = 16, 8%) identified that e-mail is not so important within their agencies to conduct
business. None of the respondents mentioned that e-mail is neutral or that is not
important at all within their agencies to conduct business.
Figure 4.2. Importance of e-mail in business activities at GoC
In Question 10, numerous information management professionals stated having
encountered difficulties in managing e-mail messages (n=179, 87%), while only a small
Very important 68%
Fairly important 24%
Not important 8%
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number of respondents (n=25, 13%) mentioned that they did not have any difficulty in
managing e-mail messages. The nature of the encountered difficulties varied across
agencie and were identified by the following order (multiple answers were allowed):
applying appropriate retention periods to e-mail messages (n=83); gathering the complete
information and documents regarding a subject (n=76); retrieving critical information to
take a business decision (n=68); the capture of e-mail records in corporate repository
(n=62); the distinction between an e-mail records that have business value and transitory
e-mail messages (n=51); information overload (n=46); ensuring the continuity of
activities when employees leave (n=34); storage issues (n=21); and electronic discovery
issues (n=17). The problems identified by the respondents are various across the lifecycle
management of e-mail records, which reflects the importance of proper management of
electronic mail messages.
The results of question 11 showed that all the respondents (n=204; 100%) agreed
that an e-mail message can be considered as one type of corporate records, when they are
used to conduct business activity. Therefore, e-mail messages need to be managed
according to laws and regulation applicable to their own organizational context and
subject to the records management tools (i.e. classification plan and retention schedule)
and approved in their respective agency. Among the respondents, five respondents (n=5)
provided additional comments by mentioning that while e-mail messages that have a
business value are records, most e-mail messages have a transitory value. Four
respondents (n=4) also added that, even if they do consider e-mail as corporate records,
their views are not shared with other professionals in their agency, such as IT
professionals and senior managers who sometimes consider e-mail as form of ephemeral
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communication. The findings of questions on the use of e-mail suggest that there is a
need for a common understanding of the value of e-mail across professionals involved in
the management of electronic records.
In order to ensure appropriate management of e-mail records in Question 12,
almost half of the respondents (n=92, 45%) indicated that their agency had developed and
implemented tools to manage e-mail records, while 79 respondents (39%) stated that their
agency is currently developing or implementing tools to ensure the appropriate
management of e-mails records. Also, 20 respondents (10%) mentioned that their agency
plans to develop tools to manage e-mail records in compliance with the policies and
procedures that the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the Library and Archives
Canada (LAC) put forward. Eight respondents (3%) stated that their agencies don’t have
any e-mail management policy and/or guidelines and are not planning to develop any
kind of tools to manage e-mail records. Seven respondents (3%) don’t know if their
agency has some sort of tools to manage e-mail records or not.
In addition, in Question 13, the results show that, among repondents who had, in
the past, developed or were currently in the process of developing tools to manage e-mail
records, the nature and format of these tools tend to vary across agencies as shown in
Figure 4.3. An important number of respondents (n=64, 37%) have a separate written e-
mail management policy and/or guidelines. More than a quarter of respondents (n=46;
27%) have a general electronic records management policy applicable to different types
of electronic records while 28 respondents (16%) have included a section on e-mail
management in their general electronic records management policy. Some information
management professionals (n=26, 16%) confirmed that their organizations did not have a
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written e-mail policy and guidelines. Six respondents (3%) mentioned that they don’t
know which type of policy or guideline is used in their agencies. Finally, two respondents
(n=2, 1%) specified that their respective agencies have an information management
policy that encompasses all media including electronic records and e-mail records.
Figure 4.3. Policies and guidelines to manage e-mail records
Importantly, in Question 14, the content of the policy seems to vary, depending on
its functions, activities and resources available (multiple answers were allowed). The
majority of respondents specify that their policy declare e-mails to be corporate records
(n=100) and the property of the Government of Canada (GoC). Therefore, they should be
managed adequately (n=109). 92 respondents mentioned that e-mail records need to be
captured and managed in an organizational records management systems (n=92). Also,
more than half of the respondents whose agency possess an e-mail management policy
and/or guidelines (n=85) contains information concerning the retention period as well as
written electronic records
management policy 27%
written electronic records
management policy that
addresses e-mail management 16%
specific written e-mail management policy and guidelines 37%
no policy or guidelines 16%
I don't know 3%
information management policy 1%
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appropriate disposition of e-mail records. Finally, 89 respondents mentioned that their e-
mail management policy and/or guidelines provide information on appropriate storage,
protection and accessibility.
The results of Question 15 indicate that while more than half (n=69, 62%) of the
respondents felt that their agency’s e-mail policy and guidelines should be modified to
address other specific issues, a small number of respondents (n=43, 38%) are satisfied
with their organization’s current e-mail policy and/or guidelines. In addition, the
respondents were asked to specify what other issues they felt should be added to their
current e-mail management policies and guidelines. Among the respondents who feels
that their e-mail policy and guidelines should be modified, 27 respondents felt that the
roles and responsibilities of professionals should be clearly defined between records
managers, IT professionals and users. Also, issues related to users were raised, because
the process of managing e-mail begins with users, at their own desktops, making
decisions every day about what e-mail messages to delete and keep, and where to file
them. Therefore, some respondents stated that their agency’s e-mail management policy
and/or guidelines should provide boundaries regarding the use of e-mail system and e-
mail etiquette (n=34) and provide guidelines for the creation and edition of e-mail records
(n=23). Also eleven respondents addressed that the e-mail management policy and/or
guidelines should be enforced by identify corporate tools to, not only ensure the lifecycle
management of e-mail records, but also compliance.
In Question 16, the majority of the respondents that participated in this research
(n=73, 67%) were involved in the creation and/or implementation of the e-mail
management policy and/or guidelines, while 29 respondents (33%) were not involved.
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The nature of the involvement tends to vary, depending on the agencies. Specifically, 21
respondents (19%) indicated to have participated closely to the creation of the e-mail
management policy within their agency, while 31 respondents (28%) participated in the
implementation of their agency’s e-mail management policy to ensure the training and
compliance of the users. The results suggest that the nature of the involvement tends to
vary according to the position the respondents are holding. Indeed, the majority of the
respondents that were involved in the creation of e-mail management policy tend to have
a higher position in their agency, such as director and manager, whereas the respondents
who are mostly responsible for the implementation tend to be professionals in the
medium level, mostly responsible for training to the users.
4.1.3. E-mail system and recordkeeping system
The questions 17 - 19 investigated e-mail messaging system and recordkeeping
system for the management, retrieval and access of e-mail records, since technology can
contribute to the management of electronic records including e-mail records. In Question
17, respondents provided the name of the messaging system used in their respective
agency. The majority of respondents (n=162, 79%) answered that Microsoft Outlook is
used in their agency, while twenty-seven respondents (n=27, 13%) identified IBM Lotus
Notes as the e-mail system used at their workplace. A small number of respondents
(n=15, 8%) mentioned using Novell GroupWise in their agency.
Regarding the use of an electronic records management system in Question 18,
the majority of the respondents (n=149, 73%) have access to a recordkeeping system to
manage corporate records, while a small number of respondents (n=55, 27%) have not
yet implemented a recordkeeping system, as shown in Figure 4.4. The results indicate
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that the respondents who have access to electronic records management systems within
their agency are using the Records, Documents, and Information Management System
(RDIMS) provided by the GoC. However, since GCDocs is currently being implemented
in the agencies, some respondents that were surveyed do not currently use an electronic
records management system. For example, five respondents (3%) mentioned using
Documentum for print records only; while eleven respondents (7%) are in the process of
implementing GCDocs. Among the five respondents, one respondent specified that
RDIMS is currently used in 1/3 of the organization but for three respondents (2%), the
implementation was delayed for different reasons: conversion of the software to a new
version, an impending merger with another agency and lack of funding.
Figure 4.4. Implementation of corporate recordkeeping system
Therefore, the results indicate that there are different practices in managing and
Yes 73%
No 27%
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saving e-mail records across agencies, as shown in Figure 4.5. Indeed, half of
respondents (n=107, 53%) indicated that their practice is to save e-mail records in a
corporate recordkeeping system such as the RDIMS or GCDocs; for 59 respondents
(29%), their practice is to print and file hardcopies of e-mail records either in personal
files or in shared files; for 27 respondents (13%), their practice is to keep e-mails records
in each user’s inboxes, while 11 respondents (5%) encourage its users to save their e-
mails records to corporate servers. Some respondents provided additional comments. As
such, five respondents indicated that there is no consistency to save and manage e-mail
records. Indeed, one respondent mentioned that “older one was print and file,
unfortunately a lot kept in email inbox, and some saved in our EDRMS (which is the goal
to achieve)”, while another respondent explained that “everyone does whatever they want
because the guideline is not enforced”. These results suggest that the lack of consistency
seems to have an impact on the appropriate management of e-mail records as remarked
by one respondent: “employees are using whatever means possible to ensure the emails
are safeguarded. There is little done on the purging and disposition front of emails”.
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Figure 4.5. Methods used to manage and save e-mail records
4.1.4. Implementation and dissemination
This section of the questions 20 - 24 investigated how the government agencies
plan the dissemination and implementation of their e-mail management policies and/or
guidelines as the goal was to determine the effectiveness of e-mail management tools and
compliance to support e-mail management principles.
The results of Question 20 (multiple answers were allowed) indicate that the
respondents used different means to communicate and disseminate e-mail management
tools in their respective agencies. Thus, 47 respondents (42%) tend to disseminate their
policy and/or guidelines by publishing it on their agency’s website or intranet. While 31
information management professionals (28%) used training to disseminate their e-mail
management policy and/or guidelines. Thirteen respondents (12%) mentioned that their
Print and file the hardcopy 29%
Keep in e-mail inbox 13%
Save to corporate server
5%
Save to corporate recordkeeping system 53%
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e-mail management policy was disseminated by making a formal announcement to their
users. Still eighteen respondents (16%) stated that the employees in their agency learned
of the existence of the e-mail management policy and/or guidelines from their colleagues,
while two respondents (2%) used other means of dissemination such as occasional
information sessions. One respondent commented that using multiple ways of
dissemination tends to be a more successful approach by saying that:
“we communicated the development and implementation of the policies through various means, including broadcast, targeted and included compliance requirements in all training material. There were subsequently posted on intranet site as well as IM [information management] working databases for ease of access by all employees and managers”.
Another respondent mentioned that the main difficulty resides, not in the dissemination,
but in the lack of interest from the users:
“due to lack of interest from employees to attend IM [information management] training the best practices are being missed. As we’ve considered IM training mandatory for ECM [entreprise content management] implementation clients are starting to be interested in learning the best practices. Slow progress but slowly gaining interest as employees realized that they need help managing the mess they’ve made”.
Therefore, in Question 21, the level of compliance of users to support e-mail
management practices tends to vary across agencies, because it has not been
standardized. 39 respondents (35%) indicated that the employees within their agency to
be fairly compliant. According to 32 respondents (28%), the users in their agency tend to
be poorly compliant, while seven respondents (6.5%) identified the users within their
agency to be very poorly compliant with their e-mail management policies and/or
guidelines. According to 29 respondents (26%), the level of compliance within their
agency is considered being good, as a few respondents (n=5, 4.5%) identified the level of
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compliance as being excellent. The results suggest that compliance is an important issue
in e-mail management but the level of compliance tends to vary across agencies.
In Question 22 regarding the means to ensure compliance of users, other than
ensuring the communication and dissemination of e-mail management tools, some
respondents implemented different means to ensure compliance of the users. The results
showed that 27 respondents (24%) make an internal periodical audit on an annual basis to
verify the appropriate application of e-mail management policy and guidelines by the
users; 39 respondents (35%) stated to have developed a monitoring program, while 22
respondents (20%) do quality control to ensure that the e-mail management policy and/
guidelines are applied appropriately; 10 respondents (9%) uses other means to ensure
compliance, such as mailbox quotas or developing automatic tools of classification in
order to take the responsibility of the users. However, 14 respondents (12%) stated that
no process to ensure compliance is currently in place.
Regarding the reasons why users are not being fully compliant in Question 23
(Figure 4.6.), more than half of the respondents (n=74, 66%) felt that the users in their
agencies had no time or were too busy to manage their e-mail records; 14 respondents
(13%) identified complexity as the main reason for not being fully compliant with e-mail
management policy and/or guidelines; 17 respondents (15%) mentioned that the users did
not know they had to apply the e-mail management policy, while 7 respondents (6%)
mentioned that other reasons are behind the fact that the employees are not being fully
compliant. One respondent provided additional comment and specified that, in his/her
agency, some employees felt it was not their responsibility to manage e-mail and this
responsibility should fall on records managers instead:
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“Employees are running at 100%. Generally, they do not understand the shift from centrally managed to locally manage at their desktop. Many refuse to become recordkeepers. Somewhat a stereotype situation thus resistance continues at all levels.”
In addition, two respondents identified the lack of training and/or continuous education as
the main reason for not being fully compliant. One respondent stated that “compliance to
email policy, other to minimize the volume of emails, is not viewed as a priority”.
Another two respondents identified the absence of the RDIMS solution as being one
reason for not being compliant. Additionally, one respondent identified a combination of
factors as being responsible: “a combination of not having a specific email management
policy, too many emails to manage, and no system or guidelines for employees to use”.
Figure 4.6. Reasons for not being compliante with e-mail management policy and guidelines
Too busy 66%
Complex 13%
Didn't know they should apply the policy and/or guidelines
15%
Other 6%
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Question 24 asked repondents to bring several interesting issues related to
compliance. One issue is the fact that there are no consequences for not being compliant
to e-mail management policy and guidelines with 40 respondents (36%). In some
agencies, consequences can be put into effect. For example, eighteen respondents (16%)
identified a written warning as a possible consequence for not complying: fourteen
respondents (12.5%) stated that employees can receive a verbal warning; eleven
respondents (10%) identified suspension from work as a possible consequence; nine
respondents (8%) mentioned that, in their agency, when employees don’t comply with e-
mail management policy and/or guidelines, their access to the e-mail system might be
limited and/or suspended; and six respondents (5%) mentioned that consequences can
lead to termination of work. Fourteen respondents (12.5%) mentioned that they don’t
know if there are consequences or not in their agencies. In addition, two respondents
provided additional comments to this question. One respondent indicated that within
his/her agency, employees can have a suspension from their position or even be
terminated depending on the severity of the situation as “consequences should be a result
of not adhering to Government of Canada legislation on IM”, while another respondent
highlighted that enforcement of disciplinary measures as an issue by specifying that
“while disciplinary measures can be enforced, the organization is not equipped to manage
across the board, nor properly monitor compliance. Therefore, not disciplinary measures
can be enforced”.
4.1.5. Issues The final section of our questionnaire (Questions 25 - 30) investigated if there are
any comments, opinions or thoughts related to e-mail management by the respondents.
The addressed comments focused on the two issues: 1) the awareness of e-mail
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management; and 2) the creation e-mail management tools to ensure the appropriate
management of e-mail records. For example regarding the former issue, one respondent
mentioned that “e-mail management and the management of e-mail records were
identified by employees as the #1 priority for the IM program strategy and roadmap”,
which reflects the awareness of this issue. However, in order to ensure the appropriate
management of e-mail records, e-mail management must be perceived as an IM issues,
another commenter mentioned that: “email management is viewed as an IT function in
term of storage costs and not an IM function in terms of the value of the record”. The
respondent goes further by adding that “unless this perception changes, it will be hard to
implement tools to manage e-mail records”.
Interesting comments related to the absence of tools for e-mail management are:
“Awareness of the issue of email management comes in waves, usually when there is an
issue due to litigation, etc. and emails cannot be found. The lack of good tools for
lifecycle management of email in the department is also an issue”. Another respondent
provided information on the information management functions that are difficult to
manage for e-mail records:
“employees may overall recognize the need to keep e-mail of business value but do not have the tool to make them easily accessible to others in the nature of a corporate management system. This makes e-mail difficult to manage in terms of accessibility, and for retention and disposition purposes”.
Importantly, one respondent addressed the need of appropriate systems to play a crucial
role in the management of e-mail records like: “with the lack of an official electronic
content/records management system to give the proper tools to the clients in effectively
managing their emails, it becomes an exercise in futility”. Even with these issues, the
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information management professionals try to implement different solutions to facilitate e-
mail management. Another respondent also agreed by saying that: “our “clean up and
win” contest did reduce emails by encouraging deletion of transitory emails, but that
didn’t help with corporate emails not saved in RDIMS. We will be introducing email
quotas on mailbox size. That should help”.
In summary, the following issues have been raised and discussed by the
respondents: awareness of e-mail management, the creation of tools to manage e-mail
records, and access to an electronic recordkeeping system to facilitate e-mail
management and ensure users buy-in to e-mail management.
The results of the web-based survey are summerized in Table 4.1.
Table 4.1. Summary of e-mail management practices and implementation at GoC
Categorie
Description
E-mail policies and
guidelines
- E-mail is used as a business communication tool; - Various difficulties exist in managing e-mail messages; - No common understanding of the value of e-mail records; - E-mail policy and guidelines are used unevenly to manage e-
mail records; - Type of policies used varies across agencies according to
organizational context; and - Most respondents are not satisfied with their current e-mail
policy.
E-mail system and
recordkeeping
system
- All agencies have access to an e-mail messaging system;
- Some agencies used a recordkeeping system to manage their e-mail records;
- Currently, there are different practices to manage and save e-mail records.
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Categorie
Description
Implementation
and dissemination
- Different means are used to communicate and disseminate e-
mail policy and guidelines;
- Level of compliance of users varies across agencies; - Agencies developed different tools to ensure compliance;
- Several agencies are often in absence or lack of training program;
- There are often no consequences for not being compliant.
Major issues
The following issues are identified:
- Awareness of e-mail management; - Access to an electronic recordkeeping system; - Compliance of users to e-mail management tools.
Overall, the results of the survey suggest that e-mails are recognized as important
business records. The establishment of an e-mail policy and guidelines to define the use
and management of e-mail in a recordkeeping system is deemed essential. The results
show that although several respondents recognize the criticality of e-mail in their work,
their agencies often lack ensuring compliance to their e-mail management policy,
guidelines and technical considerations.
4.2. E-mail management: current practices and variations across Canadian government agencies
The second section of the findings chapter explores the differences and similarities
of e-mail management practices across government agencies as stated by our research
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questions (e.g. “What are the variations and similarities of email management practices
across federal agencies?; and To what extent are they effective?”). Results presented in
this section are primarily from the in-depth interviews with six information management
professionals that represent information-rich cases. The results are divided into the three
sub-sections according to the level of implementation of e-mail management policies and
guidelines within the selected agencies: (1) two agencies that have not implemented any
e-mail management policies (Section 4.2.1); (2) two agencies that have initiated the
implementation of such policies (Section 4.2.2); and (3) two organizations that have fully
implemented e-mail management policies and guidelines (Section 4.2.3).
4.2.1. Absence of implementation
This sub-section presents descriptive contextual information on two (2) Canadian
government agencies which have yet not implemented any e-mail management policies
and guidelines.
4.2.1.1. Contextual information on agencies Agency A
Agency A was first founded in 1856 and gradually became a major tourist
attraction. Agency A has a mandate to "increase, throughout Canada and internationally,
interest in, knowledge and critical understanding of and appreciation and respect for
human cultural achievements and human behaviour." (Government of Canada, Agency
A, About us, n. d.). Agency A currently employed more than 200 employees.
