Employees at Boston's City Hall are in big trouble with email according to this Boston Globe article. It seems the common practice is to delete email daily to reduce mailbox load. At least this is the reason provided by one employee. But who forgot about public record laws which require all city email to be saved for two years?
It's hard to believe that a major city like Boston is not aware of its obligation to preserve email, but that seems to be the case. No matter; a state judge has issued an order for Boston to change its practice immediately. It was not mentioned what fines or penalties will be levied as a result of the lawsuit, but the violations can incur a fine of up to $500 or a prison sentence of up to one year.
Email archiving needs to be taken seriously by Boston and every other government agency in the United States.
...Bob Spurzem