Archiving Files:

Email is best maintained in a format that can be read in Thunderbird. Store these files on a university provided storage area.

Files:  “As stated in Standard Practice Guide 601.08 "University Archives and Records," the Records Policy and Procedures Manual of the Bentley Historical Library's University Archives and Records Program provides record keeping procedures for the University community

FAQ

How long do you have to keep this email/files by SPG? (Remember this can be requested by FOIA see: https://it.umich.edu/information-technology-policies/general-policies/DM-08 )

• Make sure you are in compliance with U-M Standard Practices and delete data beyond retention policies: Identification, Maintenance, and Preservation of Digital Records Created by University of Michigan
  • Financial records, see Standard Practice Guide 604.01, “Department Record Retention For Business and Financial Records” DEPARTMENT RESPONSIBILITIES
    • Retain records in a manner that ensures their integrity and protection from purposeful, accidental or other improper damage or loss.
    • Organize and store records in a manner that ensures they are readily accessible for legitimate purposes to others in the university. This includes describing records adequately to allow the university to find, store, dispose of and/or archive them in accordance with business and legal requirements.
    • Safeguard sensitive data and appropriately manage access. Refer to the Information Security SPG for additional information.
    • Leverage the university’s central systems for retaining records to the extent possible to facilitate access, back-up and security.
    • Vital records should not be stored indefinitely on devices or in accounts (e.g., cloud storage accounts) to which there is no access beyond that of a single owner.
    • Fulfill requests to locate and provide records necessary to allow the university to comply with legal obligations, such as the Freedom of Information Act, subpoenas, or regulatory compliance requirements.
    • For questions regarding retention requirements for specific types of records, contact the university’s Controller and Director of Financial Operations.
    • Consider which records have historical significance and forward to the University Archives at the conclusion of the retention period. For questions about historical significance determination, contact the University Archives and Records Management team at UMrecords@umich.edu.
  • Personnel records, see Standard Practice Guide 201.46, "Personnel Records – Collection, Retention and Release" Operating Unit Files
    • Other offices maintaining personnel files as defined in II. A. 1. will observe the same standards of protection and access to files as described in II. F.
    • Operating units should be aware that personnel information contained in their older faculty personnel files may be unique. The Human Resource Records and Information Services Office maintains personnel files for a period of seven years following termination. The current Human Resource Management System includes information from June 2001. Data from the prior appointments computer database included information from 1978 and has been archived to a reporting database. Neither the Human Resource Records and Information Office nor the Bentley Historical Library, the archives of the University, has the staff to maintain older personnel records or to extract information from them. Therefore, departments and units may wish to hold personnel files until they are no longer of value to them and then destroy the files.
  • Student education records, see Office of the Registrar, “Student Rights and Records” at http://www.umich.edu/~regoff/ferpa/.
• Archive Data that is not actively used:
  • Leverage the Bentley: “As stated in Standard Practice Guide 601.08 "University Archives and Records," the Records Policy and Procedures Manual of the Bentley Historical Library's University Archives and Records Program provides record keeping procedures for the University community in this regard. See http://bentley.umich.edu/uarphome/manual/index.php. The Bentley Historical Library also serves as the official archives of the University and as such preserves and provides access to select records, including digital records, for which there is an ongoing administrative and historical value. For further policy on faculty work, see Standard Practice Guide 601.03, "Ownership of Copyrighted Works Created at or in Affiliation with the University of Michigan" and the "Faculty Papers" guidelines within the University Archives and Records Program website, at http://bentley.umich.edu/uarphome/index.php.”

Can you clean up your U-M Google account based on this knowledge?

Review Tips for Cleaning Up Your U-M Google Account for suggestions on how to best engage in good data hygiene.

Can you split up the email into active and inactive mailboxes?

You can have multiple Google Shared Accounts.

• It may make sense to have archive accounts for email that needs to be retained for a period of time with a process to delete those accounts at the expiration of the retention period.
• Create your own Offline MBox Archive to be stored outside of Gmail: Prepare your needed email by creating and moving the required mail to a relevant label then use the google takeout tool to create the needed file that can later be used with Thunderbird to access and search the offline archive.

Can you split files and emails up?

You should keep email in a Google Shared Account or Uniqname account and files in a Google Drive or Shared Drive. Make sure you follow best practices when using Shared Accounts as they should not be used for storage using Google Drive or Photos. If shared storage is needed, ITS recommends using a Google shared drive (NOT associated with your Shared Account), U-M Dropbox Team Folder, or another university-provided storage service. You can have

• A Google Shared Drive  (Use for U-M business)
• A Google Shared Account (Use for roles you have such as dept chair)
• A uniqname Google account (Use for Personal/Research/Teaching that does not need to be shared)

Need to add an email to drive as an image to keep it for records. (See this addon to Chrome.)

• You can have multiple Google Shared Drives. It may make sense to have drives by types of work or other logical buckets provided that group of files does not exceed 15GBs.
  
• You can have multiple Google Shared Accounts. It may make sense to have archive accounts for email that needs to be retained for a period of time with a process to delete those accounts at the expiration of the retention period.