I hate to get Steve Whitaker started, BUT ... in the old paper based days, we did not have control over how long a recipient of our correspondence kept the documents, we did not tell other businesses or government entities what retention they could place on documents we sent them, and we were able to review all potential destruction of our records before it happened.  With the advent of electronic records, it has become both easier and more difficult to apply RIM principles simply because of the way electronic systems behave.  

However, software that gives us control over the recordkeeping practices of recipients of our documents is not necessarily a good thing.  Keeping in mind that retention is based on fiscal, historical, legal AND administrative (business need) values, my company should not be telling another company what their retention value of my correspondence or documents sent should be.  It is their business need that will drive their retention value decisions, not our business need (in addition, of course, to the other three values).  Conversely, another business controlling our retention of the documents they submit to us is also not appropriate.  Patrick's example of contracts is a good one.  Since I work for a local government entity, I can imagine several situations where senders would LOVE to control how long we keep certain documents they submit.

Ginny Jones 
(Virginia A. Jones, CRM, FAI) 
Records Manager 
Information Technology Division 
Newport News Dept. of Public Utilities 
Newport News, VA 
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Date:         Wed, 9 Aug 2006 19:41:33 -0600
Sender:       Records Management Program 
From:         Jesse Wilkins 
Subject:      Re: FW: Stellent Acquires SealedMedia and Bitform

There's the rub. I don't know how these specific systems work, but I have
two specific responses. 
1. For the records that remain in-house, that is, in your systems, your
repositories, your shared directories, etc., there MUST be a way to consider
legal holds. That's a key question to ask the vendor. 

2. For the extraneous copies (from your point of view) that leave your
control, e.g. an email sent to a partner, you don't care. Now, *they* may
care, in which case there should be some discussion between you and them now
rather than 6 years and 364 days from now...or 7 years and 1 day. But again,
the primary use case - indeed about the only case - that *I* can see for
using this type of technology would be to ensure that copies of your records
that leave the organization cannot come back to haunt you after you
disposition them. 

Regards, 

Jesse Wilkins
CDIA+, LIT, ICP, edp, ermM, ecmS
IMERGE Consulting
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(303) 574-1455 office
(303) 484-4142 fax
YIM: jessewilkins8511

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