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Agency A is divided into seven divisions. The research and collections division is
responsible for the management of library, archives and documentation services. The
specific mandate of this division is:
“to contribute to the knowledge of Canadian historical and cultural experience particularly in the fields of Canadian archaeology, ethnology, cultural studies and history, by: undertaking research programmes and adding to the collections and programmes of the Agency A; curating exhibitions, writing for publication, and providing expertise; maintaining and preserving Agency A’s collections; to develop, manage and implement a publishing programme for the Agency’s various clienteles; and making accessible both to internal and external users, the Agency’s collections and related information” (Government of Canada, Agency A, Mandate of the Research and Collections Branch, n. d.).
One of the sub-divisions of the Research and Colletions Division, the Library,
Archives and Documentation Services (LADS) is composed of 11 employees: one
director, two managers (one for library services and one manager in archives services),
three professional archivists and records managers, three reference librarians and two
assistants. The LADS is responsible for the management of the library as well as
historical archives and records relating to government business. Therefore, the personnel
must ensure the proper application of relevant policies, guidelines and procedures as well
as provide assistance and advice to the various units within the agency.
Agency B
The mandate of Agency B is to protect and promote the privacy rights of
individuals. Agency B is divided into eight branches and can count on 225 employees to
accomplish its mandate and activities. The information management (IM)/information
technology (IT) Division is responsible for information management governance as well
as the information technology systems which carry the electronic information through
Agency B.
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4.2.1.2. E-mail policy and guidelines
The goal of this section was to investigate if the absence of an e-mail management
policy and/or guidelines can have an impact on the appropriate management of e-mail
records and discussed the satisfaction level of the two participants.
Agencies A and B do not currently have an e-mail management policy and/or
guidelines to manage their e-mail records. This being said, in both agencies, the
personnel used the e-mail messaging system daily to send and receive information related
to business activities and e-mails are deemed as being very important. However, in both
agencies, difficulties regarding the management of e-mail messages were identified,
especially the value of e-mail messages and retrieval. In Agency A, a records
management specialist informed us that “their list of problems regarding e-mail is quite
long.” First, there seem to be no common understanding of the value of e-mail messages
and how to identify e-mail records among the important numbers of e-mail messages
currently being exchanged (e.g. which ones should be kept; which ones can be destroyed
and which ones have a transitory value). This lack of common understanding is present
among the users of the e-mail messaging system but also in professionals who, according
to the participant, should be involved in the management of e-mail messages, such as IT
professionals, lawyers and higher managers.
In addition, there is no standard filing system. Within Agency A, there is a
classification structure implemented for both paper and electronic records saved on the
corporate servers. However, its structure is not implemented or enforced for e-mail
records which causes important issues with the retrieval of e-mail records. Another
difficulty resides in limited inboxe sizes. As a result, since there is no storage to file
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important e-mails records, they tend to be often deleted without prior evaluation of their
content. Finally, the volume of e-mail messages that is exchanged and kept by employees
in their inboxes without document and records management processes can have a serious
impact on the accountability of the agency.
In Agency B, the situation is similar. The Information Management Officer
(IMO) explained that because the mission of the agency is to protect and promote the
privacy rights of Canada, IM is an important part of Agency B's daily activities. These
are equipped with numerous tools and systems contributing to managerial decision-
making. Some tools and systems are already implemented to ensure the appropriate
management of paper and electronic records but do not support the appropriate
management of e-mail records. As a result, the staff personnel of the agency has inboxes
that are full of messages to be deleted or kept without any evaluation regarding their
relevance. Also, it seems problematic to retrieve information that is kept in inboxes.
According to the IMO, when retrieving information, “it can [be] hard, even impossible”.
Since e-mail records are kept in each employee’s inbox, it’s impossible to manage. The
IMO explained that just like other type of electronic records, e-mail records must be
evaluated, based on their content, such as adequately managing, storing, protecting and
having access to them when necessary.
In these situations of the two agencies, both agencies are planning to develop in
the near future an e-mail management policy and/or guidelines to address the problems
faced with e-mail records. Agency A already has a general information policy that
includes the management of electronic resources. According to the records management
specialist who participated in the study, this policy can be applied to electronic resources
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that are saved on the corporate server. However, since e-mail records are kept in each
employee’s inbox, it becomes complicated to know what information exists or not, what
information is exchanged, or what information needs to be accessible. Therefore, a more
structured policy and guideline need to be created. Agency B has already implemented a
written electronic records management policy. However, for similar reasons like Agency
A, a specific policy on e-mail management should be developed and address issues,
especially the ownerships, lifecycle management, disposition, security, accessibility of e-
mail records.
4.2.1.3. E-mail System and Recordkeeping System
Both agencies are using a messaging system Microsoft Outlook as an e-mail
application. Outlook has many features, like viewing, sorting and searching e-mails. For
example, to make e-mails easier to find, they can be categorized by color and making
them quickly distinguishable from each other. Along with searching through contacts,
users also can search the contents of e-mails and attachments for keywords. Another
feature regarding attachments is the ability to preview them instantly. This allows users to
view the contents of attachments without saving and opening each one. Microsoft
Outlook also has security features to protect the e-mail account from junk and phishing e-
mails. For instance, when an e-mail is sent from an untrustworthy sender, its built-in
email scanner alerts users through which live links can be disabled and then senders can
be blocked.
Among many functionalities of Microsoft Outlook, searching and organizing
functions of e-mail messages are really important to Agency A where there is no
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corporate recordkeeping system due to a lack of funding. Because there is no specific
guideline on e-mail management, the employees of Agency A can adopt different
strategies to manage their e-mail records, whether they save them in their inboxes on the
corporate server, or print/file their hard copy. The records management specialist added
that often staff would save their e-mail records in two or three different places, resulting
in several duplicates. Even attachments can be applied in the same treatment, which are
often of great importance to the business activities of the agency and for decision-
making. In addition, in Agency A, back-up tapes are currently used as a storage for e-
mail records that need to be retained for long period of time. While, according to the IT
professionals of Agency A, this method meets the current needs of the organization, this
is, from the records management specialist’s perspective, not a mean to ensure the long-
term preservation of records.
In Agency B, its situation is similar as in Agency A. Employees mostly rely on
the functionalities of Microsoft Outlook to manage their e-mail records. Employees can
also use different strategies to save their e-mail records, as mentioned by the IMO, “older
ones were print and file, and, unfortunately, a lot are kept in email inboxes”. The
interviewed IMO specifies that within Agency B, there is a corporate recordkeeping
system used to manage paper and other electronic records. Indeed, Agency B has several
internal IM and knowledge sharing tools to support the continuity of departmental
operational needs, including shared network drives, RDIMS and SharePoint.
However, the RDIMS is not being fully leveraged as an information management
tool due to a number of factors. One interviewee pointed out by saying that: “There is no
formal quality assurance process for information contained within RDIMS, consequently
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it is difficult for users to judge the quality (i.e. confidence, reliability, finality,
authenticity, etc.) of the information contained within it and although outgoing e-mails
can be filed in the e-mail inboxes, the RDIMS feature for e-mail management is not
used”.
4.2.1.4. Implementation and compliance
Since the two agencies are planning to develop an e-mail management policy
and/or guidelines in the near future, there are currently no implementation, training and
compliance structure in place regarding the management of e-mail records.
In Agency B, there is an audit mechanism in place that is conducted in accordance
with the GoC's Policy on Internal Audit as well as the Institute of Internal Auditors
International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing. Agency B has
invested considerable efforts to put in place a solid management framework, such as
developing and approving a Performance Measurement Framework, and implementing a
method to self-assess management processes and practices against the requirements of
the Management Accountability Framework (MAF). Each branch is regularly audited,
including the information management sector that is audited every two years. The
objective of the audit is to identify the effectiveness of governance, risk management
processes, and the management and operational controls that are in place to support
Agency B's IM activitivies. The audit report revealed that there are no documented
formal employee training on the use of the systems and policies in information
management. Also, according to the IMO of Agency B, the Corporate Services does not
have the source documents or mandate required to perform an effective quality review of
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the practices in information management. Also, regarding the IM policies of Agency B, a
communication and change management plan will be important to implement to ensure
that the resulting changes are embraced by the organization. Most of the initiatives
identified to improve information management have a "human component" in addition to
the system component, and by following a formal communication and change
management plan, Agency B will increase the return on its investment. The IMO
mentioned that the tools identified in the audit report have to be developed for the entire
information management program in Agency B and thus, they should be applied to the
management of e-mail records as well.
4.2.1.5. Issues
Both participants agreed that improvement is needed in their current practice to
ensure the appropriate lifecyle management of e-mail records. The records management
specialist of Agency A stated that e-mail represents a huge challenge to its agency.
Determining which e-mails are records and integrating policies and processes together
with archiving technology are the core of many records programs. An even greater
challenge is enabling consistent e-mail deletion, finding effective strategies for
classifying e-mails records, building a consensus and drive program execution, and
finally ensuring change management strategies to implement enterprise-wide employee
compliance.
The IMO of Agency B concludes that different strategies need to be developed
and implemented to ensure the appropriate management of e-mail records. As mentioned,
paper-based information and some types of electronic records are managed as valuable
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assets. The information management governance structure, mechanisms and resources
should be in place to ensure the continuous and effective management of information.
Due to the continuously evolving nature of technology, there are opportunities for further
improvement in this area, such as the management of e-mail records. Improvements are
required to provide e-mail records that are accurate, reliable, complete, relevant, and
accessible, which should be incorporated into management/operational decision-making.
She also added that a lack of controls over end-user computing applications including e-
mail messaging system increases the risk to the continuous and effective management of
information which currently relies on commercial software applications. However, when
creating tools to manage e-mail records, an agency must keep in mind to provide
communication, training and change management initiatives to ensure compliance.
Both participants concluded that without appropriate tools, it become harder to
ensure the lifecycle management of e-mail records.
4.2.2. Partial implementation
This sub-section presents information on two Canadian government agencies
which have started to implement e-mail management policies and guidelines. Indeed, the
two agencies are currently elaborating an e-mail management policy and/or guidelines
and in the process of implementing the policy throughout the agencies.
4.2.2.1 Contextual information on the agencies
Agency C Agency C was created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 and offers a broad range
of grants and services to professional Canadian artists and arts organizations in music,
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theatre, writing and publishing, visual arts, dance, media arts and integrated arts
(Government of Canada, Agency C, Overview, n. d.).
To fulfill the agency’s goals and objectives, Agency C has 419 employees
distributed in four divisions), each led by a Divisional Director reporting to the Director
and CEO (Government of Canada, Agency C, Corporate Information, n. d.). Other than
its activities related to finances and general administration activities, the Finance and
Administration Division includes the Information Management Services whose main
responsibilities are preparing, administering and monitoring compliance with policies,
procedures and standards, maintaining and administering the Agency C’s electronic
reporting systems, information technology and telecommunications; ensuring the Agency
C’s compliance with the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act; safekeeping the
management and storage of all Agency C’s records in all formats (e.g. paper, electronic,
etc.) in accordance with federal policy and legislation; and delivery of services to staff
and researchers through the Agency C’s reference and library collection. The Information
Management Services sub-division is composed of eleven information management
professionals and technicians.
Since 2001, Agency C has adopted a Governance Policy which establishes the
corporate governance framework for the organization. The objectives of this policy are
to: (1) define Board and Management roles and responsibilities; (2) provide a consistent,
coherent and comprehensive accountability framework which spans the entire
organizational structure; (3) facilitate strategic decision-making for Board and
Management; and (4) heighten Board, staff and external stakeholder confidence in the
stewardship of the Board, the professionalism of Management and the integrity of the
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organization’s activities and processes (Government of Canada, Agency C, Governance
Policy, 2011, p.1). According to the Governance Policy, Agency C should ensure reliable
information systems and internal control mechanisms to safeguard assets and timely and
accurate accounting data. It should also promote operational efficiency and adherence to
prescribed policies and standards which are in compliance with applicable laws and
regulations. To control internally at the agency, the policies and procedures are
established and implemented alone, or in concert with other policies or procedures in
order to manage and control activities in which the organization is engaged or risks to
which it is exposed (Government of Canada, Agency C, Governance Policy, 2011, p. 18).
Information management policies, including e-mail management, are developed and
adopted in accordance with the Governance Policy.
Agency D
Agency D was created on April 1, 2004. Agency D is mandated to: “encourage
pride and excellence in the public service; foster a common sense of the purposes, values
and traditions of the public service; support the growth and development of public
servants; help ensure that public servants have the knowledge, skills and competencies
they need to do their jobs effectively; assist deputy heads in meeting the learning needs of
their organization; and pursue excellence in public management” (Government of Canada,
Agency D, About us, 2013).
Agency D is headed by a Deputy Minister/President who has supervision over and
direction of the work and 450 employees of Agency D (Government of Canada, Agency
D, Governance Structure, 2013). The activities of Agency D are carried out by three
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branches and regional offices under the leadership of the Deputy Minister/President's
Office. The Corporate Management and Registration Services Branch is responsible for
corporate management services in the areas of finance, administration, registration, IT/IM
and human resources.
4.2.2.2. E-mail policy and guidelines
Agency C and Agency D are both currently in the process of developing and
implementing an e-mail management policy and/or guidelines. In both agencies, e-mail
messages are used to conduct business but numerous difficulties were identified, such as
the classification, retention, management, retrieval and preservation of email- messages.
In Agency C, the Head of Information Management division specified that “many
employees in the agency suffer the standard human trait of hoarding - in that sense they
keep the majority of emails "just in case" without accurately defining information of
business value (i.e. corporate record) versus transitory information kept for convenience”.
Challenges include also uncontrolled growth of e-mail messages volume, inability to
locate e-mail records for litigation or business purposes, inability to apply disposition
instruments, and finally, lack of more effective repositories to keep those records of
business value and ensure their lifecycle management (e.g. disposition according to
departmental file classification system and retention schedule). Whereas the Director of
Information and Library Management in Agency D has mentioned that the employees
have a tendency of hoarding all e-mails in their inboxes or, at the opposition to delete e-
mail messages that should have been saved as records and used in the conduct of business
activities. Also, they have to cope with the volume of messages, identifying e-mail
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records, finding information or records in e-mails, sharing e-mail records, and ensuring
the appropriate management of threads and attachments.
To overcome these problems, Agency C is currently developing an electronic
records management policy with a section on e-mail management policy that will provide
the staff with specific principles on e-mail records. This policy includes general
principles that can be applied to all types of electronic records, such as records ownership
and the tools to manage electronic records including retention schedule and classification
structure. The second section of the policy focuses exclusively on the management of e-
mail records and covers the following topics: creation and edition of e-mail messages;
evaluation and selection of e-mails; access and retrieval; preservation, conservation and
disposition; security and confidentiality of information; use of the messaging system, and
finally roles and responsibilities of employees. The policy is currently being developed in
collaboration with other sectors of the agency, namely higher management, legal counsel,
records management/archives, information technology and users.
Agency D has an electronic records management policy that has been developed
and implemented in 2005. However, according to the Director of Information and Library
Management, the policy can be easily applied to electronic records that are kept on the
corporate servers, such as word processing document or excel spreadsheet. However, it
was found to be hardly applicable to e-mail records. Indeed, because of the nature and
use of e-mail records and the necessity to manage other types of electronic records, a
separate e-mail management policy was required to be establishes. In their new e-mail
management policy, specific information needs to be included: (1) e-mail records
ownership; (2) evaluation and selection of e-mails; (3) classification, access and retrieval;
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(4) security and confidentiality of information; and (5) use of the messaging system.
Hopefully, with establishing a new policy on e-mail management, they will be able to
manage e-mail records throughout their entire lifecycle and destroy messages that have a
transitory value.
Both participants consider that their policies will contribute to establishing the
principles of e-mail management and cover all the issues related to the management of e-
mail records.
4.2.2.3. E-mail system and recordkeeping system
According to the Director of Information and Library Management division of
Agency D, “the technology plays an important role in the successful management of e-
mail records” as systems can automate certain elements of e-mail management.
Both agencies use Microsoft Outlook to send and receive e-mail messages. Like
other agencies, they used the functionalities of Microsoft Outlook in the messaging
system for organizing and searching. Agency C already has implemented a recordkeeping
system. The electronic recordkeeping system, namely RDIMS, offers functionalities to
ensure the management of the lifecycle of electronic records as well as searching and
protecting of information. With the RDIMS, all types of records can be captured and
managed according to information management policies. However, even if an RDIMS is
implemented within Agency C, there is no consistency on where the e-mail records are
being captured. According to the Head of Information Management Services, the staff
members can save their e-mails records in the electronic recordkeeping system but most
of employees keep their e-mail messages within their e-mail inboxes or still print and file
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the hardcopy. Employees are using whatever possible means to ensure that the emails are
safeguarded. This lack of consistency causes serious problems with the retrieval of e-mail
records and attachments that are necessary for the conduct of business.
In Agency D, an electronic recordkeeping system is also implemented. The
RDIMS had been in use in approximately a third of the organization. Therefore, like in
Agency C, there is no consistency on how the agency manages its e-mail records. Agency
D is currently implementing GCDocs which is a Government of Canada initiative to
“support the implementation of recordkeeping policies and directives, and an advanced
government-wide recordkeeping regime and establish a hosted government-wide solution
for records and documents management to serve government departments and agencies”
(Government of Canada, Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government, 2012, p. 7). The
solution used is OpenText Content Server that offers different modules to manage
different type of content. One of these modules offers the specific functions to capture
and manage e-mail records. The Director of Information and Library Management
mentioned that once its implementation is completed for paper and other electronic
records, they will implement the module for the management of e-mail records and
hopefully, by automating a few functionalities, the management will become easier.
4.2.2.4. Implementation and compliance
All staff using an e-mail messaging system to conduct business activities needs to
be informed of the electronic messaging policy and the agencies must provide training for
all users to ensure that they understand the policies and agree to abide by them. Both
agencies, while creating and developing their e-mail management policies, are thinking
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about the means available to facilitate the compliance of the staff and the format of the
training that will be offered to the employees.
In Agency C, the Head of Information Management Services mentioned that they
are planning to use different strategies to disseminate the e-mail management policy (e.g.
an announcement on the agency’s intranet) and provide training sessions to employees.
The training will be organized in small groups and provide specific examples to
employees. The Head of Information Management Services specified that they are
exploring the idea of making the training mandatory. The training sessions will present
the following topics: the general principles of e-mail management, the responsibilities of
each employee, e-mail messages evaluation, classification, and retention and
consequences for not being compliant. Also, in a situation where numerous employees
are often not compliant since it constitutes a burden to manage their e-mail records, he
considers that the agency has a role to play in developing tools or automating certain
functionalities to facilitate the compliance. For example, Agency C intends to develop a
new profile form in the RDIMS that will automatically populate e-mail fields in an effort
to make it easier to save e-mails. However, other mechanisms must be in place to ensure
compliance and process improvement. Agency C is currently exploring monitoring,
mailbox quotas and periodical audit to enforce e-mail management policy to be
compliant. Change management must be considered when implementing e-mail
management tools.
Agency D, like Agency C, intends to publish their e-mail management policy on
the agency intranet as well as provide occasional information sessions to the employees.
The information sessions will present the general principles of e-mail management, such
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as: responsibilities of each employee, e-mail messages evaluation, classification,
retention, access and security of e-mail records. However, the Director of Information
and Library Management division mentioned that they are not planning to implement a
process to ensure compliance of employees to e-mail management policy, since
“compliance to e-mail policy, other than to minimize the number of emails, is not viewed
as a priority”. Before implementing the e-mail management policy, higher managers will
have to be clearly informed of the impacts on the agency, if not complying with the e-
mail management policy.
