With the passage of Pennsylvania's Right to Know Law came a challenging set of new rules for public agencies who had to quickly institute a process to enable an efficient and transparent way of providing records to the public upon request. One Commonwealth of Pennsylvania agency needed an application that could assist them in managing a growing number of E-mails for Right to Know compliance. Working with IMR, the resulting solution was an efficient, integrated system that provided agency employees an unobtrusive way of archiving and accessing E-mails for RTK compliance.
Pennsylvania's Right to Know History
Signed into law by Gov. Edward G. Rendell, the Right To Know Act became effective January 1, 2009. The law was built on the presumption that most government records are open to the public. The law places the burden with the governmental and other public entities to show why a record should be withheld from public inspection; instead of forcing requesters to establish why it should be made public. This change in policy was a critical distinction in how agencies determined processes for archiving and accessing records.
The single most critical piece of advice the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records offered to agencies impacted by the new law was to conduct a records management analysis to determine the types of records that the agency possesses. Since the Right To Know Act includes all types of records and documents, including E-mail messages, every agency must be able to quickly and efficiently respond to any request and be able to determine where the records are archived. Not being able to fulfill a request in a timely manner can result in civil penalties and fines.
The Challenge
One area of the new Right To Know Law that affects statewide and local agencies is the stipulation that E-mail messages are included in the public's right to know. The law does not mean there is wholesale release of E-mail records; rather like any other record, E-mails must be included in the review of requested records. The challenge was that this organization, like many other governmental agencies, did not yet have an E-mail capture, archival and search system in place.
The Solution
Working closely with the client, IMR implemented a comprehensive Right To Know (RTK) Solution that enables the department to comply with the law through the use of technology. IMR worked closely with the department to customize a front-end and reporting mechanism that allows users to easily request the information, track the result and report on all requests. IMR's RTK Solution allows the department to make sure that they are implementing processes that will deliver the results required to comply with the new law - easily and efficiently.
The RTK E-mail Solution has the ability to capture and store all or selected messages that are sent or received by the entire department in their native format. IMR's E-mail retention solution easily integrates with existing Outlook software and provides the ability to automatically tag, capture and archive messages on a pre-determined basis. Messages can be marked for retention based on subject line, message content and/or attachments. Searches for E-mails and/or attached documents can be performed based on a metadata or full text search.
IMR's RTK E-mail Solution can:
- Automatically capture E-mail for the entire enterprise in one central repository.
- Provide retention and recovery of E-mails to support compliance regulations such as E-discovery.
- Search metadata or full text on content of both E-mail and attachments.
- Dedicates E-mail database utilizing single instance storage, saving retention space.
- Creates Stubbing Service link to archived message via Outlook E-mail client.
- Reduces costs associated with the administration and infrastructure required by enterprise E-mail systems.
- Eliminates unreliable backup tapes that do not capture every E-mail communication.
The solution is a combination of Hyland OnBase's Outlook Integration module, Document Retention module and the Full Text module.
IMR created a custom add-in that works with MS Outlook to prompt the user every time a message is sent or received. The prompt allows the user to designate where they would like to save the message in their Outlook system. Certain directories are set up to automatically send a copy of the E-mail to a processing workstation that will store the E-mail into the OnBase system.
At this point, the E-mail is assigned to a retention schedule. The retention schedule will be set up to automatically purge the E-mails at the end of their required life. Another feature of the system is that once an E-mail is stored within the OnBase system, it is automatically indexed with Full Text. This allows users to search the OnBase system for any E-mails containing specific wording/text in light of a RTK request.
Benefits of the Right To Know Solution
Keeping up with document retention requirements is becoming an increasingly complex task. Adding to the complexity is the Right To Know requirement for retention of E-mail correspondence. IMR's RTK E-mail Solution allows the department to automatically manage the retention and disposition of all E-mail accounts assigned to the agency, which enables them to efficiently facilitate compliance with all governmental and legal retention requirements.
IMR's RTK E-mail Solution manages the retention and disposition of stored documents according to pre-defined business rules per class of document. The retention schedule is set up to automatically purge E-mails at the end of their required life. The destruction process is initiated by the passage of time, allowing for automatic destruction and/or removal from the system.
