DP and FOI office

Good Practice and Information Guidance
No. 5
Good e-mail Management - a summary for staff

Rights & Responsibilities – Yours and the University’s

Individuals have a right of privacy in their personal lives and a right to know what their employer's position is with regard to monitoring of communications. 

The University, as an employer has the rights and responsibilities to ensure the quality and legality of its activities and the security of its systems.  Therefore authorised teams may examine any item of e-mail (or document), and due to recent “information access” legislation, any item is liable to be disclosed externally (with very few exceptions).

With this in mind, and in line with the principles for managing any University information, you have responsibilities regarding the management of all information including emails. In the interests of information security and saving respources, you must heed the advice on e-mail format from IT Services.

  1. Create only what is needed.
  2. Keep only what needs to be kept.
  3. Organise what is kept.

What is needed? 

  • communication to initiate work or move it forward
  • information needed now or in future for reference.

What needs to be kept? 

Information that

  • proves you or another individual has taken a particular action or decision
  • records formal reasons for an action or decision
  • records factual or technical information that may be needed later
  • and is really best kept as an email and is still relevant
    (e.g. to keep contact details, save the information to your contact list rather than retaining e-mails)

How to organise it? 

  • Decide who will be the recognised records keeper for a particular project, issue etc. – even if the emails are kept on a shared drive, one person should have responsibility for managing them and providing access on request.
  • Decide which are the salient records to retain, and be rigorous about weeding out drafts and discursive exchanges.

Further advice

For further advice on managing e-mail, please contact the:

Records & Information Management Service (R&IMS)
tel: +44 (0)141 330 3111
e-mail: recman@gla.ac.uk