4.2.2.5. Issues
Overall, both participants consider that current practices regarding e-mail
management is not appropriate so improvement is needed. The first step taken to improve
their practices is the creation of an e-mail management policy that will provide the
general principles to manage e-mail records within their respective agency. As Agency C,
the Head of Information Management Services explained that:
“a policy guides toward accepted business strategies and objectives. Policies identify the key activities and provide a general strategy to employees on how to handle issues as they arise. This is accomplished by providing the reader with limits and a choice of alternatives that can be used to "guide" their decision making process as they attempt to overcome problems”.
Therefore, the policy is a very important tool to possess to manage e-mail records, since
it allows for consistency in operational activities. Policies also provide clarity to the
employees, when dealing with accountability issues or activities that are of critical
importance to the agency, such as legal requirements or other issues.
Indeed, one issue faced by numerous agencies includes e-discovery that required
that e-mail records can be easily retrieved and that organizations can ensure their
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integrity, authenticity and reliability. In addition, the Head of Information Services is
preoccupied by vital records that can be contained in e-mail and disaster recovery.
Agency C has back-up policy and disaster plan. However, back-up policies is not a
substitute for a records management program that includes the proper retention of
messages with continuing value to the messages deemed vital for business continuity.
The Director of Information and Library Management division of Agency D
specified that a good e-mail management policy is not enough to ensure the management
of this electronic record. One challenge is to ensure the adequacy between an e-mail
management policy, an electronic records management software application and users.
She added that only when the adequacy is achieved, they will be able to focus on specific
issues, such as long-term preservation or security. Most of all, the basics need to be
implemented first, which is not the case in their current reality.
4.2.3. Completed Implementation
This sub-section presents information on the other two Canadian government
agencies which have developed and implemented e-mail management policies and
guidelines.
4.2.3.1. Contextual information of two Canadian agencies
Agency E
Agency E has a mandate to ensure the sustainable development and responsible
use of Canada’s natural resources (Government of Canada, Agengy E, The Department,
2013). Agency E has currently more than 80 divisions and sub-divisions and employed
4500 employees (Government of Canada, Agency E, Organizational Structure, 2013). At
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the top of the organizational structure, there is the Deputy Minister's Office which is
responsible for the administration of federal and departmental program objective and also
for the overall management of the agency. One sub-division of the Deputy Minister’s
Office is the Corporate Management and Services Sector. The mandate of this sector is to
provide Agency E:
“with a systematic, directional and guiding approach to achieve its strategic and operational objectives through leadership in the areas of Finance, Human Resources, Health and Safety and Emergency Management, Information Management, Information Technology, Access to Information and Privacy, and Real Property through the following four primary roles: (1) Ensuring legislative, regulatory, and policy obligations are identified, understood and met; (2) Providing strategic, functional leadership and guidance; (3) Maintaining oversight and compliance monitoring and reporting; and (4) Enhancing corporate decision-making and management practices in response to (Agency E) business needs” Government of Canada, Agency E, Organizational Structure, 2013).
The Corporate Management and Services sector is then divided into specific units. There
is one unit that groups all information management activities, the Chief Information
Office Branch, with more 73 employees. Among these employees, 26 employees are
working in records management related activities.
Agency F
Agency F’s mandate is to develop and maintain Canada’s transportation system
(Government of Canada, Agency F, Organization, 2010). The Agency F currently
employed more than 4700 employees (Government of Canada, Agency F, Our People,
2010).
The Corporate Services Group comprises four directorates and four branches
including technology and information management services. The Technology and
Information Management Services Directorate (TIMSD) consists of five branches:
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Information Management; Computer Operations and Network Services; Application
Management Services; IM/IT Architecture and Planning; and IT/IM Security and
Infrastructure Planning. The Director General of TIMSD is also the department’s Chief
Information Officer. The Information Management Branch’s responsibilities include all
components of IM planning, policy, procedures, monitoring, reporting and training.
Information Management also delivers a full range of services, including electronic
document management, database support, data management, and records and mail
management. IM/IT Architecture and Planning is responsible for all components of
IM/IT architecture, research and development, IM/IT standards and policies, business
transformation and service improvement, as well as IM/IT strategy, vision and
integration. Finally, the IT/IM Security and Infrastructure is responsible for managing the
development and delivery of the IT/IM Security program to identify and mitigate threats,
risks and vulnerabilities; carrying out requirement analysis and business case
development to obtain infrastructure project funding; acting as project technical authority
on approved major and minor IT/IM projects; and directing the lifecycle management of
corporate IT/IM infrastructure.
4.2.3.2. E-mail policy and guidelines
Both Agency E and Agency F have developed in the past the tools to manage e-
mail records. The creation of tools to manage e-mail records at both agencies resulted in
difficulties and raised issues concerning the management of e-mails messages. In Agency
E, the identified problems were mainly: the ability to identify between e-mail records of
business value versus e-mail records of transitory value; the inability to capture e-mail
messages of business value in a document and records management system; and the
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ability to ensure the retrieval of e-mail records. While in Agency F, the main difficulties
were to ensure the appropriate retention of e-mail records based on their content and
value and to ensure the long-term preservation of these e-mail records that have an
historical value. As a result, both agencies have developed a policy to manage e-mail
records. Both information management professionals mentioned that the policy was the
result of a complete analysis of the risks and organizational context.
As such, the types of policy that is being used to manage e-mail records are
different in the two agencies. Agency E has developed a separate written e-mail
management policy and guideline. The Chief Information Management of Agency E
explained that before choosing the type of tool to manage e-mail records, the agency
must consider the other type of policy and guidelines used to manage other contents in
the agency, since e-mail messages are one piece of the total enterprise information
management that usually includes all the agency’s electronic contents (e.g. web sites,
intranet, digital images of scanned paper records, presentation files, word processing
files, etc.). Therefore, the chosen type of policy to manage e-mail records must reflect the
organization’s information flow and be included in a more general information
management program.
The e-mail management policy and guidelines of Agency E was first created and
adopted in 2004. The e-mail management policy includes the general principles that have
been adopted from those of the LAC, to ensure the management of e-mail records,
including records ownership, disposition according to the value of the e-mail records, the
capture of e-mail records into a system, management, protection and accessibility of e-
mail records. Their e-mail management guidelines offer step-by-step procedures on how
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to put the general principles in practice, such as guidelines on how to write effective e-
mail messages; rules on the usage and functionalities of the e-mail system; and the
inappropriate e-mail content and warning of risks. The Chief Information Management
states that the strength of their tools to manage e-mail records comes from the
combination of the policy and guidelines that ensure that the main issues are covered.
The creation of the e-mail management policy and guidelines was made by a multi-
disciplinary team that is composed of IT professionals, lawyers, managers, and
information management professionals. IT professionals intend to ensure that the
hardware and software architecture is appropriate to sustain the management of e-mail
records. Managers intend to ensure that their respective institutions follow the policies,
guidelines and procedures for the capture and management of e-mail. Finally,
information management professionals intend to manage information throughout its
lifecycle in a way that supports sound and timely decision making, maintaining
compliance with legislative requirements and respecting information privacy and security
requirements. In Agency E, the Chief Information Office Branch is responsible for
overseeing e-mail management but the Chief Information Management believes that to
ensure the proper management of e-mail records, different professionals must be
involved.
Agency F developed a written electronic records management policy in 2003.
The Director of the IM/IT Architecture and Planning explained that since different types
of electronic records have been created and used within Agency F, higher management
wanted to create a policy, where principles could be applied to all types of electronic
records including e-mail records. The principles that are covered in their electronic
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records management policy include records ownership, the retention periods of electronic
records according to their value, the proper management of electronic records by an
electronic records management system, the long-term preservation and accessibility of
electronic records, the roles and responsibilities of employees to ensure the adequate
management of electronic records. According to the Director of the IM/IT Architecture
and Planning, their written electronic records management policy is satisfactory and
covers the main issues related to the use and management of electronic records including
e-mail records. He specifies that the key to the appropriate management of e-mail records
is clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of each category of professionals
involved in e-mail management. As mentioned in the description of Agency E, the IM/IT
Architecture and Planning Department is responsible for overseeing the development and
implementation of e-mail management, because the management of e-mail messages is a
part of a global information management program. In addition, other professionals must
be included in the management process of electronic records due to the impact and issues
associated with e-records such as technology and e-discovery.
4.1.3.3. E-mail System and Recordkeeping System
Like in the previous agencies, Agency E and Agency F are currently using a
messaging system to conduct business. Both agencies are using Microsoft Outlook as an
e-mail application. Outlook has many features that contribute to viewing, sorting,
searching, protecting and blocking e-mails.
Agency E’s Chief Information Management explained that the functionalities
embedded in the e-mail messaging system are very important within their agency, since
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no electronic records management system has been implemented. So the employees rely
mainly on Microsoft Outlook to manage their e-mail messages. The employees at Agency
E used the search functions of Outlook to retrieve e-mail messages as well as the
organizing features to sort e-mail messages that have a business value. To protect each
user, each employee has its own e-mail account protected by a password so that only
designated employees can have access to their own e-mail messages and apply the
appropriate retention periods. E-mail messaging system is backed up everyday and kept
for a month in case of a system default.
In addition, in case of emergency, access to the e-mail messages can be provided.
For employees, who are working on shared projects, they must print and file the hardcopy
of their e-mail messages with other records or save e-mail messages to the corporate
server with other electronic records. The Chief Information Management stated that this
practice is, for now, acceptable considering the absence of an electronic records
management system.
In Agency F, employees rely mostly on the RDIMS to ensure the appropriate
management of e-mail records. Indeed, Microsoft Outlook is used to send and receive e-
mail messages. But their management is made through the RDIMS which is used to
capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to
organizational processes. The RDIMS covers the management of information within the
entire scope of the agency, whether that information is in the form of a paper document,
an electronic file, a database print stream, or an e-mail. RDIMS aims to make the
management of corporate information easier through simplifying storage, security,
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version control, process routing, and retention. The benefits of this approach to Agency F
include improved efficiency, better control, and reduced costs. The capture of e-mail
records is made possible by integrating Microsoft Outlook with the RDIMS. Therefore,
by clicking a button, it can be automatically transferred to the RDIMS and erased from
the employees’ inboxes.
According to the Director of the IM/IT Architecture and Planning of Agency F,
the indexing components of the RDIMS improve searches and provide alternative ways
to organize the information. The management aspect of the RDIMS comprises several
components which can be used in combination or separately. Document management,
web content management, collaboration, workflow and business process management are
the dynamic part of the information's lifecycle. Records management focuses on
managing finalized documents in accordance with the organization's document retention
policy, which in turn must comply with government practices. In Agency F, for e-mail
management, the main functionalities used within the RDIMS are those related to records
management through a classification plan, record retention schedules and deletion
schedules, the protection and access to information in accordance with its characteristics,
sometimes down to individual content components in the records. With the recordkeeping
functionalities of the RDIMS, e-mail records are not managed in the e-mail messaging
system. However, according to the Director of the IM/IT Architecture and Planning of
Agency F, the e-mail messaging system can cause other difficulties as Microsoft Outlook
is more than simply sending and receiving messages and can offer functions to enhance
connectivity with phones. For example, some managers tend to transfer some of their e-
mail records to other portable applications.
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4.2.3.5. Implementation and compliance
For the implementation of an e-mail management program and compliance, both
agencies made sure that their e-mail management policy and electronic records
management policy are disseminated within their agency respectively. In Agency E, the
Chief Information Management mentioned that they use different means to disseminate
their e-mail management policy in order to make sure that every employee is aware of the
policy. For example, they publish their e-mail management policy on the agency’s
intranet so that the current version of the policy is always accessible on the intranet. Also,
when it was first adopted, they made announcements, verbally in employees meeting, but
also a written announcement that was posted in the kitchen near the copy machines. For
new employees, upon their hiring, a copy of their policy is given to them as a part of a
welcoming package.
In addition, both agencies developed training programs on e-mail management.
Agency E and Agency F both offers training to the employees in their respective agency.
The Director of the IM/IT Architecture and Planning of Agency F believes that “you can
devote enormous amounts of time to researching, planning and writing your
organizations e-mail policies, only to see your guidelines fails if you don’t devote an
equal amount of attention to implementation and enforcement.” But before the training
with employees can begin, the Director of the IM/IT Architecture and Planning at
Agency F mentioned that like any other training program in information management,
effective education starts with the managers and executives. Higher management must
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play a role as policy advocates and enforcers. For a successful strategy of e-mail
management, executive and management must receive training prior to the employee
training in order for them to ask questions and express concerns that they would not feel
comfortable in front of employees. At the IM/IT Architecture and Planning Department
of Agency F, once the management embraces their electronic records management policy
and then if the e-mail rules were introduced to employees, they relied on managers along
with legal and IT teams to conduct ongoing employee education to enforce compliance.
In both agencies, the training program is similar and covered the following topics:
(1) e-mail risks and liabilities facing that agency and employee; (2) e-mail content and
characteristics; (3) e-mail ownership and privacy; (4) e-mail as business records; (5) e-
mail retention and deletion; (6) governmental laws and regulations; (7) e-mail as legal
evidence; (8) security and confidentiality; and (9) netiquette. In addition, only in Agency
F, there is another section that covers e-mail variations and alternative communication
technologies.
In Agency E, since 2009, IM specialists have conducted internal workshops to
help staff manage their workloads of e-mail records. These workshops were organized in
small groups of 7-8 persons working within the same department in order to provide the
examples that are related to the daily activities. At Agency F, the Director of the IM/IT
Architecture and Planning believes that the training sessions are the key to support and
compliance to e-mail management. They first started the training in organizing the
meeting in large groups for each department to present the general principles and
advantages of e-mail management. Other training sessions were organized in small
groups of 5 or 6 persons to explaine how e-mail management can be applicable on a daily
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basis. After the approval of the departmental IM Policy in April 2010 the unit initiated a
calendar of events that included presentations, training and showcases. The IM team has
provided about 300 training and awareness sessions over two years (2011-2012) and
established an IM Awareness wiki site with on-line training resources. The wiki also
included, such topics as Web 2.0, Knowledge Search, Agency E’s IM Policy, Information
Classification Structure, e-mail management and “To Keep or Not to Keep”. The training
program contributes to ensuring compliance to the e-mail management principles and
guidelines within the agencies.
However, the Chief Information Management of Agency E mentioned, “it’s often
not enough” and other measures of quality control (audit) must also be implemented to
verify the compliance with the e-mail management policy. The audit methodology
developed in Agency E was based on the Treasury Board’s guidelines on internal
auditing and standards defined by the Institute of Internal Auditors. The scope of the
audit included the governance, policy, IM practices and tools at headquarters and in the
regions. The audit focused on the information lifecycle to assess the continuous and
effective management of information and the responsabilities of employees who manage
that information. All GoC employees are responsible for managing their own
information. These responsibilities include (among other things) documenting decisions,
storing, protecting, preserving information at the end of the useful lifecycle of that
information, and following the approved processes for the disposal of information. As a
result, the employees in Agency E are considered being fairly compliant to e-mail
management policy.
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However, there are still a few “black sheep” in the agency. The Chief Information
Management provided some explanations as to why employees are not fully compliant:
(1) the staff is too busy with its daily activities; (2) there is no mandatory training for e-
mail management; and (3) there are no consequences for not being compliant.
In Agency F, the managers rely on monitoring to ensure compliance to their
electronic records management policy. The Director of the IM/IT Architecture and
Planning explained that “many agencies have implemented electronic message
monitoring technology as a means of detecting illegal activity, including misuse of
corporate resources, discrimination, harassment, or sending messages with prohibited
content”. He added that human resources, in Agency F, developed guidelines to frame
how monitoring can be done. It may include identifying who may approve monitoring,
the procedures for obtaining such an approval regarding who may intercept and view
messages, and procedures and guidelines for handling messages intercepted from the
electronic messaging system, etc. As a result, there is a good level of compliance with
Agency F. Also, the Director of the IM/IT Architecture and Planning specified that there
are consequences for not being compliant to e-mail management guidelines and
information management in general. The consequences can vary, depending on the level
of severity of not adhering to the GoC legislation on information management. It can be
ranged from a verbal warning to termination, depending on the result of monitoring. In
the training sessions, the penalties for violations are clearly stated.
4.2.3.5. Issues
During the interviews, numerous issues were raised by the participants in both
agencies. The primary issues that were raised are the electronic discovery (as known as e-
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discovery) and the retrieval of e-mail records. As defined in Chapter 2, electronic
discovery refers as “the process of identifying, preserving, collecting, processing,
searching, reviewing and producing electronically stored information that may be
relevant to a civil, criminal, or regulatory matter” (Grossman and Cormack, 2013, p. 15).
According to the Chief Information Management, Agency E is not well positioned to
respond to a legal e-discovery in a cost effective manner because the department does not
have an efficient e-discovery mechanism. Currently, without an electronic records
management system, there is no way to validate whether the process has captured the
entire set of documents required by the legal process. Without an efficient retrieval
mechanism, employee’s time and costs associated with the retrieval of information can
become excessive. It is possible that, even after a rigorous manual search, a court order
could demand additional information and the cost of additional retrieval that has not been
budgeted for. This issue is significant due to the cost implications associated with each
request and the information retrieval process.
As e-mail records and electronic documents are the primary source of information
to address an e-discovery request, there are a certain numbers of risks that were identified
in Agency E. There is a great dispersion of electronic records. For example, e-mail
records that are kept in each employee inbox attempting to conduct searches in all
locations is a very time and resource intensive process to respond to a request. In addition,
there is a legal risk of not disclosing the proper information in accordance with the
Access to Information request. Furthermore, the agency may have an inability to meet
disclosure deadlines. There is a legal risk of modification of documents. There is also a
concern with the constant updating and transmission of documents through tools, such as
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e-mail. At the time a legal hold is placed on a file, the related documents must not be
altered. Without a process to “lock” files, there may be no guarantee that the hold
conditions are not violated. Untimely or unreliable document disclosure creates the risk
that litigation strategies will need to be subsequently reconsidered, hampering Agency
E’s legal position and causing increased legal costs.
In Agency F, the Director of the IM/IT Architecture and Planning explained that
e-discovery is not as an important issue as in other agencies, because they have
implemented the RDIMS in which all records in different formats can be captured,
managed and easily searched. Regarding e-mail records, he added that they have an
electronic records management policy and a complete training program to ensure
compliance and the capture of e-mail records in the RDIMS. However, he mentioned that
there is a constant preoccupation with meeting legal requirements and, for e-mail records,
preoccupation becomes more important with the use of portable applications, where e-
mail records can be kept without being captured in the RDIMS. The management of
information at Agency F impacts all lines of business operations and is a key component
of service delivery. In addition to legacy information currently held in all agencies, new
information is being created at an unprecedented rate with different applications. Without
the ability to effectively manage this information, Agency F may be at risk of losing its
ability to identify and retrieve information needed for decision-making in an organized
and timely fashion. This could also result in an inability to meet information requests
from Canadians and to fully support statutory and other mandated requirements for the
handling and safeguarding of information required in the conduct of operations.
