Appendix G District Email Policies and Procedures I. Introduction Email has become one of the most used communications tools in both homes and work places and is now an integral part of all Joshua ISD classrooms and administrative offices. Joshua ISD provides an electronic communication (e-mail) system to employees primarily for instructional and administrative purposes and in accordance with administrative regulations. The District encourages the use of electronic mail. Nonetheless, subject to the conditions specified in these standards, the District may deny access to its electronic mail services and may inspect, monitor, or disclose electronic mail 1. when required by and consistent with law; 2. when there is reasonable reason to believe that violations of law or of District policies have taken place; 3. when there are compelling circumstances; or 4. under time-dependent, critical operational circumstances. Cautions: Users should be aware of the following: 1. Correspondence via electronic mail is not guaranteed to be private. Both the nature of electronic mail and the public character of the District s business (see Caution 2 below) make electronic mail less private than users may anticipate. For example, electronic mail intended for one person sometimes may be widely distributed because of the ease with which recipients can forward it to others. Furthermore, even after a user deletes an electronic mail record from a computer or electronic mail account it will be present in archives or backup copies, and is subject to disclosure under the provisions of Section V of these standards. The District cannot routinely protect users against such eventualities. Users of District electronic mail services should be aware that the Texas Public Information Act and other similar laws jeopardize the ability of the District to guarantee complete protection of personal electronic mail residing on District facilities. 2. The District, in general, cannot and does not wish to be the arbiter of the contents of electronic mail. Neither can the District, in general, protect users from receiving electronic mail they may find offensive. Members of the District, however, are strongly encouraged to use the same personal and professional courtesies and considerations in electronic mail as they would in other forms of communication. 3. There is no guarantee that electronic mail received was in fact sent by the purported sender. Furthermore, electronic mail that is forwarded may also be modified. As with print documents, in case of doubt receivers of electronic mail messages should check with the purported sender to validate authorship or authenticity. II. Scope These standards apply only to electronic mail in its electronic form. These standards do not apply to printed copies of electronic mail. Other District records management policies (see Retention Schedule for Records of Public School Districts listed in Appendix A of this document), however, do not distinguish among the media in which records are generated or
stored. Electronic mail messages, therefore, in either their electronic or printed forms, are subject to those other policies, including provisions of those policies regarding retention and disclosure. These Standards apply equally to transactional information (such as email headers, summaries, addresses, and addressees) associated with email records as it does to the contents of those records. These standards are effective immediately. III. General Provisions A. Purpose In support of its mission of instruction, the District encourages the use of District electronic mail services to share information, to improve communication and to exchange ideas. B. District Property District electronic mail systems and services and any electronic mail address or account associated with the District, individual staff members, or functions of the District, is the property of the Joshua Independent School District. Email access is provided as a normal operating tool for any employee who requires it to perform their job. Individual staff email addresses are shared with interested parents and community members who request to communicate with staff in this fashion. C. Service Restrictions Those who use District electronic mail services are expected to do so responsibly, that is, to comply with state and federal laws, with this and other policies and standards of the District, and with normal standards of professional and personal courtesy and conduct. Access to District electronic mail services, when provided, is a privilege that may be wholly or partially restricted by the District without prior notice and without the consent of the email user when required by and consistent with law, when there is substantiated reason to believe that violations of policy or law have taken place, or, in exceptional cases, when required to meet time-dependent, critical operational needs. Such restriction is subject to established district-wide standards. IV. Specific Provisions A. Allowable Use In general, use of District electronic mail services is governed by policies that apply to the use of all District facilities. In particular, use of District electronic mail services is encouraged and is allowable subject to the following conditions: Purpose Electronic mail services are provided by the District in support of the instructional mission of the District, and the administrative functions that support this mission. Users Users of District electronic mail services are to be limited to District employees for purposes that conform to the requirements of this Section. Message forwarding Some information is intended for specific individuals and may not be appropriate for general distribution; electronic communications users should exercise caution when forwarding messages. See additional guidelines in the Joshua ISD Staff Acceptable Use Policy.
