&gt; Intuitively, it feels that those emails aren&#x27;t official government records. But according to the law, they actually are official records. [1]<p>Emails from top-level officials like heads of cabinet agencies are part of the official record.  Emails from rank and file employees typically are not.<p>There are well over 2.6 million people in government (over 4 mil counting the military) and hundreds of thousands of contractors.  If even 10% of all those emails had to be archived and stored in the National Archives it would constitute an enormous amount of data, much of it of little use.<p>&gt; All government employees and contractors undergo annual records retention training that requires them to be aware of the obligation to retain relevant communication for the required time period.<p>I can assure you that record retention training is not standard nor is it annual at State Department.  Wasn&#x27;t that way at DoD in the past either. Some jobs and offices would deal with it a lot more than others but regular joes and janes don&#x27;t deal with that issue much.