The cloud computing and its relevancy to e-mail management are the next
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important issues that were discussed by the participants. The National Institute of
Standards and Technology defines Cloud Computing as: “a model for enabling
convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable resources (e.g.,
networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and
released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction” (Mell and
Grance, 2011, p. 2). Cloud Computing refers essentially to services that are available
online through the Internet. Both agencies are currently interested in cloud computing as
an information management solution for data storage. At Agency F, the Director of the
IM/IT Architecture and Planning explained that considering the amount of information
currently being kept and exchanged in e-mail inboxes, the cloud computing might be an
interesting solution. Also, according to the Chief Information Management of Agency E,
e-mail archiving solutions based in the cloud provide many advantages for them, one of
which is the reduced cost of investing in technology services, as opposed to
implementing the technology. This option is particularly appealing to Agency E, since
they don’t have an RDIMS. However, this option raised a certain number of questions
since, as mentioned by the Treasury Board Canada Secretariat, the government
information being held, processed, or transferred on a "government network", whereas
the cloud computing refers to any acquired services from outside the GoC. Therefore,
numerous risks must be evaluated, such as namely contractual risks, ownership of data,
location, security and data recovery. According to Agency E, there are some important
benefits to cloud computing in costs, performance, and delivery of information
technology services; therefore with continuing budgetary pressures, it is expected that
interest in cloud computing solution will continue.
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Other important issues discussed by the participants are the security and
confidentiality of information contained in e-mail records. Electronic messaging systems
are an organizational resource to be used in the conduct of the organization’s business.
Agency E and Agency F are looking into cryptography and digital signature to ensure the
protection of information contained in e-mail records and ensure their integrity and
authenticity. When an electronic message is encrypted, only individuals with the
encryption key can view the message. There are two main types of cryptography offering
differing levels of security. Besides encrypting messages, another important application
of public-key encryption is digital signature. The use of a digital signature can
authenticate the other party (e.g. sender or receiver of messages). The use of these
technologies will necessitate another policy and guideline to frame their use, but both
participants think that it could add another layer of protection for e-mail records.
The last issues that were discussed by the participants are long-term preservation
and storage of e-mail records. Electronic messaging systems are designed to get messages
from one recipient to another and not serve as a recordkeeping system. At Agency F, the
Director of the IM/IT Architecture and Planning addressed that a process must be
established to support the movement of official records to a repository that allows longer
retention of records and associated metadata. In GoC, all records that have a historical
value, whether in paper or electronic format, need to be transferred to the LAC. However,
before it can be transferred to LAC, a strategy must be thought of to ensure the
accessibility of e-mail records. The Chief Information Management of Agency E stated
that “in general, a good practice is to retain the message in its original or “native” format.”
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His perspective seems very important enough to raise questions to be answered regarding
file format choices, media selection, obsolescence, and migration.
The findings of the six in-depth interviews are summerized in Table 4.2.
Table 4.2. Summary of the six in-depth interviews on e-mail management practices and variations
Category Agency
A B C D E F
Contextual characteristics
• 200 employees; • Library, Archives and
Documentation Services composed of 11 employees.
• 225 employees; • IM/IT Division
responsible for information management governance.
• 419 employees; • Information
Management Services composed of 11 employees.
• 450 employees; • Corporate Management
and Registration Services Branches responsible of information management.
• 4500 employees; • Chief Information Office
Branch, with more 73 employees, with 26 employees working in records management related activities.
• 4700 employees; • Technology and
Information Management Services Directorate responsible for all information management activities.
E-mail policy and guidelines
• No policy or guidelines to manage e-mail;
• No common understanding of the value of e-mail messages;
• Difficulties with retrieval; • Limites inbox sizes so
random purges of e-mail messages;
• Has a general information policy.
• No policy or guidelines to manage e-mail;
• No evaluation of e-mail messages;
• Retrieval difficult; • Has a written electronic
records management policy.
• Developing e-mail management policy;
• Difficulty managing lifecycle of e-mail records;
• Difficulty managing threats and attachments;
• No common understanding of the value of e-mail messages;
• Policy developed in collaboration with other professionals.
• Has a written electronic records management policy;
• Developing a section of the management of e-mail records.
• Difficulties regarding the value of e-mail messages;
• Inability to capture e-mail messages;
• Difficulties in the retrieval of e-mail records;
• Risks analysis to develop appropriate tools;
• Adopted a specific e-mail management policy in 2004.
• Ensuring the appropriate retention of e-mail records;
• Developed a common understanding of the value of e-mail messages;
• Risks analysis to develop appropriate tools;
• Adopted an electronic records management policy in 2003 that covers e-mail management.
E-mail system and Recordkeeping
system
• Use Microsoft Outlook and its features (viewing, sorting and searching);
• No recordkeeping system due to lack of funding;
• Users save and manage e-mail messages in multiple storage places;
• Back-up tapes used as a
• Use Microsoft Outlook and its features (viewing, sorting and searching);
• Has IM and knowledge sharing including recordkeeping system but not fully implemented.
• Use Microsoft Outlook and its features (organizaing and searching);
• Has a recordkeeping system but still no consistency in managing e-mail records.
• Use Microsoft Outlook and its features (organizaing and searching);
• Has a recordkeeping system but still no consistency in managing e-mail records.
• Use Microsoft Outlook and its features (viewing, sorting and searching);
• No recordkeeping system.
• Use Microsoft Outlook and its features (viewing, sorting and searching);
• Use a recordkeeping system to capture, store, manage and preserve e-mail records.
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Category Agency
A B C D E F
E-mail system and
Recordkeeping system cont’d
preservation medium.
Implementation and compliance
• No implementation, training and compliance structure in place regarding the management of e-mail records.
• No implementation, training and compliance structure in place regarding the management of e-mail records;
• Raised the importance of change management.
• Will use different means of dissemination;
• Training may be mandatory for e-mail records;
• Will develop tools to ensure compliance and process improvement;
• Raised the importance of change management.
• Will use different means of dissemination;
• Plan to offer training sessions;
• No tools will be developed since e-mail management is not viewed as a priority.
• Used different means of dissemination;
• Training programs adapted to each employee;
• Compliance tool: auditing.
• Used different means of dissemination;
• Training programs adapted to each employee;
• Compliance tool: monitoring;
• Implemented consequences for not being compliant.
Major issues
• Ensuring the lifecycle management of e-mail records;
• Integrating policy and technology;
• Building a consensus among stakeholders.
• Ensuring communication, training and change management;
• Ensuring the lifecycle management of e-mail records.
• Importance of the policy to ensure effective e-mail management;
• E-discovery; • Vital records and
disaster recovery.
• Ensuring adequacy between policy, systems and users;
• Ensuring the lifecycle management first before more complex issues.
• E-discovery; • Cloud computing; • Security and confidentiality; • Long-term preservation.
• Management of e-mail records kept in portable applications;
• Cloud computing; • Security and
confidentiality; • Long-term preservation.
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The findings from the in-depth interviews with six information management
professionals have led us to examine the variations in managing e-mail records in
different Canadian government agencies. The findings show that the use of e-mail
messaging system to conduct business can lead to several difficulties regarding the
classification, retention, management, retrieval and preservation of e-mail messages.
Developing an e-mail management policy and/or guidelines can contribute to an effective
management of e-mail records. However, the participants suggest that to be effective, the
tools developed to manage e-mail records must be adapted to the organizational context
and information flow of an organization. In addition, the results suggest that the
management of e-mail records must be included in the overall information management
program and include different components: policy and/or guidelines, recordkeeping
system and users compliance.
4.3. Results of the research questions
Our research aims to develop a better understanding of how e-mail records are
managed in Canadian government agencies and to identify the characteristics that support
the management and preservation of e-mail records to ensure their reliability, authenticity
and integrity. The summary of the results described in this section provides answers to
our four research questions: (1) What are the general principles of the e-mail
management policies and guidelines within Canadian government agencies?; (2) To what
extent are these e-mail management principles implemented in the federal agencies?; (3)
What are the variations and similarities of e-mail management practices across federal
agencies? To what extent are they effective?; (4) What are the current practices to
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manage e-mail messages in order to ensure the reliability, authenticity and integrity of
this specific type of electronic records in federal agencies?.
4.3.1. Results of the first research question: What are the general principles of the e-mail management policies and guidelines within Canadian government agencies?
The first research question has led us to develop a comprehensive portrait of the
general principles of the e-mail management policies and/or guidelines at the
Government of Canada. The results first highlighted that e-mail is widely use as a
business communication tool within the Canadian government agencies. However, the
use of e-mail has led to difficulties regarding its management. Challenges related to e-
mail management have been identified by respondents, such as areas on retention, capture,
retrieval, overload, sotorage and discovery of e-mail records. Another specific e-mail
challenge identified by respondents is the absence of a common understanding of the
value of e-mail records among professionals involved in the management of e-mail
records.
To define the use and management of e-mail records, the establishment of an e-
mail policy and/or guidelines was deemed essential. In addition, a typology of policies
and/or guidelines used within the Canadian government agencies was identified: (1)
information management policy; (2) electronic records management policy; (3) electronic
records management policy that addresses e-mail management and (4) specific e-mail
management policy. Organizational factors such as functions, activities and available
resources seem to influence the type of policy used to manage e-mail records. The
principles to manage e-mail records include: e-mail records ownership; recognized
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records management system; retention and disposition of e-mail records; storage,
protection and accessibility of e-mail records. However, the results show that, according
to respondents, the principles contained in e-mail management policy and/or guidelines
should be expanded to include other specific issues: defining roles and responsibilities of
professionals (records managers and IT) and users involved in e-mail management,
training, e-mail etiquette, creation and edition of e-mail records and compliance to e-mail
management policy and guidelines.
4.3.2. Results of the second research question: To what extent are these e-mail management principles implemented in the federal agencies?
The second research question has brought us to describe the implementation of
the e-mail management principles in the selected government agencies. The results
indicate that technology, namely the electronic messaging system and the electronic
recordkeeping system, is used to manage e-mail records. While all agencies have access
to an electronic messaging system, the results showed that the use of an electronic
recordkeeping system has been inequal across agencies and have resulted in different
practices to manage and save e-mail records. These different practices indicate that there
is a lack of consistency in managing e-mail records within agencies were and may hinder
the integrity and authenticity of e-mail records.
To ensure the implementation of e-mail management principles, agencies rely on
dissemination and compliance tools to support e-mail management principles. The results
show that the level of compliance varies across agencies and the tools used to ensure
compliance do not seem to be standardized. The respondents identified different means to
ensure compliance: auditing, monitoring, quality control, quotas and automatic tools.
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However, these means are often not implemented in agencies. In addition, user’s training
was identified by respondents as being a real challenge since, often, no training program
exists in agencies. Also, measures for non-compliance to e-mail management policy
and/or guidelines are often absent in agencies. For respondents, it appears that a
combination of methods to ensure compliance tends to be a more successful approach,
when awareness to e-mail management challenges are raised within the agencies.
4.3.3. Results of the third research question: What are the variations and similarities of e-mail management practices across federal agencies? To what extent are they effective?
The third research question has led us to examine the variations and similarities in
managing in e-mail records in different Canadian government agencies.
The findings have highlighted differences in managing e-mail records in
interviewed agencies. We must remind that the agencies were selected based on their
different level of implementation of e-mail management policies and guidelines: (1) two
agencies that have not implemented any e-mail management policies (agencies A and B);
(2) two agencies that have initiated the implementation of such policies (agencies C and
D); and (3) two organizations that have fully implemented e-mail management policies
and guidelines (agencies E and F). The results from two agencies which have not
developed an e-mail management policy indicate that the use of e-mail messaging system
can lead to several difficulties regarding the classification, retention, management,
retrieval and preservation of e-mail messages leading to an interest in developing a new
e-mail management policy. Two agencies which are currently developing an e-mail
management policy and guidelines aim at ensuring the effective management of e-mail
records. However, the participants suggest that to be effective, the tools developed to
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manage e-mail records must be adapted to the organizational context and information
flow of an organization. In addition, the management of e-mail records must be included
in the overall information management program. Finally, two agencies which have
developed an e-mail management policy proved that to be successful, e-mail management
solutions must include additional components: policy and/or guidelines, recordkeeping
system and users compliance. The results suggest that managing e-mail records should be
considered with a holistic approach.
Regarding similarities, the results show that there are also commonalities across
the six interviewed agencies from their addressed issues. It appears that the e-mail
management challenges faced by information management professionals in the six
agencies are similar. Indeed, issues related to evaluation, retrieval, storage, e-mail
overload, management of threads and attachments, retention, classification and long-term
preservation of e-mail records were addressed by participants. In particular, the absence
of a common understanding of the value of e-mail records is a recurring theme across
agencies. To the interviewed agencies, these challenges seemed to have been the reasons
for developing and implementing e-mail management policies and/or guidelines as well
as associated tools.
4.3.4. Results of the fouth reseach question: What are the current practices to manage e-mail messages in order to ensure the reliability, authenticity and integrity of this specific type of electronic records in federal agencies?
The fourth research question has led us to create a portrait of the current practices
of e-mail management in federal agencies. The results highlighted four units to consider
in e-mail management: (1) e-mail management policy and/or guidelines; (2) electronic
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messaging system and electronic recordkeeping system; (3) implementation and
dissemination; and (4) associated issues.
Regarding the e-mail management policy and/or guidelines, while the
establishment of an e-mail policy and/or guidelines in defining the use and management
of e-mail records was deemed essential, in reality, not all agencies have developed and
implemented this kind of tool. For agencies that have not developed or implemented a
policy or guidelines, it appears that a lack of awareness of e-mail management and the
value of e-mail records may impact the management of e-mail messages. For the agencies
that have an e-mail management policy and/or guidelines, the results show that some
participants feel that their policy is inadequate to ensure the appropriate management of
e-mail records. Because the principles are limited, they should be expanded to cover
more issues to ensure the management of the lifecycle of e-mail records. For the agencies
that are satisfied with their current e-mail management policy and/or guidelines, it seems
that the fact that it was developed by a multi-disciplinary team and included in a more
general information management program, may have a positive effect on the content of
the policy. The results show that the policy seems to improve the overall quality of e-mail
management.
Furthermore, the results suggest that the e-mail management policies and/or
guidelines must be supported by proper implementation and use of an electronic
messaging system and/or electronic recordkeeping system. The results show that, since
all the interviewed agencies have access to an electronic messaging system, the system’s
functionalities are used to facilitate the management of e-mail records. However, the
results indicate that the functionalities of an electronic messaging system are not adapted
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to ensure the lifecycle management of e-mail records. More than half of interviewed
agencies have access to an electronic recordkeeping system that contains functionalities
related to records management, such as classification plan, retention schedules, protection
and access, retrieval and metadata. While the functionalities of an electronic
recordkeeping system can contribute to ensuring the authenticity and integrity of e-mail
records, the implantation of this software is inequal across agencies.
The third component, implementation and dissemination, seems to be difficult in
many interviewed agencies. The results suggest that, to be successful, the dissemination
and training should be carefully planned, adapted to the audience and the organizational
context as well as receive the approbation of higher management. The training should
cover a variety of topics, such as liabilities facing the agency and employee; e-mail
content and characteristics; e-mail ownership and privacy; e-mail as business records; e-
mail retention and deletion; governmental laws and regulations; e-mail as legal evidence;
security and confidentiality; and netiquette. The results highlighted also the need to
develop additional tools to ensure compliance of users.
Finally, the results have shed light on issues faced by the interviewed agencies
that must be adressed in e-mail management. These issues include electronic discovery,
disaster discovery, portable application and long-term preservation.
The results are further discussed in the next chapter.
Summary
This chapter presented the results that provide answers to our research questions.
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First, we examined the e-mail management principles and implementation across
Canadian government agencies. The analysis revealed that e-mails are recognized as
important in the government agencies to conduct business. However, the volume of
messages increased as well as a lack of common understanding of the value of e-mail
messages have led to difficulties in managing and preserving this type of records. The
establishment of an e-mail management policy and the implementation and use of e-mail
messges systems for managing them are deemed important.
Second, we examined the differences and similarities of managing e-mail records
in six government agencies. The findings indicated that e-mail management tools must be
developed in cohesion with the organization’s information management program. The
tools must be developed in collaboration with other professionals and must include
different components. In the next chapter, we interpret and discuss the main results
obtained during our study, based on the objectives of this research, and suggest a
framework for a comprehensive e-mail management program.
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CHAPTER V. DISCUSSION
This research examines how e-mail records are managed in Canadian government
agencies and how e-mail management tools are implemented in six agencies. For the
purpose of this study, four research questions were postulated to seek a better
understanding of e-mail management as the following: (1) the general principles of the e-
mail management policies and guidelines within Canadian government agencies; (2) the
level of implementation of these e-mail management policies; (3) the variations and
similarities of e-mail management practices across federal agencies; and (4) the current
practices to manage e-mail messages in order to ensure the reliability, authenticity and
integrity of records. This chapter interprets the results based on these research questions.
The discussion is organized into three sections. First, we reflect on the challenges raised
from the use of e-mail as a communication tool to conduct business activities and the
management of e-mail records within Canadian government agencies. In the second
section, we suggest a framework for a comprehensive e-mail management program.
Finally, we propose a policy model to manage e-mail records that takes into account the
specific characteristics of e-mail records and the reality of the studied government
agencies.
5.1. E-mail Management Challenges
The data analysis has shown that numerous issues or challenges need to be
addressed when managing e-mail records. The issues are divided into four categories: (1)
records management; (2) legal; (3) systems; and (4) users and compliance issues.
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5.1.1. Records Management
As previously mentioned, many governments including the Government of
Canada (GoC) are moving toward electronic records as the preferred record of business.
The Library and Archives Canada (LAC) states that “99.9% of government records are
digital” (Government of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, 2011). More importantly,
the GoC provides more and more services through web-based applications and, as a
result, performs more operations through e-mail. More than “70% of GoC business is
now conducted by e-mail and as a result, the GoC sends globally 18 million e-mails per
day” (Government of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, 2011). Therefore,
appropriate e-mail management has become critical within the information accessibility-
and accountability-driven environments.
The results have shown that legal value of e-mail records is not always recognized
and accepted among professionals involved in electronic records management, such as IT
professionals, lawyers, management and users. Organizations must recognize that an
electronic message can qualify as a record (ARMA, 2012). For an effective management
of e-mail records, a common understanding of what constitutes an electronic record is a
prequisite. Concerning the management of e-mail records, Smallwood (2013, p. 179)
argues that e-mail management must focus on the electronic information (e-information)
lifecycle phases. As such, the Government of Canada has developed the Information
Management Life Cycle that has seven stages: (1) planning; (2) collection, creation,
receipt and capture; (3) organization; (4) use and dissemination; (5) maintenance,
protection and preservation; (6) disposition and (7) evaluation to ensure the appropriate
management of its electronic records. In accordance with the Policy on Information
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Management, federal government agencies (institutions) are obligated to collect, create,
receive and capture all business related records including e-mail messages (e-mail) that
contain “corporate memory information or data used to make a decision or to initiate an
action”(Government of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, 2008, p. 9). As a result,
LAC has introduced, in 2008, the E-mail Management Guidelines to guide agencies in
the development of policies and procedures for the appropriate management of the
lifecycle of e-mail records and TBS has adopted, in 2009, the Directive on
Recordkeeping to ensure “effective recordkeeping practices” at the GoC.