B. Conditions of Use It is the responsibility of all users to: Maintain an electronic communication environment conducive to education and the administration of instruction that is free of illegal or malicious acts; Keep personal use to a minimum; Report any instance of misuse to the system administrators; Not permit any other user to use their assigned e-mail account; Abide by all applicable federal and state statutes and regulations pertaining to the user of computer hardware and software including, but not limited to, federal copyright laws. Practice responsible use of attachments. Accept responsibility to manage e-mail messages and attachments according to the district s retention schedule (see Appendix A of this document). It is also the responsibility of the sender of e-mail messages within the district s e-mail system and recipients of messages from outside the agency to retain the messages for the approved retention period. Names of sender, recipient, date/time of the message, as well as any attachments must be retained with the message. District electronic mail services may not be used to: Perpetuate chain e-mail letters or their equivalents. This includes letters that require the recipient to forward an e-mail to a specified number of addresses in order to achieve some monetary, philosophical, political, superstitious, or other goal. E-mails that are part of a multilevel marketing or pyramid-selling scheme, sometimes known as "Ponzi schemes," are illegal in many places and are specifically forbidden under these standards. Send virus alerts. This information is to be forwarded to technology to be verified. The technology department will make sure necessary precautions are taken. Send district-wide communication without proper authorization from the Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, or Director of Technology. Transmit commercial software. This includes sending any copyrighted materials belonging to parties outside of the district of the district itself. Create and/or send "spam". Spam is defined as any unsolicited electronic communication that is sent to any number of recipients who did not specifically request or express an interest in the material advertised in the communication. Unsolicited Commercial Email or Spam is not permitted by state law. It will be considered a greater offense if the district s electronic communications resources are exploited to amplify the range of distribution of these communications. Send or encourage "letter bombs". Letter bombs are extremely large or numerous e- mail messages that are intended to annoy, interfere, or deny e-mail use by one or more recipients. Practice an activity designed to deny the availability of electronic communications resources. Also called "denial of service attacks," these activities deny or limit services through mail bombing, malicious executables such as viruses, threatening a virus, or opening a large number of mail connections to a mail host or SMTP relay without authorization or permission. Conduct unlawful activities. This is considered to be any commercial purposes not under the auspices of the District.
Conduct any communication or include any links intended for personal financial gain. Practice any personal use inconsistent with Section IV. A. or Forward any email received in district to be automatically forwarded to an external destination. Send or receive email attachments larger than 3mb. Maximum attachment size is enforced by the Joshua ISD mail system. Conduct any communication that violates other District policies or guidelines. C. Personal Use. District electronic mail services may be used for incidental personal purposes provided that, in addition to the foregoing constraints and conditions, such use does not: Include use during class instructional time amount to an unreasonable amount of time directly or indirectly interfere with the District operation of computing facilities or electronic mail services; burden the District with noticeable incremental cost; or interfere with the email user s employment or other obligations to the District. All personal email messages, both incoming and outgoing, will be archived daily and subject to Open Records laws. Email users should assess the implications of this presumption in their decision to use District electronic mail services for personal purposes. V. Security and Confidentiality 1. The confidentiality of electronic mail cannot be assured. Such confidentiality may be compromised by applicability of law or policy, including these standards, by unintended redistribution, or because of inadequacy of current technologies to protect against unauthorized access. Users, therefore, should exercise extreme caution in using email to communicate confidential or sensitive matters. 2. District employees must take necessary precautions to protect the confidentiality of personal or confidential information encountered in the performance of their duties or otherwise. This prohibition applies to email records. 3. Operators of email services have no control over the security of email that has been downloaded to a user s computer. As a deterrent to potential intruders and to misuse of email, email users should employ whatever protections (such as passwords) are available to them and should lock their computers when unattended. 4. The following considerations should be made when sending and saving email: Do not put anything in an email or electronic communication that you would not want to see on the front page of the newspaper. Email or electronic communications pertaining to official business carried out on a home computer may be public information. Exercise utmost caution when sending any email from inside Joshua ISD to an outside network. 5. Use FERPA (Appendix A of this document) guidelines in determining the definition of confidential records. Exceptions to Disclosure - 552.04, 552.117 states that a person s home address, home telephone number, or social security number are excepted from the Disclosure laws.
