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The defensible deletion of government email

James Lappin (Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK)
Tom Jackson (Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK)
Graham Matthews (Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK)
Ejovwoke Onojeharho (Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK)

Records Management Journal

ISSN: 0956-5698

Article publication date: 20 December 2018

Issue publication date: 7 March 2019

1726

Abstract

Purpose

Two rival approaches to email have emerged from information governance thought: the defensible deletion approach, in which emails are routinely deleted from email accounts after a set period of time; and the Capstone approach, in which the email accounts of important government officials are selected for permanent preservation. This paper aims to assess the extent to which the defensible deletion approach, when used in conjunction with efforts to move important emails into corporate records systems, will meet the needs of originating government departments and of wider society.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper forms the first stage of a realist evaluation of policy towards UK government email.

Findings

The explanation advanced in this paper predicts that the routine deletion of email from email accounts will work for government departments even where business email is inconsistently or haphazardly captured into records systems, provided officials have access to their own emails for a long enough period to satisfy their individual operational requirements. However the routine deletion of email from email accounts will work for wider society only if and when business email is consistently captured into other systems.

Originality/value

The paper looks at the policy of The National Archives (TNA) towards UK government email and maps it against the approaches present in records management and information governance thought. It argues that TNA’s policy is best characterised as a defensible deletion approach. The paper proposes a realist explanation as to how defensible deletion policies towards email work in a government context.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This paper comes from a doctoral research project funded by The National Archives (UK) (TNA). The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and do not represent the views of TNA. All decisions in relation to the research, from the study design onwards, have been made by the authors and not by TNA.

Citation

Lappin, J., Jackson, T., Matthews, G. and Onojeharho, E. (2019), "The defensible deletion of government email", Records Management Journal, Vol. 29 No. 1/2, pp. 42-56. https://doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-09-2018-0036

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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