How to Transfer your Emails to the Washington State Archives

Per Chapter 434-662 WAC, the Washington State Archives, Digital Archives must be prepared to start receiving archival records contained in e-mail format from state and local agencies by January 2010. For more information regarding Chapter 434-662, please visit Chapter 434-662 WAC Preservation Of Electronic Public Records

Currently, the Digital Archives' search technology supports only Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007. We plan to support GroupWise and Lotus Notes by the end of 2010. Until that time, GroupWise and Lotus Notes e-mail records can be browsed, but not searched for item-level retrieval.

If you need assistance in identifying archival e-mail content, or guidance on how to manage your agency’s e-mail records, please refer to the Records Management General Information page. To transfer archival e-mail records to the Digital Archives, we recommend the following:

1. Include both records management staff and IT staff in the coordination effort to transfer your e-mail records to the Digital Archives.
2. Organize the e-mails into folders according to their archival designation. We recommend that your agency's executive staff e-mails be the first series you transfer (State General Retention Schedule GS 10—Executive Level Records, records series GS 10007—Correspondence, Official).
3. Participate in a conference call between your records officer and information technology staff and the Digital Archives’ archivist and chief application architect to plan the initial capture of your e-mail records.
4. Request a Transmittal Agreement (TA) and Transfer Information Plan (TIP) from the Digital Archives.
5. If you have additional questions regarding how to get started, please contact the Digital Archives at (509) 235-7509.