Capstone
NARA's role-based approach to managing email as records — capturing the email accounts of senior officials as permanent records and applying time-based retention to other accounts.
Capstone is the approach developed by NARA for managing federal email as records without requiring every employee to file messages individually. Instead of scheduling email message by message, Capstone schedules it by the role of the account holder.
The email accounts of senior officials (“Capstone officials”) are captured and preserved as permanent records, because their correspondence documents the most significant decisions. Other employees’ accounts receive time-based retention, kept for a set period and then disposed of. This makes large-scale email recordkeeping practical, consistent, and auditable. The same logic — automate capture, schedule by rule — increasingly informs how organizations handle text and chat messages as well.