Public schools and local governments are subject to just as many regulations as most publicly-traded enterprises. Enterprise Email Archive and Enterprise File Archive are competitively-priced archiving solutions, with special discounts available for schools, governments, and non-profit organizations.

The Challenges

Compliance
The U.S. Freedom of Information Act requires public schools and local governments to hold Open State and Open Records, or “sunshine”, meetings. Government and public school officials must be able to access emails and other electronic records when called upon. U.S. entities are not alone—the Freedom of Information Act of 2000 took effect in the United Kingdom in 2005. Over 70 countries world-wide have administered some form of freedom of information legislation. Internal and external control practices must be transparent not only to the government, but to the general public.

Storage
Like the rest of the business world, public schools and government agencies utilize email and electronic files more and more on a daily basis. Email and file retention for compliance and litigation, along with backup and disaster recovery, is extremely important to schools and government agencies, yet the combination of increased sending, receiving, and retention of data can result in overwhelming storage volumes. Large storage volumes pose a constant risk to primary server functioning, resulting, quite often, in slow performance and system crashes, which slow work flow and eat up IT employees’ time.

Electronic Discovery and Litigation Support
Public schools and government organizations are not immune to court demands for electronic discovery, including electronic records like email, instant messages, Word files, spreadsheets, and calendar files. The United States Supreme Court updated the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which became effective in December of 2007.

	Some common reasons schools may be requested to produce email records are: (1) Requests under Open Meeting and Freedom of Information Act laws (2) Offensive emails or those with sexual content involving students (3) Email threats
	Government organizations may encounter similar situations to those faced by public schools: (1) Requests under Open Meeting and Freedom of Information Act laws (2) Emails containing offensive or sexual content that violates human resources policies (3) Emails containing evidence of wrongdoing by an employee

In all these cases, it is important to retain emails, attachments, and other electronic records. Archiving emails and electronic files ensures that redeeming information can be accessed from an historical record in time to acquit a school or government agency of intentional wrongdoing, perhaps by locating the source of a problem, usually a staff member. Likewise, retention of electronic emails and files can prove the innocence of a staff member in the case of an investigation or lawsuit.

Archiving email and electronic files helps schools and government agencies prove their integrity and encourage accountability among staff members and employees. As corporate scandals have demonstrated, enforcing a retention policy amongst staff is just as important as developing the policy. Even government agencies have made the news for suspicious situations surrounding email use and retention. Currently, the United States White House is facing ongoing investigations into missing emails that, under the White House’s retention policy, should not have been deleted.

Limited Resources
Unfortunately, limited state and federal budgets often mean that public schools and government agencies are not equipped with the technology necessary to securely store and quickly produce electronic records. With a looming repression in the U.S., federal and state budgets are decreasing. Limited staff and resources require government-funded agencies to employ an email or file archiving solution with a low cost of ownership (TCO) that provides top performance while requiring little maintenance.

What Can Our Archiving Solutions Do?
Don’t be fooled by the names—Enterprise Email Archive and Enterprise File Archive serve schools, governments and non-profit organizations. MessageSolution’s price discount for schools, governments and non-profits ensures that everyone can afford email archiving.Contact a MessageSolution representative for more information on this special.

Achieve Compliance and Monitor Data Use
MessageSolution’s email, file, and SharePoint archiving solutions are automated, policy-driven archiving software systems that allow schools and government agencies to implement and monitor their internal and external controls to become compliant with freedom of information requirements. The email, file, and SharePoint archive software solutions leverage management policies across multiple geographic locations, alert archive administrators if staff members attempt to violate policy. The automated technology in Enterprise Email Archive, Enterprise File and SharePoint Archive eliminate the need for IT and non-IT staff to spend hours manually managing emails and other electronic data. Automated policies and real-time archiving eliminate the threat of accidentally deleting important emails or files.

The email archive and file archive’s alerts and logs allow organizations to monitor staff’s archive behavior. Granular archive access settings also allow the archive administrator to give specific users permission to search, view, restore, and/or delete emails or files in other employees’ email archive or file archive. Archive access controls and retention policies can be set across entire locations or departments, as well as down to the individual staff member.

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