Under Section 46 of the Act, organisations are now required to accord the same levels of priority to email data as they do to that concerned with other forms of communication such as written letters and telephone calls. This states that authorities are fully accountable for electronic records throughout their life cycle, from creation through to disposal. This data is required should they be subject to an audit. Exchange hosting services help organisations to ensure that they have the measures in place to meet this requirement.
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 stipulates that Public Authorities have a duty to provide access to email communications concerning an individual at their request. Authorities must provide the requested data within 20 days working days of a request and failure to do so could result in severe penalties.
Many organisations initially found such requests very difficult to deal with, but now, thanks to exchange hosting’s archive feature they can access email information quickly and easily.
Section 77 of the Act states that it is a criminal offence to “alter, deface, erase, destroy or conceal email, with the intention of preventing disclosure by a public authority.”
The worrying thing for organisations is that in the event of malpractice, personal liability can be passed to others within the organisation. To avoid this, organisations are being encouraged to implement exchange hosting, which has a range of features to allow businesses to be fully accountable for their actions.
