Email Retention Policy

See purpose.

The Email Retention Policy is intended to help employees determine what information sent or received by email should be retained and for how long. The information covered in these guidelines includes, but is not limited to, information that is either stored or shared via electronic mail or instant messaging technologies. All employees should familiarize themselves with the email retention topic areas that follow this introduction. Questions about the proper classification of a specific piece of information should be addressed to your manager. Questions about these guidelines should be addressed to the IT Team.

Includes all employees of the Diocese of Paterson, including temporary contractors or part-time employees.

All Diocese of Paterson email information is categorized into four main classifications with retention guidelines:

• Sacramental Correspondence: Indefinite
• Administrative Correspondence: 4 years
• Fiscal Correspondence: 4 years
• General Correspondence: 1 year
• Ephemeral Correspondence: Retain until read then destroy

• 4.1 Sacramental Correspondence
  • 4.1.1 The Diocese of Paterson’s Sacramental Correspondence includes, though not limited to records involving individuals who received sacraments and may include records regarding processes to receive the sacraments as well as any other information required by canonical law. To ensure Sacramental Correspondence is retained, a mailbox [email protected] has been created. If you forward an email with “{Sacramental}” in the subject line to this address, retention will be administered by the IT Department for the allotted time.
• 4.2 Administrative Correspondence
  • 4.2.1 The Diocese of Paterson’s Administrative Correspondence includes, though is not limited to clarification of established organization policy, including requested time off, time card information, work place behavior and any legal issues such as intellectual property violations. To ensure Administrative Correspondence is retained, a mailbox [email protected] has been created. If you forward an email with “{Administrative}” in the subject line to this address, retention will be administered by the IT Department for the allotted time.
• 4.3 Fiscal Correspondence
  • 4.3.1 The Diocese of Paterson’s Fiscal Correspondence is all information related to revenue and expense for the organization. To ensure Fiscal Correspondence is retained, a mailbox [email protected] has been created. If you forward an email with “{Fiscal}” }” in the subject line to this address, retention will be administered by the IT Department for the allotted time.
• 4.4 General Correspondence
  • 4.4.1 The Diocese of Paterson’s General Correspondence covers information that relates to interactions with lay people and the operational decisions of the organization. The individual employee is responsible for email retention of General Correspondence.
• 4.5 Ephemeral Correspondence
  • 4.5.1 The Diocese of Paterson’s Ephemeral Correspondence is by far the largest category and includes personal email, requests for recommendations or review, email related to product development, updates and status reports.
• 4.6 Other Correspondence
  • 4.6.1 Other subsidiaries functioning within the diocese that communicate through other means should do their due diligence to comply with these policies and use best discretion for their location.
• 4.7 Recovering Deleted Email via Backup Media
  • 4.7.1 The Diocese of Paterson maintains cloud backups through a separate archiving system, Microsoft 365 for (30 days) as well as a barracuda backups. Backups can be recovered with Departmental approval.

• 5.1 Compliance Measurement
  • 5.1.1 The DoP Technology team may verify compliance to this Standard through various methods, including but not limited to, business tool reports, internal and external audits, and feedback to the Standard owner.
• 5.2 Exceptions
  • 5.2.1 All devices should be compliant with cyber insurance standards and local/federal governance standards. Any exception/outliers should be approved by the DoP Technology team in advance.
• 5.3 Non-Compliance
  • 5.3.1 An employee found to have violated this Standard may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.

None.

None.