How long do we keep emails in Indiana local government? As long as their content requires.
Indiana has no email rule. It has record series, and an email belongs to whichever series its content matches. Routine electronic communications ride the 3-year general bucket; policy correspondence of office holders is permanent; an email that documents a contract, a personnel action, or a payment carries that record's series. Quoted from the OCPR-approved schedules.
- The default bucket
- GEN 10-04 General Files: "DESTROY after three (3) years." Its description expressly covers routine correspondence and electronic communications (County/Local General Retention Schedule, approved by OCPR 11/12/2025)
- Policy-level email
- GEN 10-03 Policy Files of office holders, deputies, and division directors: "PERMANENT. See Retention Schedule Instructions for format and transfer options."
- Content escalations
- An email documenting a personnel action follows GEN 10-27 (10 years after separation); one documenting an expenditure follows GEN 10-11 (10 years plus SBOA audit); the email carries the record’s series, not the inbox’s
- The statutory floor
- No records may be destroyed less than 3 years after filing unless an approved retention schedule authorizes it (IC 5-15-6-4)
- The freezes
- Never destroy email under audit, litigation, investigation, or a pending records request; agencies must protect records from destruction (IC 5-14-3-7(a); IARA guidance)
The short answer: retention follows the content, not the medium
Indiana does not have an email rule. It has record series, approved by the Oversight Committee on Public Records, and an email belongs to whichever series its content matches. The inbox is a delivery mechanism, not a records category. For the ordinary back-and-forth that makes up most of a government inbox, the series is GEN 10-04, General Files, on the County/Local General Retention Schedule that applies to every local unit. Its retention, as printed: “DESTROY after three (3) years.”
The series description makes the email coverage explicit. General Files are records that “do not develop or document official office policy” and do not fall under another series, including “staff responses to routine public inquiries … routine day-to-day office management activities and correspondence, electronic communications, and phone calls recorded for quality-assurance purposes.” So the default answer for a routine email in an Indiana clerk’s, auditor’s, or trustee’s office is three years. But the default is only the floor of the analysis, because the description’s other clause does the real work: the email must not fall under another series.
When three years is the wrong answer
The first escalation is built into the schedule itself. Correspondence that shapes policy is not a general file. GEN 10-03, Policy Files of office holders, deputies, and division directors, covers records that “constitute the official record of an agency’s performance of its functions and the formation of policy and program initiatives,” expressly including correspondence and memos concerning agency policy and procedures. Its retention, as printed: “PERMANENT. See Retention Schedule Instructions for format and transfer options.” A trustee’s email thread deciding how the office will handle township assistance applications is not a three-year record. It is a permanent one.
The second escalation is content that belongs to another record entirely. An email documenting a personnel action, a written reprimand sent by email, for example, is part of the personnel file, and GEN 10-27 keeps personnel files ten years after the employee separates from service (with required entries in the permanent employment log first). An email that documents an expenditure or approves a payment rides GEN 10-11, Basic Accounting Records for expenditures: ten years, and only after receipt of the State Board of Accounts audit report with unsettled charges satisfied. The medium never shortens the clock. The clerk who files the substantive email with the record it documents has answered the retention question automatically.
The freezes: when no clock matters
Every retention period in this article has the same override: a hold. IARA’s standing guidance is that records under audit, litigation, investigation, or a pending records request are not destroyed until the matter concludes, whatever the schedule says. APRA has no separate destruction-freeze section; the statutory duty is broader than that. An agency “shall protect public records from loss, alteration, mutilation, or destruction” (IC 5-14-3-7(a)), and deleting an email that a pending request covers is the textbook failure of that duty. Financial records carry their own statutory freeze: unless they have been copied or reproduced as the statute allows, they may not be destroyed until the State Board of Accounts audit is complete and any exceptions are satisfied (IC 5-15-6-3).
Underneath all of it sits a floor that surprises offices coming from other states: Indiana law prohibits destroying, removing, or transferring records less than three years after filing, unless the destruction follows an approved retention schedule (IC 5-15-6-4). Any deletion practice that is not reading from an OCPR-approved series is measured against that three-year floor, not against office habit.
Inbox zero meets the schedule
This is where the everyday habit collides with the law. Deleting email as soon as it is answered feels like hygiene; under the schedule it is unauthorized destruction unless the message has hit three years or a shorter approved series applies, and for correspondence no shorter series exists. Indiana’s General schedule has no transitory bucket. Michigan, by contrast, gives general correspondence two years and genuinely transitory messages thirty days, a structure we walk through in the Michigan version of this article. Do not import that thirty-day idea into an Indiana office; the series is not there. The workable discipline instead: let the three-year rule carry the routine traffic, file substantive emails to the record they document so they inherit the right series, and suspend deletion entirely for anything a hold touches.
Destroying on schedule, with the paperwork
When routine email genuinely ages out, Indiana’s process is destroy-then-document, not ask-first. Records past their scheduled retention may be destroyed without prior permission from IARA, and the office then files State Form 44905, the Notice of Destruction, with the county commission of public records, with a copy to IARA (IC 5-15-6-2.5(d)). That filing is the office’s proof that the deletion was scheduled disposal rather than spoliation, which is exactly the distinction that matters if a request or a lawsuit arrives later. How the schedules, the county commissions, and the destruction paperwork fit together is covered in our guide to Indiana’s retention schedule system. Email policy touches APRA, audits, and IT at once; confirm your office’s practice with your agency attorney.
Dekree runs this workflow for Michigan local governments today: records classified to their retention series when they are filed, with holds applied automatically when a request or audit touches them. We are bringing the platform to Indiana next. If you want it in your office, email contact@dekree.ai with the subject line Indiana and we will add your office to the Indiana rollout list.
Common questions
How long does an Indiana local government have to keep emails?
There is no single email rule; retention follows what the email documents. Routine correspondence and electronic communications fall under GEN 10-04 General Files on the County/Local General Retention Schedule, which says destroy after three (3) years. Policy-level correspondence of office holders, deputies, and division directors falls under GEN 10-03 Policy Files, which is permanent. And an email that documents a contract, a personnel action, or a financial transaction is that record, and carries that series, which can run ten years or longer.
Can I just delete old emails after a year?
No. Indiana law prohibits destroying records less than three years after filing unless an approved retention schedule authorizes it (IC 5-15-6-4), and the general bucket that covers routine email, GEN 10-04, is itself three years. There is no shorter approved series for ordinary correspondence, so a one-year auto-delete policy destroys records before any schedule permits it. Emails under a hold, meaning an audit, litigation, an investigation, or a pending records request, cannot be deleted at all until the matter concludes.
Are government emails public records under APRA?
Generally yes, when they document public business. That carries two duties. Under the Access to Public Records Act, an agency must protect public records from loss, alteration, mutilation, or destruction (IC 5-14-3-7(a)). And an email that exists when a records request covering it arrives must be preserved until the request concludes, even if its retention period has expired. Deleting responsive email mid-request is the classic violation.
Does Indiana have a short transitory-email rule?
No. Some states let agencies destroy transitory messages after 30 days; Michigan is one of them. Indiana’s County/Local General Retention Schedule has no transitory correspondence series. The shortest bucket that covers routine email is GEN 10-04 at three years. If your office is applying a 30-day or 90-day rule to email, it is applying a series that does not exist in Indiana.
This article is educational information for Indiana public agencies, current as of the publication date. It is not legal advice, and statutes and court decisions change. Confirm specifics with your agency attorney. Statute text: iga.in.gov.