WHEREAS, RCW 40.14 governs the preservation and destruction of the City's records; and

WHEREAS, under SMC 3.123, the City Records Manager has final authority regarding the disposal of City records in compliance with State law; and

WHEREAS, the City Records Manager is responsible for revising the scope of the City Records Management Program as needed to include current technology and for conducting audits of City agencies to ensure compliance with approved policies and procedures; and

WHEREAS, email is a critical communication tool used to transact City business; and

WHEREAS, compliance with State records law requires that the disposition of each email be determined based on its content, and it is the City email user's responsibility to delete or retain email according to approved retention schedules; and

WHEREAS, the automatic purge of email based on date sent or received may cause the unintentional loss of records; and

WHEREAS, the appraisal and management of records designated by the State and Municipal Archives as potentially archival is the responsibility of the Seattle Municipal Archives program of the City Clerk, under SMC 3.122.050;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SEATTLE THAT:

Section 1. The City Council supports the elimination of the City's 45-day purge setting, which automatically purges all City email that has not been actively archived by the recipient, forty-five days after initial receipt, as this rule is potentially inconsistent with an email management system that requires the email user to actively manage email records based on content.

Section 2. The City Council acknowledges that the Office of the Mayor and the Department of Information Technology (DoIT), in managing the City's email system, have developed an email archiving and records management protocol, which relies on (a) required City Records Management Training for all City employees, (b) a professional expectation that employees will manage and archive their email appropriately, and (c) the 45day purge setting.

Section 3. DoIT, in consultation with the Mimosa System Operations and Governance Committee is requested to research and adopt systems to ensure that City email is not purged prior to being actively managed by city staff. DoIT should begin this process by implementing a Pilot Project, based on Exhibit A to this resolution, which includes modifications to Mimosa, the City's email archiving software system, to extend the availability of email for appropriate management and archiving for an additional 45 days from its purge date, for a total of up to ninety (90) days from initial receipt of the email. The Pilot Program should include implementing a 256 megabyte Outlook Inbox limit as a test to determine how effectively this system supports proper retention of email records. Email messages thus preserved would be maintained with their attachments and metadata in a widely compatible electronic format.

The City Council requests that DoIT develop a viable, functional long-term solution or solutions and a related funding and implementation proposal, to be delivered to the City Council during the first quarter of 2012. The long-term proposal should be developed in cooperation with the City Records Manager. It is the intent of the City Council that the system, when adopted, be implemented in accordance with this Resolution until otherwise directed by the City Council or the City Records Manager.

Section 4. The following, existing key City policies and concepts relating to records would not be affected by the proposed change:

1) Individual City email accounts are to be managed by their account owners according to the City's Records Retention Schedules and as trained by the Citywide Records Management Program. Transitory email, as defined in the City's Records Retention Schedules, shall be deleted by the user as soon as its informational purpose has been served. Substantive email reflecting the conduct of City business shall be retained based on the content of the record according to the City's Records Retention Schedules and procedures approved by the City's Records Manager.

2) The Citywide Records Management Program shall continue to train staff in management of email according to City policy and State law.

3) No email that is responsive to an open legal discovery hold or to a public records request under RCW 42.56 shall be knowingly modified or deleted by a City employee while that legal discovery hold is open, or while that records request is unfulfilled, regardless of whether the email is transitory or substantive, and regardless of whether or not it has met its approved retention period under the City's retention schedules.

4) Anonymous unsolicited messages or solicitations of a general nature ("spam") may be filtered and deleted programmatically by DoIT.

5) The email of City employees and officials whose email correspondence is potentially archival shall be transferred to the Seattle Municipal Archives as arranged by the City Archivist in consultation with the City Records Manager.

Adopted by the City Council the ____ day of _________, 2011, and signed by me in open session in authentication of its adoption this _____ day of __________, 2011.

_________________________________

President __________of the City Council

Filed by me this ____ day of _________, 2011.

____________________________________

City Clerk

(Seal)

Catherine Moore/Kieu-Anh King LEG 2011 Email Retention Resolution 15 August 2011 version #10

Attachment:

1) Exhibit A. Email Purge Setting Pilot Project Proposal.

