There are almost as many different e-mail record-keeping policies as there are companies and government agencies. Salt Lake City employees, for example, may delete e-mail that is personal or routine (what experts refer to as "transitory"), but they must save anything relating to programs, policies or decision making. Steve Fawcett, deputy director of management services, said he is unsure whether the program retains meta-data along with the messages.

Salt Lake County is looking at a system whereby employees would decide whether the e-mail is a "non-record" (spam or personal; delete whenever you want); "short-term record" (routine correspondence; keep up to 30 days); "medium-term record" (non-policy matters; keep two years); or "long-term records" (policy or programs, keep indefinitely).

Unlike the city's system, which acts automatically once the employee chooses the category, the county employee sending or receiving the record would have to manually create electronic folders and put the records in them, or print them out.

Absent installation of a $50,000 to $500,000 software system, Ellis said no meta-data would be preserved.

Certainly no meta-data is preserved in the system the governor's office adopted after it was sued: Print the e-mails out and physically file them.

Call it generational record lag.

"You still have a whole generation of workers who still (are more comfortable) with paper," Smith-Mansfield said. "A generation from now, who knows what they'll be doing."

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E-mail: aedwards@desnews.com