Email has become the significant tool for correspondence
in all sectors, displacing and drastically changing usual letter composition.
It has been acknowledged as a formal method of giving and accepting commands,
agreements, decisions etc. Email is also an information communication system
which captures organisations’ decisions. Therefore, every organisation needs to
develop and implement an email policy to manage email as records for evidence
and information. In the government sector there are examples of poor email
management. For instance, Michael Gove, former UK Secretary of State for
Education, conducted government business using his wife’s personal email
account; and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal
email account and server for both government and personal business. This paper
discusses preliminary findings from a study of email management in the
government sector. It is based on a case study at a selected government
ministry in Malaysia involving interviews with twelve participants in different
roles across three departments and two policies and guidelines’ providers,
comparing practices on the ground with the policies and guidelines. The records
continuum model, which comprises the creation, capture, organisation and
pluralisation of information in an organisation, was used to design the
interview questions. The study aimed to critically explore the management of
email in the context of the transition to digital information management
(record keeping). Its context is the introduction
of the 1Malaysia email project, which will provide a free email account for
each Malaysian citizen over 18 years old to access e-Government services via a
single sign-on user ID, as part of the move to e-government in Malaysia to
accomplish its Vision 2020. This case study will contribute to the evolution of
record keeping policies and practices in a former UK dependency during the
transition to the digital and the identification of good practice that could be
transferrable to other similar national government contexts.
Email Management Email Record Keeping Information Management (Records System) Governmental practices E-government
Journal Section | Articles |
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Authors | |
Publication Date | August 31, 2017 |
Submission Date | September 12, 2017 |
Published in Issue | Year 2017Volume: 3 Issue: 8 |
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