Current coverage of the problem
Let's review some of the facts of the current White House email problem:

• From 2001 to 2004, the Republican National Committee had an email retention policy of 30 days, according to a letter written by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, on April 12.

• At least 20 White House staffers have official as well as political email addresses that were provided by the Republican National Committee, according to the Washington Post. Email domains used by the staffers include GWB43.COM, GEORGEWBUSH.COM, and RNCHQ.ORG.

• Millions of official White House emails may be missing, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino acknowledged. "I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential five million emails lost," she said.

There was nothing illegal about the length of the RNC's email retention policy for RNC mail. An argument can be made that the deletion of certain official correspondence violates the Presidential Records Act. If true, the issue would not have been the RNC retention policy for RNC mail. It would have been if official correspondence was knowingly placed on RNC systems to avoid the White House archiving system or if RNC officials knew that official correspondence was being deleted.

In the same way, in the absence of specific regulatory obligations, such as those for certain financial institution transactions, organizations can create any retention policy it wishes. Even the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) do not mandate a specific archiving policy. They just say that if a copy exists anywhere within an organization, the copy must be found in a specified timely manner. If you're concerned about this for your organization, contact your legal counsel.

It turns out that it is simply easier for most organizations to archive every email message because it is much easier to retrieve them from a centralized location. Some companies have complied with discovery requests by collecting the hard drives from every personal computer to search for copies of email messages. That works too.

The more interesting question for IT may relate to the 20 or so White House staffers that have political email addresses.