City of East Grand Rapids Unified Archiving Success Story: Seamless Archiving
Gary Veldhof is the IT and Financial Analyst for the the City of East Grand Rapids. He knew they needed to implement an archiving solution to become compliant with regulations for electronic messaging retention. He knew that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) meant that as a city government, they needed to be able to provide access to all electronic communication, including email, when any citizen asked for it.
Other city officials agreed with him and knew that it was important to store emails for legal reasons. If a lawsuit was filed against the city, they would likely need to provide email correspondence as evidence. “Like other emergency services, most people don’t care about archived email until they really need it,” stated Veldhof. A reliable unified archiving solution would give them peace of mind.
Click here to learn more about Government Archiving Regulations
Why Retain?
Gary explains that there are two main reasons why the City of East Grand Rapids chose Retain as their archiving solution. First, the application integrates seamlessly with their current messaging system and any previously archived data. And second, like most governments, they need the most value for their money and Retain fit their budget.
A few other key features helped him make the decision:
- 100% retention: Every email and piece of associated data is archived. Nothing is missed no matter when it was sent or when it was deleted.
- Web-based interface: The look and feel is similar to other browser-based services so it seems familiar to users, which helps reduce anxiety and increases the learning curve.
- SQL-based data storage: Retain keeps data secure and searchable in a SQL database.
- Search and query tools: A broad set of search capabilities makes it easy to find the archived email his users are looking for. This feature saves Gary a lot of time since most archived email can be retrieved by his users.
Conveniently Covering the Bases
According to Gary, Retain was easy to install and straightforward to set up. The application has even been set to send him daily emails letting him know the archival jobs are complete. He can also provide managers with access to employee emails as necessary.
With Retain, East Grand Rapids city officials know they are in compliance with government regulations for archiving electronic messaging data and their legal bases are covered.
For more information about the need for archiving and monitoring or GWAVA solutions visit www.GWAVA.com
Photo Credit: http://goo.gl/JnLhKZ by Steven Depolo is licensed under CC BY 2.0
