Instant Messaging (IM)
Real-time, text-based electronic communication that exchanges short messages between users over a network, often producing content that qualifies as a record subject to retention and disposition.
Instant Messaging (IM) is near-real-time, text-based electronic communication that lets users exchange short messages, files, and links over a network, typically within an organization’s collaboration or chat platform. Like email, IM is not exempt from recordkeeping: when a message documents a decision, transaction, or other agency business, it meets the definition of a record and is subject to the same retention, disposition, and discovery obligations as any other format. The challenge is that IM is informal, high-volume, and ephemeral by design, so messages can disappear before anyone evaluates them.
For example, a chat thread approving a budget exception is a record, while “running 5 minutes late” is transitory. Because manual filing rarely works at chat speed, organizations increasingly capture messages by rule — automating preservation and applying role- or time-based retention. IM also raises distinct metadata needs, since participants, timestamps, and thread context establish authenticity and integrity. When standards-based capture is required, programs look to the Universal ERM Requirements and FERMI rather than the DoD 5015.2 framework NARA stopped endorsing in 2022.