On 8/15/06, Mario Rieger <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I'm a new member in this list and I do have my first question: (I hope,
> that my english is good enough, that I will be able to describe my
> request!)
>
> What can we do to ensure that business-relevantly e-mails are retained in
> accordance with records retention schedules?
>
> I have classified e-mails in the two main-groups "not-offical-messages"
> and "official-messages". Both groups are divided in several sub-groups.
>
> All not-official messages do not have a retention period, which means,
> that
> they can be destroyed to each date. All other messages (the official ones)
> have to be retained in accordance with the records retention schedules.
>
> Up to now the only way to store the official-messages is manually. This
> requires a high logistic expenditure.
>
> About ideas, which are able to solve this problem, I am pleased!
>
> Mario Rieger
>

Mario-

You've done an excellent job of expressing what your concerns are, but
unfortunately, the same issue plagues most of us in RIM.

Your initial description of your process is exactly what you should be
doing:

- Determine the business value of the e-mail, based on content
- If the e-mail is determined to be "non-record" material, then it should be
deleted asap
- If the e-mail is determined to be "record" material, then it should be
retained based on the content, in accordance with your approved retention
schedule

And as you stated, this is where the tough part begins.   Many organizations
have been attempting to use and or develop automated classification tools to
"sort" these record e-mail messages into categories based on taxonomy
searches performed of the "words" in the messages.  They look for logical
combinations of words, the sender and/or the recipient, and make a "rules
based decision" to classify the content.

These take a lot of time to build an refine, and depending on the volume of
e-mail and the size of an organization, a certain level of success can be
achieved with them, but you need to verify and validate the results over a
long period of time and continue to adjust the rules to ensure you are
accurately classifying the e-mail.

Much of the decision on JUST HOW ACCURATE you need to be depends on how
heavily regulated the organization you work in is, or other concerns about
compliance and risk management.

Best of luck to you!

Larry
-- 
Larry Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972

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