Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. Best Practices for Managing the Use of Personal Email Accounts, Text Messaging and Other Instant Messaging Tools. Updated 27 July 2023. While our office is of the opinion that official public body business should never be conducted through personal email accounts, if emails of a business nature are sent through these personal accounts, those emails would be considered a record pursuant to FOIP or LA FOIP. How can you Meet Your Access and Privacy Obligations? The IPC strongly recommends that public bodies prohibit their staff from texting or using other instant messaging tools for doing business unless they can be set up to retain and store records automatically and securely. However, there may be situations where a public body has a legitimate business need to use these text messaging and other instant messaging tools. If a public body is considering using text messaging or other instant messaging tools, it should consider the advice in this resource to ensure compliance with FOIP or LA FOIP. Assess the Risks and Benefits Conduct a privacy impact assessment (PIA) to determine when the use of these tools would be appropriate or necessary, and whether the benefits outweigh the risks. In some cases, there may be a legitimate business need to use instant messaging. For example, university staff may determine that they need to use instant messaging tools to communicate with students. If it is necessary to use text messaging or other instant messaging tools for business purposes, do a thorough review of the privacy, security and access implications. Consult with access and privacy staff, information technology staff, and records and information management staff to: • Determine the types of tools that best support the public body’s communications and records management needs. • Determine if records can be automatically and securely retained on the public body’s digital storage. • Determine what format records are saved in and determine if additional software will be required to ensure the public body is able to access the records in a readable format.
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