Emails you create or receive as part of Australian Government business are Commonwealth records. You must manage email according to the Archives Act 1983.

Not all emails contain business information. These do not need to be saved. Some business information has little value or is useful only for a very short time.

Ask yourself:

• Did I receive or send this email in the course of my work?
• Does this relate to a project I am working on?
• Does the email approve an action?
• Does the email provide advice, give a direction or record a decision?

If you answer 'yes' to any of these questions, you need to save the email into a system that can manage it properly.

Email that probably does not need to be saved into another system includes:

• messages received for information only
• trivial information, such as meeting reminders and room bookings
• copies of information already in a records management system
• copies of documents for reference purposes only
• general notices to staff
• personal and social messages

You can routinely delete emails that have little or no business value as long as it is allowed by your agency's 'normal administrative practice' or NAP policy.

NAP is a provision of the Archives Act that allows low-value information to be deleted regularly as part of normal business practice. Your agency should have a policy on how it implements NAP.

Email that cannot be deleted under your agency's NAP policy should only be deleted by your agency's information and records managers or with their approval.

Under the Archives Act, your agency needs permission from the National Archives to delete email that contains useful or valuable business information. We give permission through records authorities that set out how long different types of information and records need to be kept.

Below are some tips for making email easier to manage:

• Include only 1 topic per email to make it easier to find and save.
• Include information in the body of the email if you can. Use attachments only when necessary.
• Make email subject headings meaningful so the titles do not need to be changed when they are saved into another system.

The Building trust in the public record policy requires that agencies manage all digital information assets, created from 1 January 2016, digitally. Information assets created digitally from this date, that are eligible for transfer to the National Archives, will be accepted in digital format only (action 9 - mandatory). This means you should not print and store email on paper files.

You should store business email in a system that can manage it effectively for as long as it is needed. This could be either:

• an electronic document and records management system (EDRMS)
• a case management system
• another suitable business system

If your organisation doesn’t have a more suitable system, it's better to store your business email in a network or shared drive system than leave it in an email system. Your information will at least be available to other staff to use and it can be stored in context. Information in shared drives can be altered or deleted without authorisation, so this should only be a temporary solution.

Your organisation's information and records management policy should cover email systems and how to manage email.

Have business rules and procedures to guide staff. Use clear, easy-to-follow guidelines.

Guidelines on saving emails should include advice on:

• which emails need to be saved into another system
• who is responsible for saving emails – the sender, the receiver or someone else
• which formats and processes should be used when saving emails
• how emails should be titled when saving them into another system

Guidelines on managing emails should include advice on:

• how email attachments should be managed – whether they’re saved as part of the email or as separate documents
• where emails should be stored – into which system and where in the system
• who is responsible for shared mailboxes or public folders, and how they should be managed
• how email threads or conversations should be managed, and when they should be saved into another system

Guidelines on deleting emails should include advice on which emails can be deleted and when.

Once your organisation has decided on its email policies and procedures, tell staff about them. You will need a continuing program of communication and training to remind people of their responsibilities and the right procedures – and to ensure that new staff know what they need to do. Spread the word through your induction program, staff newsletters and the intranet.

• The search functionality of email systems is limited.
• Context of information can be lost.
• Information kept in personal email folders isn't available to colleagues.
• Email systems typically contain a lot of information that has little or no business value.

Some ICT vendors promote email archiving solutions or storage systems to better manage email. Using these solutions, you transfer email from your primary email system to another storage server. They may offer advantages for information storage. They are not a substitute for an effective information and records management system for the following reasons:

• It is difficult to differentiate between valuable business information, duplicates and personal or unsolicited commercial email.
• Information communicated via email is not linked to related records in other formats and systems.
• Usually only the sender, recipient or an administrator can access the messages. If email is available more widely, there may be problems protecting private information.
• It is difficult to change the titles of messages to better reflect the content, making it more difficult to find information.
• It is difficult to separate information that needs to be kept for different amounts of time, which may result in most information being kept longer than necessary.