A. Electronic Mail Disaster Recovery The District creates electronic mail backups for the sole purpose of restoring the entire electronic mail system in the event of disaster. Backups do not allow for restoration of individual mailboxes and cannot be used as a convenience to retrieve deleted messages. Backups do not serve a records retention function. Each Joshua ISD department must make provisions to retain documents and messages in accordance with their departmental records retention policy. B. Electronic Mail Archiving The District will archive all electronic messages daily and maintain a central electronic mail archive of all electronic mail sent or received. All archived email messages will be retained for a period of not less than 5 years. This does not, however, relieve the individual user of the responsibility of proper records retention practices. The District electronic mail system is a communication system and is not intended to be the primary records retention repository. It is the responsibility of all individual users to educate themselves on use of the electronic mail system when used to converse with parents concerning their student. Email users and those in possession of District records in the form of electronic mail are cautioned, therefore, to be prudent in their reliance on electronic mail for purposes of maintaining a lasting record. Sound business practice suggests that the user give careful consideration to transferring electronic mail to a more lasting medium/format, such as a printed copy, where long-term accessibility is an issue to comply with the District Data Retention Policy (Appendix A of this document). Users must also consider the fact that electronic mail, in any form (any electronic format or hard copy) can be subpoenaed. VI. User Electronic Mail Records Retention Responsibilities Email is subject to the same records retention rules that apply to other documents and must be retained in accordance with departmental records retention schedules. The retention requirement associated with any document is determined by its content, not the method of delivery. Each Joshua ISD department has a records retention schedule that specifies the retention period to be applied to various departments. The responsibility of retaining an internally created and distributed document (or message) most often falls on the author not the recipients. Employees who receive messages from outside the Joshua ISD are responsible for proper records retention of those messages. Email that has been requested in a subpoena or public information request must be retained until the request has been addressed, even if the retention period has expired. The Joshua ISD approved retention schedule lists the record series that are created and the retention period for each series. It is the content and function of an e-mail message that determines the retention period for that message. All e-mail sent or received by an agency is considered a state record. Therefore, all e-mail messages must be retained or disposed of according to the agency's retention schedule. E-mail systems must meet the retention requirements found in Texas Administrative Code 6.94(e). E-mail generally (see the Texas State Records Retention Schedule for more information) falls into several common record series categories. These are:
(1) Administrative Correspondence, 1.1.007 - Incoming/outgoing and internal correspondence, in any format, pertaining to the formulation, planning, implementation, interpretation, modification, or redefinition of the programs, services, or projects of an agency and the administrative regulations, policies and standards that govern them. Subject to Archival review. Retention: 3 years. (2) General Correspondence, 1.1.008 - Non-administrative incoming/outgoing and internal correspondence, in any media, pertaining to or arising from the routine operations of the policies, programs, services, or projects of an agency. Retention: 1 year. (3) Transitory Information, 1.1.057 - Records of temporary usefulness that are not an integral part of a records series of an agency, that are not regularly filed within an agency's recordkeeping system, and that are required only for a limited period of time for the completion of an action by an official or employee of the agency or in the preparation of an on-going records series. Transitory records are not essential to the fulfillment of statutory obligations or to the documentation of agency functions. Examples of transitory information are routine messages (can be recorded on any medium, such as hard copy message slips or in an electronic format on e-mail and voice mail); internal meeting notices; routing slips; incoming letters or memoranda of transmittal that add nothing of substance to enclosures; and similar routine information used for communication, but not for the documentation, of a specific agency transaction. Retention: AC (after purpose of record has been fulfilled) VII. VIOLATIONS Violations of District Standards governing the use of District electronic mail services may result in restriction of access to District information technology resources. In addition, disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal, may be applicable under other District policies, guidelines, implementing standards, or collective bargaining agreements. APPENDIX A REFERENCES The following list identifies significant sources used as background in the preparation of these Standards, whether or not they are directly referenced by these Standards. It does not, however, include all federal and state laws and District policies that may apply to electronic mail. These policies and laws change from time to time; therefore users of these Standards are encouraged to refer to on-line versions of this and other District policies accessible on the Office of the President home page on the World Wide Web. District Policies and Guidelines Joshua ISD Board Policy Manual (http://pol.tasb.org/home/index/739) Electronic Communication and Data Management (LOCAL) (http://pol.tasb.org/policy/download/739?filename=cq(local).pdf) (LEGAL) (http://pol.tasb.org/policy/download/739?filename=cq(legal).pdf) Texas Public Information Act (http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/agency/customer/pia.html) Retention Schedule for Records of Public School Districts (Texas Library Commission) (http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/slrm/recordspubs/sd.html) Federal Statutes (FERPA) Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html)