以電子檔案管理之觀點探討電子郵件保存

The Preservation of E-mail: from the Perspective of Electronic Records Management

電子郵件已成為政府機關傳遞各項政務訊息的重要管道，也不乏具有檔案保存之價值。若能將電子郵件視為機關電子檔案的範疇，並妥善規劃電子郵件保存作業，應可使具保存價值的電子郵件得到較周全的管理。因此，如何保存電子郵件，並與機關現行檔案管理資訊系統接軌，儼然成為一項重要的課題。然而，目前國內針對電子郵件保存作業之相關研究相當匱乏，有鑑於此，本文透過探討美國、英國及加拿大之作法，提出我國電子郵件保存作法之建議，並藉由實作電子郵件保存雛型系統，驗證此作法之可行性。

E-mail is used extensively for delivering official messages across the government. It is suggested that e-mail messages contain important information and data should be managed and kept because of their archival values. It will benefit the preservation of e-mail with archival values if it is included in the management of electronic records. Thus, the development of e-mail preservation policy and integrate it into the electronic records management system address an important issue. Due to the lack of research works on the topic in Taiwan, this paper reviewed the e-mail preservation methods applied in the U.S.A, U.K and Canada. In addition, it proposes an approach to deal with e-mail preservation for the government agencies in Taiwan. Moreover, a prototype is developed to verify the feasibility of the proposed approach.