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Frequently Asked Questions

Information Management Tips

Treasury Board Secretariat has issued guidance for email management that can be equally applied to OneDrive, collaboration documents, and messages in Teams.

Users of Office 365 should transfer email and instant messages containing information of business value to a designated corporate repository, such as GCDOCS or equivalent, as soon as possible. For more information about your department’s corporate repositories, please refer to direction provided by your departmental Chief Information Officer.

Examples of emails, messages, and documents of business value may include:

• Messages that reference a decision;
• Direct communications with clients; and
• Messages that authorize or complete a business transaction where that information is not captured elsewhere (e.g. in a financial or human resource system).

Examples of transitory emails, messages, and documents may include:

• Messages or documents that are copies of information used only for convenience of reference and not as the official record;
• Messages or documents used for casual communication (e.g., meeting invitations, lunch requests, thank you messages);
• Informal messages that are not required as evidence in the development of a document;
• Messages or documents forwarding an attachment that is saved in the corporate repository;
• Messages or documents that are duplicate copies of information; and
• Messages or received as part of a distribution list or received from an Internet sources, and used solely for convenience of reference.

Transitory messages or documents may be deleted once the information is no longer of use