The Government is committed to improving the quality and keeping of records so that they facilitate the transaction, documentation and auditing of official business. At the same time the Government is committed to delivering responsive and accessible government services to the community through improved use of information technology.

In line with these commitments, the use of email by agencies in the New South Wales public sector has increased dramatically in recent years. Email provides a quick and efficient means of communicating across government and with external stakeholders.

Emails generated or received by an officer of an agency in the course of his or her duties are, however, official records. Such emails must be kept and disposed of in accordance with the requirements of the State Records Act and the State Records Authority Policy on Electronic Record Keepingand Policy on Electronic Messages as Records.

To reflect the status of emails as official records, templates should be adopted by agencies and implemented for email communications. These templates are to capture the formal information that should be contained in official correspondence.

The use of templates will ensure that standards applying to ordinary correspondence are observed and will ensure that basic information (including recipient and sender details, details of transmission, subject or title, details of the business activity or transaction documented) is recorded in respect of emails.

To assist agencies in implementing this policy, State Records has developed a number of templates that should be used when creating and managing emails. Alternatively agencies may develop their own templates.

Some other basic requirements should also be observed:

• Approval of correspondence - As an official record of the relevant agency, emails needs to be created and managed in exactly the same way as other correspondence. This means that the usual agency arrangements for authorising correspondence apply to emails.
• Quality - Emails must be of a standard that is equivalent to other correspondence produced by an agency. They should accurately document official business where they are used for this purpose.
• Content - Emails should not contain language or comments that would not be used in a hard copy submission or correspondence.

Further detailed guidance on this issue can be found in Managing the Message – Guidelines on Managing Electronic Messages as Recordsprepared by the State Records Authority and which is available from its website: www.records.nsw.gov.au.

Ministers should ensure that their agencies develop appropriate standards and protocols to implement the above arrangements.