Urging schools to make eMail archiving a "critical part" of their record-keeping activities, a leading educational technology advocacy group has come out with a new resource to help school leaders understand and comply with recent changes to federal laws governing data retention.

The changes are the result of a December 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that amended the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), the legal rules that dictate how the discovery of information relevant to federal lawsuits is conducted. As a result of these changes, electronically stored information from schools and other organizations--including eMail and instant messages--are now subject to the discovery process (see "Ruling: Schools must archive eMail"). But there is evidence to suggest that many schools and districts have yet to implement comprehensive digital archiving in response to these changes (see "Poll: Schools aren't meeting data-storage rules").

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To help school leaders adapt to these new rules, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) has released a white paper called "School Districts, Data Retention, and Federal eDiscovery Rules: The Case for a Full eMail Archiving Solution Now." The paper highlights what schools need to know, how they should approach eMail archiving, and what other districts are doing to become compliant.

"eMail has transformed the way we all communicate--educators, schools, and school districts included. Because much information is shared electronically and federal laws and judicial interpretations are including electronic communication as subject to legal discovery, it has become increasingly important for schools to make eMail archiving a critical part of their record-keeping activities," said Keith Krueger, CoSN's chief executive.