Toward E-Mail Governance: Policies and Practices in the Government of Canada

The objectives of this study are to identify e-mail management policy development and implementation in the Government of Canada (GC) and examine the current e-mail management practices toward improving e-mail governance. This study conducted a survey with 204 information management professionals from 76 Canadian government agencies who deal with e-mail records in their daily operations. The results showed that respondents widely accepted e-mail management as important and recognized that an e-mail management policy and/or guidelines are significant tools for the effective management of e-mail records. However, the level of implementation and practices varies and are not standardized across agencies. Since the GC tends to rely heavily on an individual employee's own responsibility to manage e-mail records, employee training is an essential component in effective e-mail management. The results of the study emphasize the importance of policy development and its application to practices at government agencies.