Nevertheless, numerous issues were raised by participants regarding the
management of the lifecycle of e-mail records, namely apparaisal, classification,
retention, management, retrieval and preservation of e-mail messages. As such, during
interviews, five out of six agencies identified difficulties regarding the classification of e-
mail records to facilitate the management and retrieval of e-mail records. In addition, four
participants specify the difficulty of assigning retention periods to e-mail records
contained in employees mailboxes. It is now widely accepted that e-mail messages
pertaining to the business of the government are records and, as such, must be preserved
for a specific amount of time or kept permanently in accordance with legislation
(Government of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, 2008). While some types of
records must be preserved for a minimum period of time, other types are subject to longer
retention periods, after which they must be disposed of by law. Government agencies
should keep only active records, dispose e-mail records based on their value
(administrative, legal, financial, informational, historical), and retain the active records
according to their retention and disposal schedules. Finally, throughout the entire
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lifecycle of an e-mail record, it should be stored, protected, and accessible when
necessary.
In order to ensure the management of the entire lifecycle of e-mail records,
several authors have discussed in the literature that effective records management
requires the creation and implementation of a policy as addressed in Chapter 2
(Gurushanta and Smallwood, 2012; Saulnier, 2005; Flynn and Kahn, 2003; Périat, 1997).
The results of the research showed that the Canadian government agencies developed
different kind of policies and guidelines to manage e-mail records, ranging from general
information management policies to specific e-mail management policies, depending on
each agency organizational structure, technology and business needs. Among
participants, it is widely accepted that an e-mail management policy and/or guideline is
an important tool for effective management of e-mail records.
However, the practices vary among agencies as some of them don’t have an e-
mail management policy and thus failed to capture and manage e-mail records according
to laws and regulations as well as business needs. With e-mail records, effective e-mail
management must be enclosed in a policy and/or guidelines, since the process of
managing e-mail begins with users, at their own desktops, making decisions about what
e-mail messages to delete, or keep and where to file them. In addition, the content of the
policies and guidelines also tend to vary across agencies and their practices vary, too.
5.1.2. Legal
Agencies’ e-mail management policies and usage must comply with the laws and
regulations of the jurisdictions in which they are conducting business. In Canada,
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according to Gurushanta and Smallwood (2012),
“there are six areas of law applicable to the management of paper and electronic records: (1) the laws of evidence applicable to electronic and paper records; (2) national standards of Canada concerning electronic records; (3) the records requirements of government agencies; (4) the electronic commerce legislation; (5) the access to information and privacy laws; and (6) the guidelines for electronic discovery in legal proceedings” (pp. 32-33).
Each of these areas of law affects records and information management, just as they are
affected by the laws governing the use of records as evidence in legal proceedings - the
laws of evidence.
Under the rules of discovery, parties in a legal matter can request all relevant
records and information from each other, including electronic records and e-mail. The
failure to preserve and present relevant information can result in sanctions and adverse
rulings for the offending organization (Martin, 2012). “Electronic discovery (also called
e-discovery or ediscovery) refers to any process in which electronic data is sought,
located, secured, and searched with the intent of using it, as evidence in a civil or
criminal legal case” (Grossman and Cormack, 2013, p. 15). According to Hrycko and
Rothman, the nature of electronic records makes it well-suited to investigation because it
can be electronically searched with ease (2013, p. 2). Furthermore, electronic records are
difficult and almost impossible to destroy, particularly if it gets into a network and a
backup is made. In the process of electronic discovery, electronic records of all types can
serve as evidence such as text, images, databases, Web sites. Martin argues that “e-mail
can be an especially valuable source of evidence in civil or criminal litigation, because
people are often less careful in these exchanges than in hard copy correspondence, such
as written memos and postal letters” (Martin, 2012, p. 188).
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Our research has shown that some agencies are worried about electronic
discovery, mentioning that legal hold is difficult to apply since there are no uniform
methods to organize e-mail records, and retrieval was also hard to achieve. As
recommended by Hrycko and Rothman (2013), organizations should have formal
(documented) policies and procedures in place to identify, preserve, and produce records
in any format in response to discovery proceedings. The policies and procedures should
specifically address how to handle e-mail in compliance with a legal hold. Organizations
with technology-enabled legal hold processed should consider integrating automated
processes into the organization’s e-mail system to manage e-mails affected by legal holds
(ARMA, 2013).
In addition, in most jurisdictions, messages sent over the agency’s systems are the
property of the agency and the agency should set a policy to ensure that the messages sent
and received over the system are secure, that their authenticity can be assured, and that
the use of the system does not compromise the integrity of the agency. Information
management programs are usually developed with legal counsel to address privacy and
security issues. A risk assessment with respect to privacy and security needs to be
identified and addressed regarding improper disclosure of information, integrity of the
data, and systems safeguards (ARMA, 2009). The needs analysis must take into
consideration any regulatory requirements governing the organization’s industry and
location, as well as considerations such as the size and culture of the organization. For
Canadian government agencies, the risks are evaluated through the Management
Accountability Framework (MAF) developed by the Treasury Board Canada.
Implemented in 2003, each agency is assessed under 14 areas of management including
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people management, financial management, internal audit, etc. (Government of Canada,
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2011). All major federal departments and a third
of small agencies are assessed on an annual basis, which represents 45 to 50
organizations each year. Smaller organizations are assessed on a three-year cycle using a
more targeted approach to reduce the burden of the exercise on them (organizations have
between 150 and 499 employees and an annual budget of at least $300 million)
(Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2011). Despite the risk
assessments, concerns regarding security and confidentiality were raised by the
participants.
The agencies must also consider the security and confidentiality of information in
the form of e-mail, attachments, or linked documents that reside on third party servers.
The electronic messaging policy should include ways to ensure the protection of
information and make a distinction between public and confidential information. E-mail
that contains sensitive information must be subject to the same standards and precautions
as afforded information in any other medium. The e-mail system should not be used to
transmit messages that contain confidential business information, information covered by
privacy regulations, or other sensitive information. Employees should be made aware of
information confidentiality as it applies to e-mail. Many jurisdictions have developed
privacy regulations that govern the transmission and retention of personal information. In
Canada, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA),
updated in 2006, protects personal information that is collected, used, or disclosed in
certain circumstances by providing for the use of electronic means to communicate or
record information or transactions. Privacy legislation and regulations change as new
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technologies are employed and new privacy concerns come to the surface, as privacy
issues are addressed in courts. Organizations need to stay on the top of new requirements
in the jurisdictions in which they do business.
5.1.3. Systems
A corporate recordkeeping system is considered a very important tool in order to
manage efficiently e-mail identified as records by the participants in this study.
The results of the study showed that a certain number of Canadian government
agencies are using the electronic messaging system to manage their e-mail records. An
electronic messaging system is a “one or more computer applications used to create,
receive, and transmit messages and other documents electronically. It differs from other
computer applications in that its purpose of communication, along with the collecting and
conveying of context information” (ARMA, 2012, p. 2). Electronic messaging systems
vary in their structure and functionalities: message creation, transmission, storage of
messages, research, and security. E-mail systems continue to evolve at a rapid rate
(Government of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, 2011).
However, even if electronic messaging systems allow for some automatic
functionnalities, an evaluation of the content of messages should be done. In addition, as
mentioned by Agency C, e-mail messaging systems should not be subjected to periodic
and indiscriminate purges of messages, either by manual or by automated means, whether
by users themselves or by system administrators. Messages should only be deleted or
disposed of in accordance with agency approved disposition schedules and must not be
disposed of simply because the inbox is full or because the messages have aged beyond
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some arbitrary time limit (Saffady, 2013; Prom, 2011; Franks, 2004). The electronic
messaging systems are not designed to ensure the appropriate management of e-mail
records. As such, effective records management may require conversion or migration to a
more appropriate system. These practices can have serious implications for agencies. E-
mails and their attachments as official records must be retained and managed securely in
order to support regulatory compliance and satisfying business needs (ARMA, 2013;
Enneking, 1998). Failure to produce such documentation in a timely manner can result in
legal problems. Moreover, the actual process of searching unmanaged and unclassified e-
mails can be an enormous financial burden on the government agencies. Therefore, other
systems should be used to accomplish these functions.
To provide an infrastructure for records managements systems, including e-mail
messages, the GoC has identified an overwhelming and urgent need for an electronic
document and record management (EDRM) system to meet the needs of its diverse users,
comply with regulatory standards, ensure the management of the entire lifecycle of
records, and control the significant costs associated with meeting these requirements.
This approach is supported by Shupe and Behling (2006), who recommended that
installing one integrated records management system that includes e-mail management is
greatly effective across multiple departments within an institution. GoC has developed an
integrated system, called Records, Documents and Information Mangement Sstem
(RDIMS) (Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2007). The
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat has chosen and established the RDIMS as the suite
of applications for records and document management in the federal government as part
of the Shared Systems Initiative. RDIMS is an electronic document and records
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management solution designed to manage documents and records throughout their
lifecycle and facilitate the sharing of information within departments and across the GoC.
RDIMS integrates “commercial-off-the-shelf software applications to operate as a single,
seamless application in an electronic work environment” (Government of Canada, Public
Works and Government Services Canada, 2006, p. 1). The system establishes corporate
repositories for the effective implementation of information policies, and provides
various functionalities to capture, manage, and share records until it no longer have value.
The RDIMS solution combines functionality for “document management, records
management, workflow, routing, imaging, and reporting” (Government of Canada, Public
Works and Government Services Canada, 2006, p. 1). Through RDIMS, all kinds of
documents and records can be created, managed, searched, preserved, and accessed,
including word-processing documents, e-mail messages, spreadsheets, presentations,
images, photos, and forms (OpenText, 2012). However, RDIMS has had limited success
within the Canadian government. As a result, a new government-wide recordkeeping
system, called GCDocs, was developed to manage all information coming from different
channels such as e-mail records. For different reasons, the implementation of this system
is inequal across agencies.
The results showed that systems used across government agencies are different
and illustrate a lack of consistency in practices, whereas some agencies have access to an
electronic records management system that ensures the management of e-mail records
throughout their entire lifecycle and other agencies use an e-mail messaging system to
manage e-mail records.
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5.1.4. Users and compliance
This study found that an e-mail management policy and an electronic records
management system with its functionalities can contribute to an effective management of
e-mail records. However, the findings of this study stressed the importance of training
and ensuring compliance to e-mail management tools.
Dissemination of an e-mail management policy is as important as implementation.
As shown at the GoC, different means should be used to disseminate the e-mail
management policies and procedures to reach as many users as possible, whether by
diffusion on the agency website or by the mean of training (ARMA, 2013). In addition,
top managers at government agencies must support e-mail management policy and
emphasize its importance within the organization. Different kinds of professionals are
also involved in the process of e-mail management, such as IT professionals and
information management professionals, because e-mail management cannot be separated
from records management or from computer systems.
Employee training is raised as an essential aspect for effective e-mail
management. In the current practice, GoC tends to rely heavily on employees’
responsibility to manage e-mail messages. The likelihood that employees will actually
perform e-mail management may depend on the training that employees receive.
However, our study shows that GoC does rarely provide a specific guideline on e-mail
management training or that there is only a section dedicated to training in their e-mail
management policy. LAC recommends that training take a different shape or form by
using different media (Government of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, 2008, p.
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24). However, the implementation of different training programs was observed in one of
the studied agencies.
In addition, according to the Association of Records Managers and
Administrators (ARMA), “organizations must have mechanisms in place for enforcing
the messaging policy and for taking appropriate action against employees who violate it”
(2013, p. 38). Thus quality control programs are necessary to verify whether employees
correctly recognize e-mail records and file them in compliance with the official e-mail
records management policy. As such, the TBS has developed a Guideline for Employees
of the Government of Canada: Information Management (IM) Basics that with the
introduction of the Policy on Information Management (2007), the Directive on
Information Management Roles and Responsibilities (2007) and the Directive on
Recordkeeping (2009). They have been designed to help all GoC employees understand
their roles and responsibilities in managing information resources effectively regardless
of the medium, including data and information in e-mails and documents produced in
word-processing systems. According to these guidelines, all employees are accountable
and responsible for ensuring quality of information in their area of responsibility at all
stages of information lifecycle; in addition, employees must follow the advice and
guidance of information professionals with regard to the creation of accurate, complete,
reliable, authentic, and accessible information. However, as Sprehe and McClure (2005)
have pointed out, training is often insufficient. It is necessary to raise awareness within
GoC regarding the importance of implementing e-mail management training and
appropriate quality assurance at government agencies, which should be further examined
and implemented.
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In relation to compliance, an effective training program minimizes compliance
problems related to employees’ not knowing what is and is not expected of them. Though
some agencies have implemented recordkeeping and/or records management systems to
manage corporate e-mails, according to the respondents, many employees seems not to
use them because of tedious office procedures and lack of sufficient training in their use.
To increase the level of compliance to e-mail management policies and guidelines, the
majority of the respondents have implemented different methods to ensure compliance. In
some circumstances, risk factors may justify more enforcement efforts. Considering that
electronic messaging systems are a corporate resource and that the organization has the
right to monitor and control their use, there are other means for monitoring compliance
available. In reality, at the GoC, few participating agencies have implemented solutions
to ensure compliance. However, some agencies (agencies B, E and F) are relying on
periodical audit in conformance with the Management Accountability Framework
developed by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat that contributes to evaluating
information management in government agencies.
In summary, the results of the analysis show that e-mail messaging system is used
widely within the GoC to conduct business activities and that e-mail records are
recognized as important business records. In addition, the participants in this research
agreed that it is crucial that e-mails should be managed properly. The results have shown
that different challenges must be overcome to manage e-mail records. As suggested in
this research, four kinds of issues have been addressed. The records management issues
include the appraisal, classification, retention, management, retrieval and preservation of
e-mail records and the creation of tools to ensure their management, such as an e-mail
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management policy. Legal issues include security, confidentiality, e-discovery, and
privacy. System issues are related to the use of an electronic recordkeeping system and its
features to ensure the proper management of e-mail records. Finally, users-related issues
raised proper training, compliance and enforcement of e-mail management tools.
5.2. Framework for a comprehensive e-mail management program and implementation
Based on the results of this study, this research highlighted five components of e-mail
management that must be aligned in a comprehensive e-mail management program.
5.2.1. Five components for an e-mail management program
Five components must be addressed and aligned in an e-mail management program as
shown in Figure 5.1. The five components identified are the following:
1. Legal and Organizational Requirements: Laws and regulations have an impact on the ways in which governments and organizations in general conduct business. Also, laws and regulations affect the way in which organizations create and use records since records form the basis for legal evidence. In addition, each organization has its own organizational culture. Therefore, understanding how to manage records, particularly electronic records, requires understanding the legal and organizational environment. 2. Records Management Requirements: Records need to be managed in an appropriate way so they can be accessed and used in the course of daily business functions throughout the organizational environment and served as legal evidence. The way that records, including electronic records, are managed throughout their lifecycle is formalized into the policies and practices of the records and information management program. 3. Systems Requirements: Technology is used to create, transmit and manage electronic records such as e-mail records. To ensure the implementation of records management policies, functionalities of systems used within the organizations must be investigated to evaluate the compatibility of the systems with the e-mail management program’s objectives. 4. Training Requirements: Records management, more specifically e-mail
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management, is reliant on the participation of users. Therefore, the users requirements must be addressed in a complete e-mail management program to understand the e-mail management policy and guidelines as well as to use the electronic messaging systems effectively and appropriately. 5. Auditing and Compliance Requirements: Records management activities, such as e-mail management, must be reviewed (1) to ensure that sufficient policies, training programs and controls are in place; (2) to comply with all operational and legal, obligations and; (3) to identify the improvements that should be made.
Figure 5.1. Components for an e-mail management program
E-MAIL MANAGEMENT PROGRAM
LEGAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL REQUIREMENTS
AUDITING AND COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS
RECORDS MANAGEMENT REQUIREMENTS
SYSTEMS REQUIREMENTS
TRAINING REQUIREMENTS
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As shown in Figure 5.1., each component is interrelated to operationalize the use and
management of e-mail records.
Each component is further explained in the subsequent sections.
5.2.2. Legal and Organizational Requirements
The first component of the framework is legal and organizational requirements.
This component can be mapped with the juridical requirements of Park’s study (2002)
and the legal and business issues presented by ARMA (2000). Both studies as well as the
results of our research have shown that the understanding of legal requirements and the
business activities of an organization are the premises to understanding how electronic
records are managed. Every organisation is subject to laws and regulations which govern
the way that agencies conduct business. As a result, the laws and regulations affect how
electronic records are created, used, captured and managed, as records are the basis for
legal evidence. Legal systems depend on “access to trustworthy evidence”, which often
takes the form of documentary evidence, such as letters, minutes, photographs and
different types of electronic records including e-mail records (International Records
Management Trust, 2009, p. 40). Therefore, the ability to access reliable and authentic
information and records is vital to any legal system, since decisions are made, based on
the analysis of evidence (Smallwood, 2013). According to Thurston (2012), “efficient
record keeping will greatly improve the chance that these documentary materials will be
considered authentic and reliable” (p. 33).
In addition, “each organisation has its own ‘culture’ or way of operating, which
influences the decisions they make and the actions they take” (International Records
Management Trust, 2009, p. 39). In order to manage the records of a particular
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government agency or organisation effectively, it is important to understand the ‘culture’
of that organisation: the political, economic and organisational environment in which that
agency operates (Wright, 2013). According to Thurston (2009),
“understanding the organisational culture also involves considering the different elements that make up the organisation, including the following:
• the mandate: why does the organisation exist; when and why was it established; has its purpose changed over time; does it perform functions other than those identified as its core business?;
• the people: how many people work in the organisation; what do they do; what are their qualifications?;
• the financial structure: what is the organisation’s budget; what are its usual financial expenditures; what economic constraints does it face and how does it decide on priorities?;
• the physical environment: what kind of building(s) are in use; what hazards or risks exist inside or near the facility;
• the geopolitical environment: is the jurisdiction in which the agency operates stable; do governments and administrations change frequently or remain the same for years?;
• the technological environment: what is the state of the technological infrastructure; what level of technical support is available to the agency to manage electronic information resources what technical constraints are in place that may hinder effective electronic records management?;
• the information environment: what is the level of control over records and information; is information used regularly or well to support business functions and activities; what support is in place for improvements to information resource management?; the information flow; the different work environments (use of remote locations)” (International Records Management Trust, 2009, p. 41).
Therefore, understanding the unique characteristics of an organization is necessary to
ensure an effective electronic records management programme, including e-mail
management. As seen in Chapter 2, a government agency is a “permanent or semi-
permanent organization that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific
functions within the government” (Garvin, 2011, p. 1). There is a variety of agency types.
The autonomy, independence and accountability of government agencies can vary. The
agencies that participated in this research have different mission, goals and objectives. In
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order to accomplish their mission, all the agencies have different available resources (e.g.
financial, human, technological). In addition, each agency must operate its functions and
activities according to their own legal requirements and business needs. Understanding
which tasks and functions are or are not unique to a particular agency is essential as
records are created and received in these contexts and attest of the functions and activities
of each agency.
Therefore, understanding the legal and organisational environments in which
records are created and used is essential to establishing a successful and effective records
management programme.
5.2.3. Records Management Requirements
The second component of the framework consists of records management
requirements and policy to manage e-mail records. This component can be mapped with
the procedural requirements of Park’s study (2002) and records management issues of
ARMA (2000) since records must be properly managed so they can be used in the
conduct of business activities to be served as legal evidence.
According to the International Standard Organization (2001), records
management is the “field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic
control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records including the
processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business
activities and transactions in the form of records” (ISO15489, 2001, p. 3). Records
management applies to all records regardless of format, whether electronic records or
paper records. Organizations create and maintain records in order to operate effectively.