Exhibit A to Resolution 31212: Email Purge Setting Pilot Project Proposal

CURRENT STATUS.

The City has a 45-day purge setting for all City email users.

If a user gets an email and does not a) delete it, or b) move it to Mimosa or a Cabinet folder, the 45-day purge setting sweeps it up and purges it from the Outlook Inbox on Day 46.

The Data Protection Policy keeps a copy of every email -in Mimosa, the City's e-mail archiving program -for 14 days after (a) a user, or (b) the purge setting, purges it.

This means that an email message that is not moved to Mimosa or a Cabinet folder may be retrievable for 59 days after it is initially received (45 days in Outlook + 14 days in Mimosa).

Council is concerned that e-mail messages may be purged by the 45-day purge setting before users have had the chance to manage (and archive) their e-mail accounts appropriately.

Separately, DoIT will soon establish a 256 MB Outlook Inbox Size Limit for all City employees.

Most users do not currently have Outlook Inbox size limits.

Exceptions to the 256 MB limit will be allowed for elected officials and a small number of City employees.

This Resolution, introduced in 2010 and scheduled for discussion and vote at Council on August 16, 2011, states that the City should retain email correspondence for greater than the current 45 Day purge setting allows.

Moving to a two-year auto-retention period for all City employees for all email users would cost $1.3 to $1.7 million, according to DoIT's 2010 estimates.

The City Council wants to explore whether the City can enhance e-mail retention more efficiently, with far fewer resources.

To do so, the Council wishes to extend the Mimosa Data Protection Policy from 14 to 45 days (31 add'l days).

This means that any email deleted by the 45-day purge setting would be retrievable for 45 additional days.

The practical effect is that users could have up to 90 days, from the time an email is received, to archive or otherwise manage it, before it is permanently purged from the City's systems. The chart below shows the location of an email received, from Day 0 (initial receipt) to Day 90, under this proposal:

PILOT PROJECT PROPOSAL:

The City Council is proposing a minimal-cost Pilot Project:

a) In the short term, identify a small "test group" of 150-175 City e-mail users to participate in a pilot project. Test group members would likely be in management or policy development.

b) Extend the Mimosa Data Protection Policy for this test group from 14 to 45 days (an increase of 31 days).

c) DoIT believes that this pilot project will be possible using existing computing resources, at no increased cost to the City.

d) After 3-6 months, DoIT will review the change in Mimosa Server Storage Space for these "test group" e-mail users, and compare it against other City e-mail users, who do not have this enhanced Data Protection Policy.

POSSIBLE LONG TERM OPTIONS.

Council requests that DoIT develop a proposal for a long term strategy for email management that ensures email is not purged prior to being actively managed by city staff, with cost estimates, according to the timeline established in this resolution. This strategy might include applying this Data Protection Policy enhancement to all City e-mail users who produce records likely to need to be retained, as well as additional approaches. The costs of and financing for implementation are unknown. Council would likely review any implementation proposal in the context of the annual budget process, or via another budget appropriation ordinance

DoIT does not currently know how much Server Storage Space this 31day increase in the Data Protection Policy will require, for either the Pilot Project or the Long-Term Proposal. If additional server storage space is required, DoIT does not know the full cost of that incremental server space.

* Pursuing this Pilot Project should give DoIT and City policymakers better information with which to make a subsequent decision.

USERS AFFECTED.

This pilot will include a subset of the City's 11,000 e-mail users who are more likely to have records that have longer retention periods, per State law. These users are likely to be involved in Management, Human Resources, Contracting and Policy Development. Council expects that the City can determine the appropriate pilot users via a working group of Council, DoIT, City Attorney and City Budget Office staff. This overall number may be between 1,000 and 2,500 email users, but is not definitively known at this time. The City Council expects to review this issue further, once data from the Pilot Project is available.

Catherine Moore/Kieu-Anh King LEG 2011 Email Retention Resolution, Exhibit A 15 August 2011 v. 9

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