I disagree - in fact much of this has already taken place. As part of my
high school education I learned all of the standard office documents,
salutations, titles, tab spacing, etc. None of it pertains in an email
(maybe the titles, but I don't send very many letters OR emails to Right
Reverends, Honorable Secretaries, etc.). 

I do agree with Wayne that training is important and that employees as
individuals shouldn't flout corporate policies. That said, Bernadette I
think hits it on the head regarding the next generation of employees: my
19-year-old brother thinks absolutely nothing of having a dozen IM and IRC
clients open, uses Flickr, del.icio.us, and Myspace, doesn't have a blog but
reads quite a few of them from his friends, and has just entered the job
market. I'm sure he could be taught to eschew all the ways he communicates
today for a very short period of time - but he and his generation recognize
that many of these technologies have a lot of value. Just as we decided to
accept electronic transmission of signed contracts using that newfangled
facsimile technology some time ago, younger workers not only accept new
technologies but don't understand those who don't understand them. 

<snip>
In any workplace situation the rules are different from those at home or
other personal use of technology and it is usually part of your employment
conditions to abide by the workplace rules and conditions of use or you do
not end up having a job.

The use of Internet email services for corporate business is irresponsible
and leaves an organisation open to all sorts of risk.  Internet email can be
rife with viruses, has no security functionality for sending sensitive
corporate records or information and is easily intercepted by third parties
who will not have a need-to-know for the information contained in the
email.</snip>

True - but you can't fire everyone. I liken this point of view to an
argument 12 years ago I had with my manager, who forbade the use of the
"Internet". His position was that it was a waste of time at best and a
vector for viruses, video games, and dirty pictures that had no place in the
modern office. 

With regards to web-based email, I believe it is at LEAST as safe as most
corporate email systems for this reason: the major providers all do virus
scanning and you can bet their data files are up-to-the-second updated. Many
modern email systems are not inherently set up for security, so no
difference there; and webmail is no more easily intercepted than normal
email. 

With regards to blogs, Myspace, etc., I suspect that the CEO of GM, Sun,
Socialtext, and numerous other Global 2000 organizations would disagree.
Training and policies come to play here, to be sure, but there are things
that can be discussed in public. I believe there is a strong argument to be
made for *more* openness and collaboration between organizations and their
customers, not less; in fact Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams make exactly
that argument in Wikinomics. 

I do believe we have to manage records by content and context. I truly do.
What I agree with from Bernadette, and the argument I made last week
regarding email, is that there are limitations with the classical
60-year-old records management model as they are applied (or as is more
often the case NOT applied) to electronic records and email, in part because
of the complexity of the media/format/system and the difficulty of
separating the same; in part because of the way in which we use these
technologies (and that horse left the barn years ago); and in greater part
because of the volumes involved. 

Remember, we used to use carbon paper and interoffice memos with "chop
sheets" as well. And younger workers of a certain era were trained on how to
use them. I'm certain some of them were fired for not following established
policies and procedures. But eventually offices recognized that the days of
the mimeograph, the steno pool, and shorthand were past. I am NOT arguing
that the day of records management is past - far from it. But times change,
technologies change, and it is incumbent on us as *information management
professionals* to manage information as efficiently and effectively as
possible, and if that means web-based email, collaboration through wikis and
instant messaging, storing the outputs of both in large buckets, and
searching using new technologies and approaches, then I'm all for it. Not
throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but sometimes the water does need
changing. 

My tuppence as I work on a white paper on collaboration, 

Jesse Wilkins
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