Comments on: Schools are NOT required by Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) to block all web 2.0 sites

By: What Teachers Want | Nebraska Change Agent

What Teachers Want | Nebraska Change Agent — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:48:58 +0000

[...] law (CIPA) requires filtering of pornography and pornography ONLY! I read with much interest a post written by Wesley Fryer about two weeks ago where he wrote about what schools were required to block. Here is the quote from [...]

By: Benjamin Wright

Benjamin Wright — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:33:24 +0000

E-archival is a fluid topic, with few simple rules. However, I’ll hazard a general statement: To the extent that key employees of any enterprise (school or otherwise) are using e-mail or instant message to transact substantive business (e.g., hiring and firing, internal control or contract negotiation), the enterprise is wise to strive to keep records in a centrally-managed archive. –Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/04/reducing-volume-of-e-mail-archives.html

By: Justin B.

Justin B. — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:11:14 +0000

Good points Roger and I will forward that on to my guest author at the Edjurist on this topic. But, we are doing a series on this of which this was just the intro post. It looks like one of the later posts in the series is going to address e-mail archiving as well. In fact, looking at your blog, the whole series on FRCP, discovery, and electronic documents at the Edjurist will probably interest you.

By: Roger Matus

Roger Matus — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:01:00 +0000

You bring up an issue which is often misunderstood both by schools and business. And, I am also not a lawyer so I cannot give legal advice.

The FRCP does not require anyone to archive anything (with the exception of the litigation hold provisions). What it does say is IF anyone in the “party” has a copy of anything, then you must produce it. The party is often understood to be faculty, administrators, staff, directors, Board members, some consultants and some contractors. Basically anyone who can give or receive direction.

So, what is the deal with email archiving? The issue is that many people keep copies of email messages on a laptop or PC. The FRCP can be met by retrieving relevant emails from every laptop and PC. Most schools decide it is easier and cheaper to centralize email collection than to do that. This email archiving rules.

What about Twitter and IM? Well, the same rule applies. If your staff keeps a copy of their conversation, it is discoverable. But, if it is not kept, then you are not obligated to keep it.

I wrote a whitepaper on this topic and the issue of litigation hold, entitled Email Archiving Requirements For
Schools and Local Governments. Feel free to download it at http://www.inboxer.com/wp_archiving_in_education.shtml.