In a message dated 5/11/2005 12:05:24 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] (Nolene Sherman) writes:

While he  understands in theory that email is just like any other record,
the CFO  cannot believe that companies have employees look at each email
and decide  whether or not it should be kept. He is adamantly convinced
that large  companies must have some sort of automated system that does
this for them.


Hi, Nolene: A large part of the issue of not reviewing every document to
determine its recordness and assign an appropriate retention schedule is to
manage records from the top down at the functional/business process level rather
than from the bottom up from the document level. The trick with email is in
linking individual emails to appropriate business processes that have already
been appraised and assigned a schedule. That can be done by leaving it up to
the  creator to make those determinations manually (an approach that has not
worked  out for many organizations), or in a computer-assisted manner, e.g.,
with the  help of job-specific business processes pick lists that the individual
can use  to tag the email, but there is growing resistance to this approach.
When  staff numbers are getting reduced while responsibilities are getting
enlarged,  few people have the time or patience to do this kind of work every time
they  send and email or receive one from outside. Or in a largely automated
way that  makes use of automatic classification systems and data mining
schemes.   Some CIOs prefer tackling email as part of a broader enterprise content
management platform approach, e.g. with such ECM products as are offered by
FileNet and IBM. Others prefer to deal with email-specific products, e.g. KVS.
Below are a few resources that might help you out.

_http://productfinder.cmomagazine.com/cxocm/search/browse/1474/1474.jsp_
(http://productfinder.cmomagazine.com/cxocm/search/browse/1474/1474.jsp)
_http://whitepaper.sdmagazine.com/cmpsdmagazine/search/viewabstract/59820/inde
x.jsp_
(http://whitepaper.sdmagazine.com/cmpsdmagazine/search/viewabstract/59820/index.jsp)
_http://www.networkmagazine.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=160701506_
(http://www.networkmagazine.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=160701506)

Regards,

Rick Barry
_www.mybestdocs.com_ (http://www.mybestdocs.com)
Cofounder, Open Reader Consortium
_www.openreader.org_ (http://www.openreader.org)

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