Chapter 5: Technology

Oregon State Archives
Records Management Training

Name:

True/False

Indicate whether the sentence or statement is true or false.

If a public employee sends e-mail messages from a personal account on work time, they could be considered a public record.

Your computer hard drive is a reliable media for long-term preservation of e-mail messages.

Internet Chat Rooms, Instant Messaging, and other forms of electronic communication fall under Oregon's Public Records Law and Public Meetings Law.

Multiple Choice

Identify the letter of the choice that best completes the statement or answers the question.

In what ways can e-mail management software help you to manage e-mail?

a.	Identifying and deleting junk mail	c.	Long-term storage of important e-mail messages
b.	Grouping and organizing e-mail	d.	All of the above

What are some recent technologies available to e-mail users?

a.	E-mail to fax	c.	Voice-mail systems that accept e-mail messages
b.	Pocket Paging System	d.	All of the above

Case

You supervise a staff of three food inspectors who spend most of their time out of the office. To facilitate note taking, the three food inspectors purchased their own portable computers: one food inspector uses a laptop, the second uses a Blackberry, and the third uses a Palm Pilot. When they complete a project in the field, they circulate the information directly from their portable machines, sometimes using Instant Messaging (IM) software.

If a restaurant owner submitted a Public Records request for information on the handling of his case, how would you go about assembling the necessary records? How would you ensure that all the food inspectors' work product was also accessible from your office's network or e-mail system? How would you respond if a food inspector refused to comply with the request on the grounds that he owned the information on his machine because he had purchased it with his own money?