Purpose - This document provides guidelines for prudent and acceptable practices regarding the use of e-mail and the management of e-mail messages sent and received. This standard supplements the e-mail policies articulated in the UTSA Acceptable Use Policy.

Audience - The UTSA E-mail Standard applies equally to all individuals granted access privileges to any UTSA information resource with the capacity to send, receive or store electronic mail.

1. E-mail is an essential tool for communicating within UTSA and the University of Texas System, and must be available at all times. E-mail must be used in a manner that does not expose the University and the UT System to unnecessary risks. Each UTSA employee and student will be assigned an e-mail address, and each user is required to exercise prudent e-mail use in accordance with the Information Resources Acceptable Use Policy. The UTSA e-mail system will carry official notices and information unavailable to the recipient in any other format, and it is the obligation of each user to check the e-mail account regularly for such material.

2. All user activity on UTSA Information Resources assets is subject to logging and review.

3. To reduce spam and to protect the e-mail environment from malicious viruses, worms or other threats, the Office of Information Technology may filter, block and/or strip potentially harmful code from messages originating from sites known for distribution of spam or malicious code.

4. Records Retention

   1. The retention requirement associated with any document is determined by its content, not the method of delivery. Each UTSA department has a records retention schedule that specifies the retention period to be applied to various documents. It is critical that records be destroyed when the retention requirement has been met.

   2. The responsibility of retaining an internally-created and distributed document (or message) most often falls on the author, not the recipients. Recipients may delete such received messages after they are no longer needed.  

   3. Employees who receive messages from outside UTSA are responsible for proper records retention of those messages.  

   4. Most casual e-mail messages are "transitory records" and can be discarded after their purpose is served. For records retention purposes, electronic mail that is digitally signed must be filed electronically, (rather than on paper), if the signature is of importance to the legal status or business usefulness of the document.  

   5. E-mail that has been requested in a subpoena or public information request must be retained until the request has been fulfilled, even if the retention period has expired.

5. E-mail Backup and Recovery
   
   Institutional backups are created solely for the purpose of restoring the entire electronic mail system in the event of a disaster. Backup tapes do not allow for the restoration of departmental electronic mail systems or individual mailboxes and cannot be used as a convenience to retrieve "deleted" messages.