To deliver information with value, that information must be recorded and managed to
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ensure its: “(1) Authenticity – The record is proven to be what it claims to be; (2)
Reliability – Contents can be confirmed as dependable, full, accurate representations of
the transactions to which they relate; (3) Integrity – It is a complete, unaltered record; and
(4) Usability – The record can be located, accessed, understood, and utilized” (ISO15489,
2001, p. 7).
Gradually, electronic records management (ERM) have moved to the front of
business issues with the increasing automation of business processes and the increasing
volume of electronic records such as e-mail records. Smallwood (2013) argues that “these
factors, coupled with expanded and tightened reporting laws and compliance regulations,
have made ERM increasingly essential for most entreprises – especially highly regulated
and public ones such as government agencies – over the past decade” (p. 3). The
management of e-mail messages is one of the biggest information management
challenges. Comprehensive planning by organizations is aimed at gaining control over
the explosive growth of this electronic medium and its growing range of uses, features
and functionalities.
To ensure ongoing records management, the records lifecycle – from creation to
disposition or preservation – provides the structural foundation. This is applicable to all
records, including e-mail records. The records lifecycle, as suggested by InterPARES and
the International Council on Archives (ICA), consisted of:
• “Creation: in the course of business activities, electronic messages can be transmitted (i.e., sent and received) by the organization and added to a recordkeeping system. The organization considers business and legal requirements when considering an electronic message to be a record.
• Appraisal: process of determining the value of the record to the organization. Schedule periodic or random audits to ensure program compliance.
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• Classification: classification scheme allows for the identification and indexing of records. Classification may be automated through the use of technology. Or, it may be manual, requiring human intervention. Selection of the appropriate method depends on specific characteristics of the organization and its policies.
• Disposition: the disposition of a record may result in: 1) its destruction or 2) its transfer to another entity and/or archive. Specific conditions/events triggering a disposition action (e.g., the end of the business process or activity supported by a record or the expiration of a retention period) should be clearly documented. Actions spawned by disposition events should be logged, and those logs should be retained for audit purposes.
• Preservation: A record should be preserved in a trustworthy way during its entire retention period, up to and including long-term preservation in an archive, if appropriate. For a record in the form of an electronic message, the content and metadata must remain linked to the electronic message throughout the retention period. This requires deployment of technological and organizational resources including time, money, personnel, hardware, software, network systems, and other e-mail management program-related features. Such resources, when properly instituted and implemented, help to ensure the records’ authenticity, accuracy, reliability, and usability”. (InterPARES and ICA, 2012, pp. 9-10).
In order to ensure the lifecycle management of records, a risk assessment and analysis
is conducted to identify risks pertaining to records loss or damage (ARMA, 2012;
Lemieux, 2010; Thurston, 2009; Duranti, 2009). These activities will also be useful to the
organization’s planning efforts regarding vital records, business continuity, and disaster
response. Based on the previous requirements, tools are created by information
management professionals, such as policies and procedures, to ensure that business need
for evidence, accountability and information about an organization’s activities are met.
As such, an e-mail management policy is identified as being an important tool to ensure
the appropriate management of e-mail records throughout their lifecycle.
5.2.4. Systems Requirements
The third component in the framework is systems. This component can be
mapped with the technological requirements of the theoretical framework in Park’s study
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(2002) and systems issues of ARMA. To ensure the implementation of records
management policies, functionalities of systems used within the organizations must be
investigated to meet the records management objectives. The systems refer to the
technology used to produce, transmit and manage e-mail records, mainly the electronic
messaging system and the electronic recordkeeping system. In order to manage e-mail
records appropriately, the systems requirements related to the functional components of
e-mail management program must evaluate the compatibility of the systems with the
program’s objectives. When properly executed, systems design and the systems-related
specifications can facilitate the implementation of an efficient e-mail management
program (ARMA, 2013). System(s) design should reflect the e-mail management
program requirements.
As seen in this research, organizations provide electronic messaging services to
send, receive, classify, and store electronic messages. When using multiple systems-
related tools to accomplish these functions, such as an electronic records management
system, the level of interoperability can be an important factor. It is also important to
consider the degree of integration between systems that can be expected.
In addition, the functionalities of the systems used to manage e-mail records must
be evaluated to meet the e-mail management program requirements (ARMA, 2013). For
example, systems design, file formats, search, retrieval, and security are important
considerations. As seen in the research results, it is possible that an electronic messaging
system can enhance the search and retrieval of e-mail records facilitating access.
However, the type of search engine can affect the system performance and reliability
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(ARMA, 2013). Therefore, the organization business requirements must guide search and
retrieval features and/or functionalities.
In the organizational environment, technology plays an important role in ensuring
the governance of activities. However, technology is always evolving. Therefore, the e-
mail management program needs to be flexible and “forward-looking enough to
anticipate the dynamic nature of technological options” (Smallwood, 2011, p. 59), as the
hardware and software used become obsolete as a result of technological innovation. The
e-mail management program must anticipate the technological obsolescence by keeping
an eye on safeguarding the records. It is important to determine how to preserve access to
the organization’s records (ARMA, 2013) as keeping the e-mail records’ reliability,
authenticity, and integrity remain of great importance.
In order to ensure the integrity and authenticity of e-mail records, security
features of systems are important to consider. Security features can vary from one system
to the other. Access to electronic messaging systems should be authenticated by a unique
identifier assigned to each individual and is not to be shared among users. This security
technique ensures that a user is authorized for access to electronic messaging resources as
appropriate to job title, work activity, and/or organizational role; each time the system is
accessed, validation occurs via the unique identifier. As recommended by ARMA,
“records management and information technology personnel should collaborate to define
and designate levels of user authorization” (ARMA, 2013, p. 36). When a user leaves an
organization, whether permanently or temporarily, the access to the organization’s
electronic messaging system should be terminated on the date of departure and the
account should be desactivated. The messages in the account of the user who is leaving
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the organization may be accessed by authorized individuals in compliance with the e-mail
management policy. Also, other security features can be used to ensure the integrity and
authenticity of e-mail records such as an “auto-lock feature to safeguard information
when the equipment is left unattended and users should not share access passwords”
(ARMA, 2013, p. 37).
The ability of the organization to attest the authenticity of e-mail records should
be preserved. Therefore, the organization’s systems must include audit trails to ensure the
integrity and authenticity of electronic records. Records management personnel should
verify the audit data as one way to monitor the authenticity of records throughout the
organization as suggested by ARMA (2013). Encryption is another methods may also be
used to ensure the integrity and authenticity of electronic messages. When a message is
encrypted, only individuals with the encryption key can view the message. Another
important application is the digital signature. The use of a digital signature can
authenticate the other party (sender or receiver of message). A digital signature consists
of two components: the digital signature and proof of authenticity of the identity of the
user. As mentioned by InterPARES, “digital signatures are subject to obsolescence and,
together with the entities to which they are attached, cannot be converted to new or
updated software applications. Indeed, the life span of authentication technologies may
be shorter than the length of time that an e-mail record must be retained” (InterPARES 3
Project, 2011, p. 56). Security breaches are important to consider and should be
minimized in order to ensure the integrity and authenticity of e-mail records.
As such, spam is one primary security threat to e-mail. Indeed, “as a delivery
mechanism, it can spread viruses and/or malicious software; threats that originate in the
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e-mail system may quickly spread to other electronic systems in the organization,
destroying data, stealing information, compromising the authenticity of information, and
infecting entire networks” (ARMA, 2013, p. 35). The organization should also have
appropriate firewall protection, intrusion detection systems, and operating system
security patches. As Flynn and Kahn recommend that “organizations should seek
professional legal counsel to develop protocols for addressing and responding to different
types of security incidents and breaches of confidentiality” (Flynn and Kahn, 2003, p.
122). Depending upon the nature of the incident or breach, the type of information
comprised, and the legal jurisdiction within which the incident or breach occurred,
security incidents may need to be reported to a regulatory agency. Organizations with
technology-enabled legal hold processes should consider integrating that technology into
the organization’s electronic messaging system to automate the legal hold process for
electronic messages. Ultimately, as recommended by ARMA, “an organization’s
approach to legal hold and discovery processes should be informed by industry best
practices and relevant statutes, in conjunction with an organization’s risk profile”
(ARMA, 2013, p. 19).
As seen in the research results, many organizations are now faced with a situation
in which employees use mobile devices from which electronic records are managed.
Many of these devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) are “user-owned, giving rise to the
“bring your own device” (BYOD) trend” (Saffady, 2013, pp. 50-51). This trend can be
challenging for ensuring information governance in organizations, considering that
device monitoring and control is more complicated with devices not provided by the
organization as many records are created, accessed, retrieved, transmitted and/or stored in
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mobile devices. The organization needs to address the use of both organization-owned
and user-owned devices and provide guidance.
To ensure the appropriate management of e-mail records, the technical aspects of
management and preservation must be considered. Several technical factors make e-mail
records difficult to preserve. Indeed, Christopher Prom (2011) specify that:
“email allows people to send any type of digital information, including information generated using other applications, from one email account to any other email account. In other words, email programs are simply communication utilities that support activities undertaken in the course of fulfilling daily work duties or in our personal lives. As a result, a single email account contains records of disparate context, structure and content, documenting activities both mundane and extraordinary (p. 8).”
In addition, an e-mail message includes both structured data (i.e.the header) along with
unstructured data (i.e. the body and the attachments). Therefore, the preservation can be
complex. In order to understand the basic technical difficulties of preserving e-mail, we
must understand how a wide range of hardware and software systems interact to send,
receive, and store messages (Pennock, 2006). An organization must determine how to
manage their e-mail records and ensure their long-term preservation in their electronic
form, either in their “native format” that retains metadata of the messaging system or in a
standard format such as simple message transfer protocol (SMTP). To ensure the
appropriate preservation of e-mail records, the organization should assess the risk
according to their legal requirements and business needs. Ensuring long-term
preservation of e-mail records means ensuring accessibility of stored data and its
components. As mentioned in Chapter 2, electronic messages usually comprise several
digital components, such as headers, digital signatures, and metadata. Electronic
messages should remain linked to their components. Electronic preservation of e-mail
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records will, over the long term, require records conversion and/or migration. ARMA
recommends that “the organization’s preservation strategy should plan for this situation
as part of the normal course of business. Ideally, a message destined for long-term
preservation should be converted to a persistent format at the beginning of that record’s
lifecycle. Embedding this activity in the records management workflow will further add
to the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of preservation efforts” (ARMA, 2013, p. 14).
Another system requirement is the backup. Backup consists of “a copy of
information created as a precaution in case the original is lost or destroyed” (ARMA,
2012, p. 5). Backup activities should encompass electronic messages as well as electronic
messaging systems. While backups facilitate “improved response in the event of a
disaster, they should not be a substitute for a comprehensive records management
program” (ARMA, 2013, p. 22). As Prom mentioned, “even if incremental backups of
email accounts are being completed, many messages may never enter the system or may
be quickly purged from backup as old backups are overwritten. Additionally, a single
message may be stored in many locations: on the server, on handheld devices, in local
library files, on local file systems, on networked drives and on backup devices (p. 10).”
Therefore, any system attempted to preserve e-mail must begin not only with an
understanding of the specific technologies used in an e-mail, but a detailed knowledge of
how server administrators and end users have configured software and hardware.
It is widely accepted among records managers that systems can contribute to
managing e-mail records by enforcing classification rules and retention periods, deleting
records as soon as possible after meeting compliance requirements (Smallwood 2008, pp.
30-31, 97-103). However, two research projects from Steven Howard and James Lappin
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have shown that most “attempts to capture and preserve email in ERMS systems have not
proven themselves to be that effective” (Howard, 2011; Lappin, 2011). In reality, many
institutions set quotas, leaving e-mail management to users forcing the information
management professionals to work in collaboration with IT professionals and users to
manage e-mail records (Cox, 2008, p. 233).
In summary, system design and systems functionalities need to be evaluated and
properly executed to facilitate the implementation of e-mail management program as well
as be as technology-neutral as possible.
5.2.5. Training Requirements
The fourth component of the framework for a comprehensive e-mail management
program is training requirements. This component is mapped with the sociocultural
requirements of Park’s study (2002) and user issues of ARMA as records management,
precisely e-mail management, is reliant on the participation of users.
Research has shown that one of the biggest challenges faced by information
management professionals is the “lack of users involvement” (Bailey and Vidyarthi,
2010, p. 279). As such, records management, and more precisely e-mail management, is
heavily reliant on the participation of individual users. Therefore, the users requirements
must be addressed in a complete e-mail management program. Training is deemed an
essential component of an organization’s e-mail management program (Smallwood,
2013; ARMA, 2013; Flynn and Kahn, 2003). Training activities should be designed to
ensure that individuals understand the e-mail management policy and guidelines and the
skills to use the electronic messaging systems effectively and appropriately. To ensure
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the appropriate management of e-mail records and preserve the records’ reliability,
authenticity and integrity, training activities should highlight these areas: proper
electronic messaging system usage, including “netiquette” of electronic communications;
records management practiced (e.g., lifecycle, retention schedule, disposition); security,
confidentiality, privacy, and copyright issues pertaining to electronic messaging; and
statutory, legal, and/or regulatory requirements pertaining to electronic messaging
(Pennock, 2007). Table 5.1. shows the recommanded content for an e-mail management
training program based on the comments of the participants as well as suggested in the
literature (Smallwood, 2013; Saffady, 2013; ARMA, 2012; Huang, Sheng and Lin, 2011;
Burgess, Jackson and Edwards, 2005 ; Flynn and Kahn, 2003). The content is not
exhaustive.
Table 5.1. Recommended content for e-mail management training program
Category Content
Legal and organizational
Legal framework (records management, privacy, confidentiality, copyright, etc.) Objectives of e-mail management program Issues of the organization regarding e-mail management
Records Management
Charateristics of e-mail messages Appraisal of e-mail messages Classification of e-mail records Retention of e-mail records Preservation of e-mail records Destruction of e-mail records Accessibility of e-mail records
Systems
Functionalities of e-mail messaging system Appropriate e-mail security practices through out the information lifecycle Functionalities of electronic recordkeeping system
Training and auditing
Use of misuse of e-mail messaging system Respectful and good manners when using e-mail (Netiquette) Training programs available Compliance tools
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Potential consequences for non-compliance to employees Roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders involved in e-mail management
Authors recommend that training take various forms depending on each
organization’s culture and available technology (ARMA, 2013; Gurushanta and
Smallwood, 2012; InterPares 3 Project, 2011; Pennock, 2006; Saulnier, 2005; Flynn and
Kahn, 2003). As such, different media can be used to ensure that the e-mail management
program is understood and applied within the organization. As recommended by Library
and Archives Canada, “the use of multiple media to provide training can accommodate
individuals’ various learning styles and enforce key points related to electronic
messaging” (Government of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, 2008). Regardless of
the chosen training format, collaboration between information management professionals
and IT is essential. In addition, training should be provided for all individuals within the
organization and tailored to the audience’s needs, depending on their responsibilities.
Specialized training should be developed for executives, managers, information
management specialists and network or system administrators, because each of these
audiences has a different set of responsibilities. Attendance and completion of training
activities has proven to be difficult within organizations. Burgess, Jackson and Edwards
(2005) suggest that an attendance sheet be signed by each user and that the log be
maintained and retained as records for audit purposes. An effective training program can
ensure better compliance within the organization’s e-mail management program and
further enhance positive outcomes. As suggested by ARMA (2013), “periodic reminders
related to electronic messaging policy, procedure, and process can reinforce users’ proper
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behaviours and attitudes. These reminders can take many forms, including newsletter
articles, intranet messages, posters, or other communications collateral” (p. 38).
Regarding training, an evaluation of the training content and activities need to take place
on a regular basis to assess accuracy and utilization of the e-mail management program.
In addition, training experiences of the users should be evaluated to encourage quality
improvement-related feedback.
In summary, training requirements are important to consider in an e-mail
management program and systematic training is an important way to ensure that e-mail
records are management effectively. With proper training, users are made aware of all the
requirements necessary to manage e-mail records as well as their responsibilities
regarding the management of their information.
5.2.6. Auditing and Compliance Requirements
The final component of the framemork for a comprehensive e-mail management
program is auditing and compliance requirements. This componenet is also mapped with
the juridical requirements of Park’s study (2002) as well as legal issues of ARMA, since
an e-mail management program should comply with legal and organizational obligations
of the organization.
Audit is defined as “a review and examination of records and activities to test for
compliance with established policies or standards, often with recommendations for
changes in controls or procedures. Audits may also review programs to ensure they are
accomplishing their intended purposes. Sometimes called program reviews, evaluations,
assessments, or inspections” (Pearce-Moses, 2005, p. 40). In the professional and
academic literature, it is now recognized that including audit and compliance activities
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into organizational and records management processes will ensure that records are
created in a cost-efficient manner, are accessible for their entire lifecycle, are properly
managed and store; their integrity and authenticity are maintaned, and that records are
properly disposed of at the end of their lifecycle (ARMA, in press). Therefore, audit and
compliance activities should focus on evaluating the success of the e-mail management
program and all of its components.
To ensure compliance to an e-mail management program, training alone has
proven to often be insufficient. Organizations should implement mechanisms to ensure
compliance with the e-mail management policy. Some authors recommend that there
should be consequences for not being compliant with records management policies
(including e-mail management program) as the users must be responsible for their actions
(Pennock, 2006). ARMA specifies that “organizational culture and practices will impact
how intrusive compliance and enforcement efforts can be” (2013, p. 21). The basic means
of enforcement are through training and periodic reminders that can facilitate user buy-in,
support the organization’s goals and appropriate management of e-mail records.
Compliance monitoring can be performed considering that electronic messaging
systems are generally considered a corporate resource and the organization has the right
to monitor and control their use (ARMA, 2013). Technology can be used to monitor
specific components of the policy. As such, as suggested by LAC, software applications
can be programmed, based on the organization’s policy, to scan outgoing e-mail content
to identify violations and automatically redirect the message for corrective action. Policy-
based applications are also available that will automatically apply encryption and other
enforcement options. These applications may be based on word lists identifying specific
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proscribed words or word groups. Similar products for content filtering and blocking, file
transfer controls, as well as compliance-enhancing logging features are becoming
available for information management as well. While these products are aimed at
enforcing policy with regard to outgoing messages, similar functions protect the
organization from incoming threats such as viruses, unsolicited commercial messages,
and oversize files that can cause degradation in network service, loss of data, and/or
breaches of confidentiality. Also, as mentioned by ARMA, “to function effectively as a
deterrent, the organization must inform its employees that such a software application has
been installed and to what extent their messages may be monitored for compliance”
(ARMA, 2013, p. 22). In addition, as required by GoC, conducting audits on
organizations activities including information management in order to remain compliant
with internal and external authorities is important to the success of the e-mail
management program.
Finally, the assessment of the e-mail management program needs to be conducted
periodically. All e-mail management program components should be evaluated to
improve the management of e-mail records and ensure their integrity, authenticity and
reliability (i.e. user feedback, program deficiencies, corrective actions, implementation,
etc.) so that the program can effectively serve the organization and its users.
