With election season upon us, many offices will see elected officials and other employees separate or retire in the next few months. During this transition, offices must coordinate the transfer of records and working documents under ORC 149.351. This includes paper and electronic records, including email. An orderly transfer will prevent operational disruptions and help offices comply with Ohio’s Public Records Law.
Each office should designate locations for electronic records, such as a shared network, document management system, or government cloud. Designating these areas provides ease of access to records of the office as well as records retention compliance. However, employees may also keep electronic office records in unstructured personal systems. Departing employees should review the following areas to ensure records are transitioned appropriately:
- Email Accounts – Review government-owned email accounts. Delete transitory messages, non-records, and messages that have met their retention requirements. Move emails that require long-term retention to a record-keeping system so others can access them. For more information and email best practices, see the OhioERC Email Management online training module.
- Personal Drives – Offices may assign employees personal drives, such as OneDrive in Microsoft 365, to store work related files. Often, only the assigned employee can access the drive. Offices should require employees to move office records to a shared record-keeping system. They should also consider limiting storage capacity to discourage record hoarding and state that personal drives serve convenience purposes only.
- Local Drives/Desktops – Saving records to a computer’s local drive or desktop prevents others in the office from accessing them. It also creates security and disaster-recovery risks if the device is lost or fails. Employees should move office records from local drives to the office’s record-keeping system.
- Portable Media – Departing employees should return office-issued CDs, flash drives, portable hard drives, and other media. These devices may contain thousands of government records. Offices should inventory issued storage media to track who has it and how they use it.
- Personal Computers/Accounts – Before leaving, employees who use personal computers or accounts, such as personal email, should transfer all government records from them. Records remain subject to public records requests and litigation requirements whether employees store them on government or personal devices. This may also interfere with the office’s compliance to ORC 149.351.
Additionally, work with your IT team to identify automated policies that affect record retention. For example, determine whether the system deletes an employee’s OneDrive account a set number of days after separation. Automatic deletion could destroy records that the office must retain. This risk becomes especially serious when litigation holds apply concerning anticipated or active litigation. Deleting an account under a hold could expose the office to spoliation claims. To reduce this risk, consult with your legal department to determine if any holds apply.
As always, reach out to [email protected] if you have questions.