ARST 516

Secretaries at work on Mad Men (Source)

Government Trespasses

On October 31, 2017, the Edmonton Journal broke a story covering the deletion of 800,000 emails by members of Alberta’s New Democratic Party (NDP) Government, including those within the office of Premier Rachel Notley. Alberta’s official opposition party, the United Conservatives, had unearthed information relating to the deletions following a 2016 request for “…numbers of managerial and director government email records…”. That investigation exposed the sparse inboxes of many high-level government employees, including those who had worked for the NDP for many years.

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Image By Olga Lebedeva/Shutterstock

Text messaging services are being used increasingly by businesses and their employees to do their work. It’s quick, easy, and reliable. Employees can use these services to communicate amongst themselves, but also with their customers.

For example, this summer I added a service on my cell phone plan and the employee gave me his cell phone number. He told me I could text him instead of calling customer service to cancel. I did end up cancelling via text message and it was easy and quick with the added bonus of not having to speak to another human being!

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Corporations and government agencies are discovering the need to manage text messages as records.  That is to say, text messages are records, and need to be managed as such.

Records are defined as “any recorded information, regardless of medium or characteristics, made or received and retained by an organization in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business” in the Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles (GARP).  Although some may argue that text messages have simply replaced phone calls and in-person discussions and thus do not need to be managed, the fact is that text messages largely fit GARP’s definition.  However, the retention of text messages needs to be addressed.

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