5.3. E-mail Mangement Policy
This study showed that to manage e-mail records effectively and appropriately,
different requirements - legal and business, records management, systems, training and
compliance – must be mapped and aligned. Based on the five components of Figure 5.1.,
to define the proper use and management of e-mail, the establishment of a policy and/or
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guidelines is deemed essential as several authors agreed (Smallwood, 2013; InterPARES,
2012; ARMA, 2012; Saulnier, 2005).
Considering the importance of establishing any policy, basically, the term policy
is defined by Mayer-Schönberger and Lazer (2007) as being:
“a documented set of broad guidelines, formulated after an analysis of all internal and external factors that can affect an organization’s objectives, functions and activities. Formulated by the organization's higher management, a policy lays down the organization's response to known and knowable situations and circumstances. It also determines the formulation and implementation of strategy, and directs and restricts the decisions, and of the organization’s personnel in achievement of its objectives” (Mayer-Schönberger and Lazer, 2007, p. 2).
As shown in the definition above, a policy should be appropriate to each agency’s unique
business requirements, organizational culture, and technology. Indeed, “a policy guides
toward accepted business strategies and objectives. Policies identify the key activities and
provide a general strategy to employees on how to handle issues as they arise. This is
accomplished by providing the reader with limits and a choice of alternatives that can be
used to "guide" their decision making process as they attempt to overcome problems”
(Smallwood, 2013, p. 24). Therefore, we see that the policy is a very important tool to
possess to properly and efficiently manage e-mail records since it allows for consistency
in operational activities. Policies also provide clarity to the employees when dealing with
accountability issues or activities that are of critical importance to the agency.
Smallwood (2011) identifies the four aspects that need to be included in an e-mail
management policy: “(1) commercial – guidelines on how to write effective message; (2)
productivity – rules on the usage of the e-mail system; (3) records management – rules
for the management of the lifecycle of an e-mail record; and (4) legal - prohibit
inappropriate e-mail content and warn of risks” (pp. 19-20). However, the results of this
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research as well as some authors suggest that the e-mail management policy should be
more specific (ARMA, 2013; Smallwood, 2011). As such, we suggest the components of
an e-mail management policy as illustrated in Table 5.2. The components that we propose
describe the general statement of the policy, its objectives, scope, the legal framework,
the guiding principles on which it is based, the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders,
the measures that must be implemented to achieve the objectives. The order of
presentation of these elements is suggestive and the content is not exhaustive, as specific
sections could be added according to each institution’s legal and organizational
requirements. The detailed and recommended contents of e-mail management policy are
described as the following in Table 5.2.
Table 5.2. Recommended content of an e-mail management policy
Section Content Description General General
Statement Describes the reason for the policy. It is pertinent to indicate that e-mail records are derived from the business conduct of the organization and thus, it is important to ensure the appropriateness for business continuity and its needs for evidence.
Objectives Describes the expected outcomes are pursued by the policy. The objectives must be consistent with the general records management program.
Scope Specifies the organizations or persons or systems subject
to the policy.
Definitions Describes the definition of key terms used in the policy, ensuring that all stakeholders affected by the policy will have the same understanding of terms.
Legal Framework
Provides a list of laws and regulations that are in relation or the source of the prepration of policy. This section can also provide a list of related policies or procedures.
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Section Content Description Guidelines Provides general rules for e-mail management inspired by
the basic principles of records management. These principles serve as a reference or authority principles.
Roles and Responsibilities
Determines the responsibility of each stakeholder involved in e-mail management or using e-mail messaging system.
Approval and Effective Date
The policy must be approved by the higher management
of the organization, which should be recognized. The effective date should indicate when the policy is started to be in effect.
Review The review process should be mentioned. Traceability of the different revisions to the policy should be kept. The policy should be revised depending on the evolution of the legal framework, the information technology, the feedbacks from users, the efficiency measures as well as the needs of the organization.
Records Management
Ownership Provides a statement that the electronic messges belong to the organization.
Appraisal Provides guidance on the value of e-mail messages and identification of e-mail messages that qualify as records and if so, they are subject to the policy.
Classification Provides guidance of the classification system available as messages should be indexed and retrievable.
Retention Provides guidance that e-mail records should be disposed of according to retention schedules.
Legal Holds Provides guidance on how the e-mail records will be managed in case of litigation.
Preservation Provides guidance on preservation methods for e-mail records as well as their digital components through time.
Destruction Provides guidance on the appropriate disposition of e-mail messages. The disposition of e-mail records should be secure and recoverable.
Access Provides guidance on access to information contained in e-mail records.
Confidentiality – Privacy
Provides indications between information that may be disclosed and information that need proper authorization to be disclosed. In addition, the level of privacy should be expected.
Disaster and Recovery
Provides information on the available means of business continuity for electronic messages and electronic messaging systems in case of a disaster.
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Section Content Description System Functionnalities
of e-mail messaging
system
Provides information on the functionalities of the e-mail messaging system to ensure the management, security, and retrieval of messages.
Functionnalities of electronic
recordkeeping system
Provides information on the electronic recordkeeping system used to ensure the appropriate management of e-mail records (metadata, audit trail, access rights, etc.)
Security Provides information on the security features used in the organization (authentication, password, access rights, encryption, digital signatures etc.)
Back-up and storage
Provides information on the back-up procedure that should be performed on a regular basis to meet business needs as well as storage information.
Training and Auditing
Creation and edition of e-mail
messages
Provides indications on the appropriate content allowed in e-mail messages as well as the appropriate language to be used.
Use and misuse of e-mail
messaging system
Provides indications of the allowable use as well as prohibited activities of e-mail messaging system (personal use vs professional use).
Training program
Provides information on the available training program that should be designed to ensure that users develop the knowledge and skills to use and manage e-mail messages.
Dissemination Provides indication on the dissemination methods
Auditing – Monitoring
Provides indications on available means to ensure users compliance to e-mail management policy.
Violations Provides indications on the actions that will be taken in case of violations (penalties, suspension, personal liability for misuse).
The scope of the e-mail management policy must be comprehensive and specific enough
to ensure that e-mail messages are managed consistently across the organization. The
policy must address the management of e-mail messages as well as the technology used
to produce and manage the messages. Indeed, “the Email Management Guidelines must
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pertain to human processes as much as to machine processes. In simple terms, machines
are incapable of making all of the decisions involved in managing email” (Government of
Canada, Library and Archives Canada, 2008, p. 9). Smallwood (2013) sums it up as
“first, better policies; then, better technology for better enforcement” (p. 12).
In addition, the creation of an e-mail management policy requires a team
approach that may include members from different professions. Experts from these
sectors may be sought:
• Higher management to consider compliance requirements, productivity and communication within the organization;
• Legal professionals to ensure that the e-mail management is consistent with the legal framework;
• Records Management/Archives to ensure the appropriate management of e-mail records for their entire lifecycle;
• Information technology to assess the ability of the organization’s current technologies to meet the needs of the e-mail management policy; and
• Users to provide inputs on how e-mail messages are used and controlled in their day-to-day work.
Richard Cox and many other authors argue that archivists, “records managers and IT
administrators should work together to develop policies and procedures to manage email
for its long-term value” (Cox, 2008) or such policies will be ineffective, unless they are
also developed in close collaboration with the e-mail system’s users. In addition, e-mail
management must be integrated into the overall recordkeeping infrastructure to “tackle
perception of individual ownership of e-mail records; enable shared access to messages
and related records from a single location which will prove useful when dealing with
discovery requests” (Pennock, 2006, p. 31).
In summary, the e-mail management policy is an important tool that contributes to
meeting the legal requirements and business needs of organizations as well as records
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management requirements, as long as the policy are not incomplete and out-of-date, and
have been adjusted to changes in the business requirements, such as new technology
platforms, changing laws, and additional regulations. “Email policy failure can arise from
one of two things — failure to establish proper policy or failure to enforce it” (Flynn and
Kahn, 2003, p. 56). The policy must be consistent with the business needs, legislation,
regulations, and other policies or best practices already implemented.
Summary
The GoC and the public sector in general have high standards on information
management to ensure accountability, transparency, accessibility and provide quality
services to stakeholders. The study results indicate that the organization needs to
implement measures to manage e-mail records appropriately and effectively. These
measures must be planned to cover several requirements of e-mail management –
specifically, legal and organizational, records management, systems, training, and
auditing and compliance - for a holistic e-mail management program. Although some
agencies have already developed some tools to manage e-mail records, there seem to be
little resources to support training and compliance on e-mail management. Therefore, we
suggest that the e-mail management policy should be develped in government agencies
and the components of the policy should include the general statement of the policy, its
objectives, scope, the legal framework, the guiding principles on which it is based, the
roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, the measures to be implemented to achieve the
objectives.
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VI. CONCLUSION
This chapter aims to present the conclusion of our research. First, we present the
summary of our study. Then, we present the main contributions of our research to the
fields. Finally, we present recommendations for future research.
6.1 Summary of the research
The aim of this research was to understand how e-mail records are managed in the
Canadian government agencies and identify the characteristics that support the
management of e-mail records to ensure their reliability, authenticity and integrity. It
sought to answer the following research questions:
(1) What are the general principles of the e-mail management policies and guidelines within Canadian government agencies?
(2) To what extent are these e-mail management policies implemented in the government agencies?
(3) What are the variations and similarities of e-mail management practices across government agencies? To what extent are they effective?
(4) What are the current practices to manage e-mail messages in order to ensure the reliability, authenticity and integrity of this specific type of electronic records in government agencies?
The research methodology adopted to answer the research questions is a mixed
methods approach. Our study is descriptive seeking to explore practices related to
management of e-mail records. Three main methods of data collection were used: (1)
web-based survey with information management professionals working at the Canadian
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government agencies; (2) in-depth interviews with information management
professionals involved in the process of e-mail management from six government
agencies; and (3) the relevant documentation. While a statistical analysis was done on the
data collection by using the web-based survey, a content analysis combining both
inductive and deductive methods has been done on the interview data and relevant
documentation. Four units of analysis were considered, namely: (1) e-mail management
policy and guidelines; (2) electronic messaging system and electronic recordkeeping
system; (3) implementation and dissemination; and (4) associated issues.
The results show that electronic messaging is widely used in the Canadian
government agencies to conduct business activities and that they are recognized as
important business records. The management of e-mail records is an obligation when the
organization is subjected to provisions of laws and regulations, such as Access to
Information Act, and secondly, to ensure the continuity of activities of the organization.
The results of the survey indicated that e-mail is a widely used form of
communication within the Canadian government agencies. While the value of e-mail
records are recognized among information management professionals, the methods to
manage this type of records vary between agencies. The establishment of e-mail
management policy and/or guidelines to define the management and use of e-mail is
considered important by the respondents. The type of policies and guidelines developed
in agencies varies ranging from a specific e-mail management policy to a more general
information management policy according to each agency’s organizational context. In
addition, an electronic recordkeeping system for the management, retrieval and access of
e-mail records was identified as crucial to manage e-mail and ensure their reliability,
220
authenticity and integrity. The results show that although several respondents recognize
the importance of e-mail in their work, their agencies often lack to practice compliance to
their e-mail management policy and/or guidelines as well as technical considerations. The
results stressed the importance of managing e-mail records to: (1) ensure the continuity of
the activities of the agencies; and (2) ensure the authenticity and integrity of e-mail
records.
The findings from the in-depth interviews with six information management
professionals from different Canadian government agencies have led us to examine how
e-mail records are managed in different organizational settings. The data collected from
agencies which did not develop e-mail management policies indicate that the use of e-
mail messaging system to conduct business can lead to several difficulties regarding the
classification, retention, management, retrieval and preservation of e-mail messages.
Agencies which are in process of developing e-mail management policies showed that
developing the policy and guidelines can contribute to an effective management of e-mail
records. However, the participants suggest that to be effective, the tools developed to
manage e-mail records must be adapted to their organizational context and information
flow of an organization. In addition, the management of e-mail records must be included
in the overall information management program. Finally, agencies which have developed
e-mail management policies proved that to be successful, e-mail management solutions
must include different components, such as policy and/or guidelines, recordkeeping
system and users compliance.
Together, these findings led us to suggest a framework for a comprehensive e-mail
management program, including: (1) legal and organizational requirements; (2) records
221
management requirements; (3) systems requirements; (4) training requirements and (5)
auditing and compliance requirements. These components must be addressed and aligned
in an e-mail management program, as each component is interrelated and has an impact
on the requirements of the upper level.
6.2 Contributions of the research
The contributions of this research to the relevant academic and professional fields
are considered from the theoretical, methodological and practical aspects. These
contributions are described in the following points.
6.2.1. Theoretical Contributions
Most of all, this research contributes to the recognition of the value of e-mail
records and the need to ensure the long-term preservation of this type of electronic
records. This research demonstrates that the use of information and communication
technology in organizations has led to the creation of different types of electronic records
with their own specific features. While technology is constantly evolving, the practices to
manage e-mail records are the result of an ongoing reflection on the methods and
techniques to manage e-mail records and will evolve through the experiences of different
organizational contexts. Nevertheless, the analysis of the current practices of e-mail
management at the government agencies has allowed us to develop a framework for a
comprehensive e-mail management program. The framework can serve as a theorical
foundation to build an e-mail management program in any type of organization and
identify the different requirements as well as their relationships to manage e-mail records
as all five requirements have been rarely documented together in existing literature. The
222
framework has been drawn from the field investigation, which presents how policies are
implemented in actual government settings. The field investigation has offered us the
opportunity to develop a better understanding of the administrative and procedural
contexts of government electronic records management. Further, the result can help to
draw a general picture of electronic records management in the various types of
organizational environments in the fields.
6.2.2. Methodological Contributions
The use of a mixed methods approach to study e-mail management has provided
rich data for this research. The data collection tools that have been developed for this
research could be used by various stakeholders involved in the management and
archiving of e-mail records as well as other types of electronic records and use to monitor
e-mail management practices in terms of technology and policy development.
6.2.3. Practical Contributions
From the findings of this research, we noted that in the absence of an appropriate
policy of e-mail management, agencies don’t seem to feel obliged to ensure the
management of e-mail records or when they wish to do so, they are not properly
supervised in their work. The current methods used to manage e-mail records are not
always appropriate and can affect their authenticity and integrity. Therefore,
organizations need to adopt a systematic approach and integrate e-mail records within
their orverall records management program and systems.
For professionals, the findings could contribute to raising awareness of the
importance to manage e-mail records and offer new insights on the requirements
223
necessary to manage both paper and electronic records, when using information
technologies with e-mail to conduct business activities. As such, one major contribution
of this research is to develop a policy model for managing e-mail records. This policy can
support records related professionals (e.g. records managers and archivists) during the
implementation of e-mail management tools within their organization, since there are
only a few references in the field. The policy model is comprehensive enough to be
adapted to government agencies as well as different organizational contexts.
In addition, the results of this research emphasize that the implementation process
should involve different organizational actors. During the development and
implementation of an e-mail management policy, information management professionals
must play a more active role by becoming more involved in the design process and
management of e-mail records. Their roles and responsibilities must be also clearly
defined.
6.3. Future Research
This research on e-mail management practices and policies at the Government of
Canada (GoC) has provided results that can be enriched by future research. Three areas
of research are particularly relevant.
First, to obtain a general picture of e-mail management practices in the Government
of Canada, the number of participants and the number of agencies could be increased to
allow the generalization of the results. In addition, the results of this research should be
complemented by the study of the users involved in the management of electronic
records. The results of such a study would provide an additional picture of the
224
management of electronic records in government institutions and forsee possible
strategies to facilitate the management of these records. In our research, respondents
identified several users-related difficulties: usability of systems, privacy, resistance to
change and lack of user training. Considering these difficulties that result from the
interpretation of employee needs, a more in-depth assessment would be suggested to
contribute in the design of a training program in records management as well as a
practical solution to ensure compliance of users.
Second, future research could be directed toward finding technical ways to design
better electronic records management systems in order to automate and facilitate the
management of electronic records. As seen in our research, the GoC is currently moving
forward to enhancing transparency and accountability by implementing open government
efforts “to foster greater openness and accountability, to provide Canadians with more
opportunities to learn about and participate in government, to drive innovation and
economic opportunities for all Canadians and, at the same time, create a more cost
effective, efficient and responsive government” (Government of Canada, Treasury Board
of Canada Secretariat, 2012, p. 1). The Open Government initiative is structured along
the three streams of our Open Government Strategy: Open Information, Open Data, and
Open Dialogue. In line with this movement, as technology is used to provide greater
access to information, better systems should be used to ensure the reliability, authenticity
ans integrity of electronic records. In addition, technology used to ensure the storage of
electronic records, in particular in clouding environments, should be further studied.
Finally, the selection of records for permanent preservation depends on several
criteria, including their potential uses for research. The long-term preservation of
225
electronic records has been mainly studied to date in the field of records management
(Smallwood, 2013; Saffady, 2009; InterPARES, 1998). However, further research should
be conducted on a new document type emerging after the implementation of new
technology or changes in its uses, such as e-mail, other web-based or smart phone-based
applications. These types of document will be more prevail in future and getting related
to e-mail records in every aspect of business activities in organizations.
226
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Appendix 1: Ethics Certificate
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Appendix 2: Survey Instrument – English
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Appendix 2: Survey Instrument – French
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Appendix 3: Results of Survey Questionnaire
Questions Frequency (%)
1. Consent − I agree to participate in the study − I do not agree to participate in the study
204
23
2. What is the name of your agency?
N/A
3. Which of the following best describes the key activity areas of your agency? − General public services − Defense − Public order and safety − Finance and economics affairs − Environment − Health − Recreation and culture − Justice − Education − Other (please specify)
37 (18%)
13 (6%)
21 (10%)
27 (13%)
18 (9%)
29 (14%)
24 (12%)
26 (13%)
9 (5%)
4. What is the staff size of your agency? − Less than 250 employees − Between 250 and 500 employees − More than 500 employees
32 (16%) 119 (58%) 53 (26%)
5. What is your position / title?
See Appendix 4
6. Which of the following categories best represent your position classification? − Director
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Questions Frequency (%)
− Manager − Professional − Technician − Clerk − Other (please specify)
121 (59%)
49 (24%)
34 (17%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
7. For how many years have you been working in records management / archives? − Less than 10 years − 11 to 20 years − 21 to 30 years − More than 31 years
26 (13%)
51 (25%)
109 (53%)
18 (9%)
8. Do the employees, in your agency, use emails in their daily business activities? − Yes − No
204 (100%)
0 (0%)
9. How important are e-mails in daily business activities in your agency? − Very important − Important − Neutral − Not important − Not at all important
139 (68%)
49 (24%)
0 (0%)
16 (8%)
0 (0%)
10. In your agency, have you ever encountered some problems in managing e-mail messages? − Yes
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Questions Frequency (%)
− No − If so, please specify the nature of these difficulties:
179 (87%)
25 (13%)
− Apply retention periods to e-mail messages (n=83)
− Gather complete information and documents related to a subject (n=76)
− Retrieval information for business decision (n=68)
− Capture of e-mail records in corporate repository (n=62)
− Value of e-mail messages (n=51)
− Information overload (n=46) − Continuity of activities when
employees leave (n=34) − Storage (n=21) − Electronic discovery (n=17)
11. Do you considered emails as corporate records? - Yes - No - If no, please explain why:
204 (100%)
0 (0%)
− while e-mail messages that have a business value are records, most e-mail messages have a transitory value (n=5)
− IT professionals and senior managers sometimes consider e-mail as form of ephemeral communication and not as records (n=4)
12. Does the agency that you are working for: - Have developed and implemented, in the past, tools
to manage email records - Is currently developing or implementing an email
management policy and/or guidelines - Is planning to develop an email management policy
and/or guidelines in the near future - Don’t have any email management policy and/or
guidelines and is not planning to develop any king of specific tool to manage email records
- I don’t know
92 (45%)
79 (39%)
20 (10%)
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Questions Frequency (%)
8 (3%)
7 (3%)
13. Does your agency have one of the following: - A written electronic records management policy - A written electronic records management policy that
addresses email management - A separate written email management policy and
guidelines - No policy and/or guidelines to manage email records - An information policy - I don’t know
46 (27%)
28 (16%)
64 (37%)
25 (16%)
2 (1%)
6 (3%)
14. Which issues are discussed in your email management policy and/or guidelines? (Check all that apply) − E-mails are corporate records − E-mails should be adequately managed − E-mails need to be managed by a records
management system − E-mails should be disposed timely depending on
their value − E-mails should be appropriately stored, protected,
and accessible when necessary − Other, please specify:
100
109
92
85
89
15. Are you satisfied with your current email management policy? − Yes − No
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Questions Frequency (%)
− If no, what other issues should be included in your email policy and/or guidelines (please specify):
43 (38%)
69 (62%)
− Defined roles and responsibilities between IT, records managers and users (n=27)
− Defined boundaries for use of e-mail system and e-mail etiquette (n=34)
− Guidelines for creation of messages (n=23)
− Enforce compliance (n=11)
16. Were you involved in any way in the creation and/or the implementation of the email
management policy and/or guidelines?
