"As a government organization, we are required by law to respond to requests for public information. I am comforted knowing that I can respond quickly for any search that involves email using NearPoint."
— Bruce Lorimer, Information System Supervisor, Madera County
The widespread use of user-generated content, including email and files, is having a major impact on every industry it touches, including public and private education. Email is used almost exclusively by teachers and staff members to communicate inside and outside the school organization. These emails can include anything from important information related to a student’s performance, to confidential or important policy information. Files created by teachers and staff contain course curriculum, budgets, meeting minutes and other important content. All of this user-generated content is valuable and must be preserved. Currently applications, such as Microsoft Exchange Server, do not provide the necessary measures to manage this important content for retention.
Local, state and federal laws exist which govern the retention of public documents, including email, files and all electronic information. Samples of these laws are public records acts, open meeting laws – also referred to as sunshine laws – and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) that apply to federal courts. It is beyond the scope of this brief summation to provide legal advice and we advise you to consult with your school district legal department. However, it seems logical that public officials working in education are under the same rules as public officials in government positions.
It is prudent for educational institutions at all levels to adopt a conservative philosophy and preserve all electronic information.
To preserve user-generated content, archiving solutions such as Mimosa NearPoint™ are available. NearPoint supports archiving for email, SharePoint and files. Using automated policies it can capture and retain important electronic documents and email automatically. There is no risk of losing important communications or files because Mimosa keeps a tamperproof copy in its archive. At the end of each school year, IT staff can safely remove email and files from the IT storage infrastructure and free up capacity for the next school year.
All electronic content stored in the NearPoint archive is de-duplicated, indexed and command pressed for efficient storage. NearPoint will safely and securely manage all content for the time period (e.g. years) required by the school board. When the retention period expires, the content is automatically removed.
Searching archived content is easy. The Mimosa eDiscovery application allows for quick search of all content including email, SharePoint and files in a single search. Search results are saved, shared and processed according to the needs of the staff performing the search. Search results can then be culled quickly in response to public requests for information, staff requests or legal inquiries. Search results are saved in NearPoint and exported via PST files. Since the NearPoint archive automatically archives all content during the school year, there is no risk of having incomplete search results. No matter how large the search, results can be created quickly and accurately using Mimosa NearPoint.
Mimosa NearPoint has already been successfully deployed at universities, city governments, law enforcement agencies, and public schools around the country. It is an ideal solution for all public organizations that need better management of email and file records.
Hilton Central School District, located in upstate New York, includes five K–12 schools: one high school, one middle school, and three elementary schools. Josh Ennis, network administrator for the district, purchased Mimosa NearPoint to solve multiple Exchange storage and discovery-related problems. Mailbox quota limits for Exchange are 30MB, which is quite small. As a result, teachers had to manage their mailbox capacity closely. On a daily basis, teachers either deleted email or moved email to an offline .PST file.
“I am concerned that my teachers are spending their valuable time managing email—time they could be spending with students,” said Josh. “I am also concerned that they might delete important email just to save time, when the email should be saved for future reference.”
The use of .PST files for email storage is something that Josh eliminated with NearPoint. “Currently there are over 200 .PST files on the network. This number represents a large amount of email that is difficult to access for discovery and creates a management risk. I used NearPoint to archive all existing .PST files. Moving forward, the NearPoint Mailbox Extension feature allowed me to reduce Exchange mailbox capacity and my teachers no longer need .PST files. All email information is accessible in the NearPoint archive.”
Using Mimosa NearPoint, the Hilton Central School District’s goal is able to manage its email records without the limitations created by mailbox quotas. Teacher productivity improved with fingertip access to all archive email, and less time was wasted managing mailbox capacity. Previously Hilton did not save email from teachers who left the district.
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