Town of Danby
 Email Policies and Procedures
 October 7, 2024

1.0 General Policies

The Town legally owns all emails that employees, appointees, and officials create and receive in the process of conducting business on behalf of the Town and its constituents. Employees, appointees, and officials have no promise of personal privacy when using email on behalf of the Town.

1.1 Ownership of Email

All elected officials, board and committee chairs, and staff may be issued town emails.

All email users of town email accounts will acknowledge that they understand the town’s policy on email ownership by written acknowledgement to the Town Clerk.

Town Email users will not use personal email to conduct town business except in emergencies. Anyone conducting business by email on behalf of the Town not using a Town email to do so must include among the recipients of outgoing emails someone with a Town email address so that the correspondence is captured for the record by the Town Email Management System

Town officials, appointees, and employees must recognize that all town-related emails are public records that are covered by the Records Retention and Disposition Schedule (MU-1) and by this town email policy.

1.2 Training

No person will have use of a town email account without appropriate initial and ongoing training. Training will include established email use and management policies.

Ongoing training will be offered after upgrades, transitions to new email programs, and on an as-needed basis.

The Town Clerk will arrange for training, which will include the following topics:

1.2 (a) identifying records and general records management practices

1.2 (b) responsibilities of users in records and email management

1.2 (c) appropriate use of town email accounts

1.2 (d) how to write and communicate effectively via email

1.2 (e) responding to legal actions and FOIL requests

1.3 Policy Review and Updating

To ensure that this policy is current and relevant, it will be reaffirmed by the Town Board at the annual organizational meeting.

2.0 Maintaining the Town Email Management System

The technical maintenance of the system will be a coordinated effort involving several key players with defined roles and responsibilities.

2.1 Town Supervisor and Town Board

2.1 (a) Ensure an adequate budget for maintaining the email management system.

2.1 (b) Promote, support, and enforce this and other records management policies.

2.2 Town Clerk as Records Management Official (RMO)

2.2 (a) Ensures that appropriate state retention requirements are complied with.

2.2 (b) Ensures that the current and future systems meet federal and state records requirements.

2.3 Town Computer Support Vendor

Maintains the technical capabilities of the email management system

3.0 Access to Email

Access to email must be possible for the full retention period of the email but subject to strict controls to ensure against unauthorized or inappropriate access.

Email users must assign intelligible subject lines to all outgoing emails.

The RMO and the Computer Support Vendor have access to all town email records in the email archive and can allow access to legal counsel and others on an as-needed basis. Access to certain emails relating to law enforcement investigations, court actions, and personnel matters may be restricted by law to specific individuals in town government.

The RMO is responsible for ensuring access to email records.

4.0 Retention and Disposition

The system will manage the retention and disposition of email automatically. While it is not legally required that all emails be retained indefinitely, until such time as resources become available to selectively retain emails in accordance with NYS guidance, all emails will be retained.

4.1 Managing Retention and Disposition
 The RMO, is responsible for all email retention and disposition.

4.2 Backups

The Town creates backups of its email system as a disaster management strategy only. Backups are not intended to be archival copies of permanent records.

4.3 Suspending Retention

The Town has a legal obligation to suspend all retention and disposition activities in the event of an impending lawsuit, a legal investigation or ongoing fiscal or program audit. This obligation will be satisfied by retaining all emails indefinitely.

4.5 Departure

If someone with a town email account departs from the Town, the Town Clerk will terminate their access and use within 15 days of the user's departure unless otherwise provided for by Town Board action.

It is the responsibility of the Town Clerk to notify the Town Computer Support Vendor when a user needs to be removed.

4.6 Transition

In the event that a town position is open, and a new official has not been appointed or hired, the Town Board may choose to allow the previous occupant of said position to continue to use a town email.

It is the responsibility of the Town Clerk to notify the Town Computer Support Vendor when there is a change in status of a town email account.

5.0 E-discovery

All town email messages, including personal emails related to town business, may be subject to discovery proceedings in legal actions.

If a staff member or official becomes aware of potential litigation, it is his or her responsibility to notify legal counsel immediately. The Town Attorney will determine what action, if any, needs to be taken.

Legal counsel will work with the presiding judge and opposing counsel to narrow the parameters of a records search as much as possible so as not to overburden the Town’s technical infrastructure.

In the event of an extended legal proceeding, the Town Clerk, working with the Town’s Computer Support Vendor, must ensure that records of potential relevance to the case remain accessible for the full extent of the proceeding, which may require moving relevant email records offline to storage media or a detachable drive.

6.0 Inappropriate Use

Inappropriate use of a Town email account will be handled and enforced as a serious security issue.

6.1 Responsibility for Inappropriate Use and System Security.

All users of a Town’s email account are expected to know the difference between appropriate and inappropriate use of email.

6.2 Inappropriate Uses of Email

Do not use the Town of Danby’s email for:

6.2 (a) activities unrelated to official assignments or job responsibilities

6.2 (b) any illegal purpose

6.2 (c) transmitting threatening, obscene, or harassing materials or messages

6.2 (d) distributing confidential town data and information

6.2 (e) interfering with or disrupting network users, services, or equipment

6.2 (f) private purposes, such as marketing, business transactions, or advertising of products or services

6.2 (g) installing copyrighted software or computer files illegally

6.2 (h) promoting religious or political causes

6.2 (i) unauthorized not-for-profit business activities

6.2 (j) any activity meant to foster personal financial gain

6.2 (k) modifying, obtaining, or seeking information about files or data that belong to other users, without explicit permission to do so

6.3 Enforcing Appropriate Use

The Town has the right to:

6.3 (a) log network use and monitor file server space utilization by users

6.3 (b) inform users there is no promise of personal privacy

6.3 (c) restrict listserv membership to those listservs that are directly related to the job and the work of the Town

6.3 (d) address misuse through disciplinary action if necessary, and report messages relating to or in support of illegal activities to the appropriate authorities

The Town Board will review alleged violations of the Town email appropriate use policy on a case- by-case basis. Violations of the policy that are not promptly remedied may result in termination of internet and email services for the person at fault.

7.0 Technical Security

The Town Clerk, with the support of the Computer Support Vendor, has primary responsibility for overseeing the technical security of the Town’ s email management system.

7.1 Handling Suspect Emails

Any user who receives suspect email or email with suspect attachments, must delete these emails and report them to the Town Clerk. Under no circumstances should users open suspect email attachments. Users should exercise similar care when linking to external websites from unsolicited messages.

7.2 Passwords

All users must use passwords to access their email, and passwords will not be shared. Users will also be required to change their passwords annually. The Computer Support Vendor will alert users when it is time to initiate the password change.

8.0 Preservation

Except where indicated, the Town will apply all preservation standards described in the New York State’s Record Retention and Disposition Schedule (LGS-1).

8.1 Backups and Long-term Preservation

Backups of the email system are to be used for disaster recovery purposes only, not for retention purposes. Data on backups are not indexed and are in a proprietary compression format, making it less likely that the data will be accessible long-term.

8.2 Media Integrity

The Town will ensure the ongoing integrity of media used to store long-term and permanent emails.

Questions regarding town email use can be directed to the Town Clerk.