− Yes − No − Please specify the nature of your involvement:
73 (67%)
29 (33%)
− Participated in the creation of e-mail policy (n=21)
− Implementation of e-mail management policy (n=31)
17. Which email system is used in your agency? (please specify) :
− Microsoft Outlook 162 (79%) − IBM Lotus Notes 27 (13%) − Novell GroupWise 15 (8%)
18. Is there a recordkeeping system in your agency? − Yes − No − If yes, please provide the name of the system:
149 (73%)
55 (27%)
− RDIMS (n=121) − Using Documentum for print
records (n=5) − Are currently implementing
RDIMS (n=11) − Implementation delayed (n=3)
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Questions Frequency (%)
19. How does your agency manage and save emails that are identified as corporate records (check all that apply)? − Print and file the hardcopy − Keep in e-mail inbox − Save to corporate server − Save to corporate recordkeeping system − Other, please specify:
59 (29%)
27 (13%)
11 (5%)
107 (53%)
0 (0%)
− No consistency in managing e-mail records (n=5)
− older one was print and file, unfortunately a lot kept in email inbox, and some saved in our EDRMS (which is the goal to achieve) (n=1)
− everyone does whatever they want because the guideline is not enforced (n=1)
− “employees are using whatever means possible to ensure the emails are safeguarded. There is little done on the purging and disposition front of emails” (n=1)
20. How is your e-mail management policy and/or guidelines disseminated within your agency (check all that apply)? − Announcement − Training − Agency website or intranet − From employees − Other (please specify)
13 (12%)
47 (42%)
31 (28%)
18 (16%)
2 (2%)
− “we communicated the development and implementation of the policies through various means, including broadcast, targeted and included
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Questions Frequency (%)
compliance requirements in all training material. There were subsequently posted on intranet site as well as IM [information management] working databases for ease of access by all employees and managers”. (n=1)
21. To what extent do employees in your agency recognize email management policy and
implement it to their daily activities?
− Excellent − Good − Fair − Poor − Very poor
5 (4.5%)
29 (26%)
39 (35%)
32 (28%)
7 (6.5%)
22. How do you ensure compliance of employees to your email management policy and/or guidelines? − Periodical audit − Monitoring − Quality control − Other, please specify − None
27 (24%)
39 (35%)
22 (20%)
10 (9%)
14 (12%)
23. In your opinion, what is the main reason for employees not being fully compliant with
your agency email management policy and/or guidelines?
− Too busy − Complex − Didn’t know employees should adopt email
management policy − Other (please specify):
74 (66%)
14 (13%)
17 (15%)
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Questions Frequency (%)
7 (6%)
− “Employees are running at 100%. Generally, they do not understand the shift from centrally managed to locally manage at their desktop. Many refuse to become recordkeepers. Somewhat a stereotype situation thus resistance continues at all levels.” (n=1)
− Lack of training and continuous education (n=2)
− “compliance to email policy, other to minimize the volume of emails, is not viewed as a priority” (n=1)
− Absence of RDIMS (n=2) − “a combination of not having a
specific email management policy, too many emails to manage, and no system or guidelines for employees to use” (n=1)
24. In your agency, what are the consequences for not complying with e-mail management policy and/or guidelines? − Verbal warning − Written warning − Limited access to e-mail system − Suspension − Termination − No consequences − I don't know − Other, please specify:
14 (12.5%)
18 (16%)
9 (8%)
11 (10%)
6 (5%)
40 (36%)
14 (12.5%)
− “consequences should be a result of not adhering to Government of Canada legislation on IM” (n=1)
− “while disciplinary measures can be enforced, the organization is not equipped to manage across the board, nor properly monitor compliance. Therefore, not disciplinary
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Questions Frequency (%)
measures can be enforced” (n=1)
25. How do you rate retrieving stored emails in your agency? − Very easy − Fairly easy − Moderate − Difficult − Very difficult
32 (16%)
41 (20%)
57 (28%)
49 (24%)
25 (12%)
26. Has your agency ever practiced ways to ensure long-term preservation of email
records?
− Yes − No − I don't know
107 (52%)
61 (30%)
36 (18%)
27. Has your agency ever been in a situation where it needed to prove the integrity of an email records? − Yes − No − I don’t know
53 (26%)
40 (20%)
111 (54%)
28. Has your agency ever been ordered by a court or regulatory body to produce an e-mail record? − Yes − No − I don’t know
65 (32%)
32 (16%)
107 (52%)
29. If you have any comments related to email − “e-mail management and the management of e-mail records were
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Questions Frequency (%)
management in your agency, please write
your opinions or thoughts.
identified by employees as the #1 priority for the IM program strategy and roadmap”
− “email management is viewed as an IT function in term of storage costs and not an IM function in terms of the value of the record. unless this perception changes, it will be hard to implement tools to manage e-mail records”.
− “Awareness of the issue of email management comes in waves, usually when there is an issue due to litigation, etc. and emails cannot be found. The lack of good tools for lifecycle management of email in the department is also an issue”.
− “employees may overall recognize the need to keep e-mail of business value but do not have the tool to make them easily accessible to others in the nature of a corporate management system. This makes e-mail difficult to manage in terms of accessibility, and for retention and disposition purposes”.
− “with the lack of an official electronic content/records management system to give the proper tools to the clients in effectively managing their emails, it becomes an exercise in futility”.
− “our “clean up and win” contest did reduce emails by encouraging deletion of transitory emails, but that didn’t help with corporate emails not saved in RDIMS. We will be introducing email quotas on mailbox size. That should help”.
30. May I contact you again for future information and clarification? − Yes − No
110 (54%)
94 (46%)
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Appendix 4: List of Titles/Positions of the Respondents to the Survey
ATIP and IM Coordinator
Audit Manager IM/IT
Business Information Officer
Chief, Classification and Organization
Chief, Information Management
Director General, Chief Information Officer
Director General, IM/IT
Director, Enterprise IM/IT Strategic Services
Director, Information and Methodology
Director, Information and Library Management
Director, Information Management & Records Management
Director, Library Archives and Documentation Services
Enterprise Management Information Analyst
Head of Archives, Library and Collections
Head, Information Management
Head, Records Management
IM Advisor
IM Policy and Planning Officer
IM Training and Outreach Officer
IM/IT Planning Analyst
IMT Corporate Reporting Analyst
Information Advisor
Information and Records Management Analyst
Information Holdings and Records Administrator
Information Management Officer
Information Specialist
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Manager, Enterprise Information and Records Management
Manager, Life Cycle Management
Recorded Information Specialist
Records and Documents Management Specialist
Records Integrity Specialist
Records Management Coordinator
Records Management Specialist
Records Management Supervisor
Records Retention Analyst
Records Team Leader
Sr Information Analyst
Supervisor, Records Operations
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Appendix 5: Invitation Letter to Interviews Participants – English
Montreal, (Date)
(Name of organization) (Address)
Mr/Ms ________________________
I am contacting you to invite you to participate in a research study that I am conducting as part of my Ph.D. dissertation at the School of Information Studies at McGill University.
The study investigates the current e-mail management principles in federal government organizations. More specifically, this study aims to determine and compare significant differences in managing e-mail records in government organizations and to identify the best practices to manage e-mail messages in order to ensure reliability, authenticity, and integrity of this type of electronic records.
You were indentified as a potential participant due to your position as a information management professional. If you accept to participate in this study, I will ask you to conduct an oral interview and help collect supporting documentation. The interview can take place at the location of your choosing and be held at a time that suits you best. The interview can be conducted in French or in English, depending on your preference. I will contact you shortly in hope to make an appointment. Your participation is voluntary and the data will only serves research purposes.
If you have any questions, please contact me.
Best regards,
Natasha Zwarich Eun G. Park Doctoral Candidate and Principal Investigator Associate Professor and Faculty Advisor School of Information Studies School of Information Studies McGill University McGill University 3661 Peel Street 3661 Peel Street Montreal (Quebec) H3A 1X1 Montreal (Quebec) H3A 1X1 Tel. : (450) 482-0802 Tel. : (514) 398-3364 E-mail : [email protected] E-mail : [email protected]
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Appendix 5: Invitation Letter to Interviews Participants - French
Montréal, le (date)
(Organisation)
(Adresse)
Monsieur / Madame ________________________
La présente vise à vous inviter à participer à l'étude que je mène dans le cadre de mon doctorat en sciences de l'information, sous la direction de la professeure Eun G. Park de la School of Information Studies de McGill University. L'étude s’intéresse aux pratiques actuelles de gestion du courrier électronique au Gouvernment du Canada afin de garantir leur fiabilité, authenticité et intégrité. Votre participation à tire de professionnel«le» de l'information est essentielle à la réalisation de ce projet de recherche. J'aimerais donc vous rencontrer pour conduire une entrevue d'environ une heure et demie. L'entrevue pourra se dérouler, selon votre préférence, en français ou en anglais et se tiendra au moment qui vous convient le mieux. Je vous remercie de l'attention que vous porterez à cette demande. Je communiquerai avec vous sous peu pour connaître votre disponibilité et, je l'espère, prendre rendez-vous. Votre participation est volontaire et les données receuillies ne serviront qu'à des fins de recherche. Je vous prie d’agréer, Monsieur/Madame, l’expression de mes salutations les plus distinguées, Natasha Zwarich Eun G. Park Doctoral Candidate and Principal Investigator Associate Professor and Faculty Advisor School of Information Studies School of Information Studies McGill University McGill University 3661 Peel Street 3661 Peel Street Montreal (Quebec) H3A 1X1 Montreal (Quebec) H3A 1X1 Tel. : (450) 482-0802 Tel. : (514) 398-3364 E-mail : [email protected] E-mail : [email protected]
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Appendix 6: Informed Consent Form
CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH
Policies and Practices at the Canadian Government for E-mail Management: an Exploratory Study
You are invited to participate in a research study being conducted by Natasha Zwarich, doctoral candidate at the School of Information Studies, McGill University, Montreal as her dissertation research, and for potential scholarly publications.
IDENTIFICATION OF INVESTIGATOR
Natasha Zwarich, Doctoral Student and Principal Investigator School of Information Studies McGill University 3661 Peel Street Montreal (Quebec) H3A 1X1 Tel.: (450) 482-0802 E-mail : [email protected] Eun G. Park, Associate Professor and Faculty Advisor School of Information Studies McGill University 3661 Peel Street Montreal (Quebec) H3A 1X1 Tel.: (514) 398-3364 E-mail: [email protected]
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The study investigates the current e-mail management practices in federal government organizations. More specifically, this study aims to determine and compare significant differences in managing e-mail records in government organizations and to identify the best practices to manage e-mail messages in order to ensure reliability, authenticity, and integrity of this specific type of electronic records.
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PROCEDURES
Your participation in the study will entail an oral interview. This interview will last approximately one hour and a half and will be conducted in your workplace or at a location of your choosing. During the interview, the investigator will ask you a series of questions relating to how e-mail records are managed in your organization and how you ensure the reliability, authenticity and integrity of e-mail records. In addition, the investigator will ask your consent to be audiotaped to help the investigator taking notes. Also, after the interview, the investigator might contact you by telephone or electronic mail if there are any points arising from the interview that she needs to clarify.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS
You will have the opportunity to express your thoughts about effective e-mail management and you will learn more about what are the best practices to manage e-mail messages. The findings of this study will characterize administrative and procedural contexts of government records management and identify the strengths and weaknesses of management of e-mail as official records within the Government of Canada (GoC). Also, this research will support a better understanding of the factors that facilitate and limit electronic records management in the GoC. In addition, it is expected to contribute to the development of improved e-mail management practices and preservation policies at the GoC. Moreover, the expected results will add to research in the records management field and be applicable for use in other organizational settings to meet their needs in e-mail management. You will receive a summary of the interview for your records and also for you to review to make sure that I have correctly interpreted your answers. Copies of the final results of this study will be made available to you.
POTENTIAL HARMS AND RISKS
Participation in this research does not pose any foreseeable harms and risks.
PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY
Any information that is obtained and that can be identified with you will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your permission. The data will only be used for the purpose of this research study. Your name will not be used. However, you should know that you or the government institution for whom you work for might be identifiable from the description of your work functions and the mission statement of your institution. If you are uncomfortable with this possibility, this information will not be disclosed. Confidentiality will be maintained by assigning a code number to you. The code will be kept by the investigator and will not be made accessible to any other individual. Identifiable information will not be given to anyone other than the dissertation committee and the investigator itself. If you have any concerns about the possibility of being identified, please express them to the investigator.
You will have the right to review your interview information and withdraw permission to use it at any time. You also have the possibility to review the recordings made for this study and edit and/or erase any information that you are not comfortable with. Anything you say will only be attributed to you with your permission, otherwise the information will be reported in such a way
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as to make direct association with yourself impossible. The information will be stored in a secure place and will not be made available to anyone other than the investigator and the dissertation committee. The recordings will be kept by the investigator for the duration of the study. After the research is over, the recordings will be kept in a secure place, if you agree, or erased.
COMPENSATION
You will not receive any compensation for your participation in this research project.
PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL
Your participation is voluntary. If you accept to participate in this research, you are able to withdraw your consent and stop your participation at any time without any penalty. You also have the right to refuse to answer any questions you do not want and still remain in the study. Any information that is obtained and that can be related with you will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your permission.
SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT AND PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
I have read the above information and I agree to participate in this study
______________________________ ____________________________________
Signature of the participant Signature of the principal investigator
_____________________________ ___________________________________
Date Date
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Appendix 7: Interview Instrument
Interview instrument for data gathering
This interview is being conducted as part of a doctoral dissertation research study that is investigating the current e-mail management practices in federal government organizations. More specifically, this study aims to determine and compare significant differences in managing e-mail records in government organizations and to identify the best practices to manage e-mail messages in order to ensure reliability, authenticity, and integrity of this specific type of electronic records. This interview is only for research purposes and your participation is completely voluntary.
Code #: _______________
Profile
1. What is your position /title in your institution? How long have you been working for that institution? What is your hierarchical rank?
2. What is the mission of your institution? Can you please provide the mission statement of your institution?
3. What is the staff size of your institution?
4. What is the organizational structure of your institution? Can you please provide a copy of the organization chart?
5. What are the main tasks or missions of your administrative unit?
6. Can you describe the composition and the tasks of the information management team?
E-mail policy and guidelines
7. Does your institution have written e-mail management policies or guidelines explaining the use of e-mails?
8. If so, when was it introduced? Who produced it? Can you please provide a copy of your e-mail management policy? If not, are you planning to develop any kind of policy for managing e-mail messages?
9. What information does it contain? In your opinion, do you think your e-mail management policy is satisfactory or not and covers all the issues related to the use and management of e-mail messages?
10. How does your institution deal with e-mail attachment?
11. How does your institution keep e-mails that are identified as corporate records? Do you think practices of employees are appropriate in your institution?
12. In your opinion, what is the effort required to retrieve stored e-mails and attachments?
13. Which office or administrative unit is responsible for overseeing e-mail management?
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14. What are your duties and responsibilities relating to e-mail management?
15. In your opinion, who should be responsible of e-mail management in an institution? What should be the roles of the different stakeholders involved in e-mail management?
Implementation and compliance
16. Please explain how employees put e-mail management policy into practice in their works.
17. How do employees learn or know the existence of your e-mail management policy or any new notices related to e-mail management?
18. In your opinion, to what extent is your institution compliant with your e-mail management policy? How would you explain the fact that some employees are not being fully compliant with your institution e-mail management policy?
19. Did you develop some tools to facilitate the compliance of the employees? If so, can you please describe the tools that have been developed?
20. Does your institution offer some training to ensure the compliance of the employees? If so, how the training is organized? What is the content of the training session? Do new employees receive some training upon their arrival?
21. Does your institution do some sort of quality control (audit) to verify the compliance with the e-mail management policy? If so, on what basis (annually, quarterly or monthly?)? If not, why not offered? How can you measure the compliance of employees?
E-mail System and Recordkeeping System
22. Which e-mail system is used in your institution? What are the main functionalities of this system? What functions are most frequently used? 23. Do some employees use the e-mail system to manage their messages? Do you think that this practice is appropriate for the management of e-mail records? 24. Are e-mail messages backed-up ? If so, for how often? Please explain e-mail back–up policy in your institution. 25. Is there a corporate recordkeeping system in your institution? If so, what is the name of the system? Can you describe its main functionalities? Do you use the recordkeeping system to manage e-mail records in your institution?
Issues
26. How do you preserve e-mail records? Please explain in detail. Does your institution ever consider ways to ensure the long-term preservation of e-mail records? If so, what methods did your institution chose and why? In your opinion, what is the best way to preserve e-mail records? 27. Can you give me an example where your institution needed to prove the authenticity and integrity of an e-mail message? 28. When employees in your institution create and work with records, do they trust e-mail records?
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29. In your opinion, what means can ensure the authenticity and reliability of e-mail records? 30. Overall, are you satisfied with your current practices in your institution?
31. Would you recommend any improvement in your current practice?
32. Are there other issues that were not discussed in the interview that you would like to raise?
33. May I contact you again for follow-up and further information as well as supporting documentation?
Natasha Zwarich Eun G. Park Doctoral Candidate and Principal Investigator Associate Professor and Faculty Advisor School of Information Studies School of Information Studies McGill University McGill University 3661 Peel Street 3661 Peel Street Montreal (Quebec) H3A 1X1 Montreal (Quebec) H3A 1X1 Tel.: (450) 482-0802 Tel. : (514) 398-3364 E-mail : [email protected] E-mail : [email protected]
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Appendix 8: Thank You Letter to Interview Participants Montreal, (Date)
(Name of organization) (Address)
Dear Mr/Ms ________________________
Many thanks for your participation in my research project aimed at a better understanding of the practices for e-mail management at the Canadian government. Your interview provided me with information essential for my research for which I am grateful. Best regards,
Natasha Zwarich Doctoral Candidate and Principal Investigator School of Information Studies McGill University 3661 Peel Street Montreal (Quebec) H3A 1X1 E-mail : [email protected]