I took the scenario Ginny described (shown below) and tried to come up some numbers. My calculation based on this information is:

Stage one: 7000 emails @ 10 seconds each = 70000 seconds/3600 seconds per hour = 19 hours

Stage two: assume that only 5% of messages are possibly relevant - (5% of 7000 = 350) - 350*3 minutes = 1050 minutes = 17.5 hour

Stage three:  assume that only 10% of messages are relevant - (10% of 350 messages = 35) - 35*4 minutes (average) = 35* 4 minutes = 140 minutes = 2.5 hours.

Total time required for 7000 messages = 39 hours

Are my assumptions liberal or conservative? 

Either way, I contend that by managing email "up front" or early in the life cycle and separating the "wheat from the chaff", the stage one number could be reduced significantly.  

Mary Hilliard, CRM
Records Manager, Records Management Officer
University of Texas System Administration
210 West 6th Street
Austin, TX   78703
512-499-4557


From the reply by Ginny Jones:

I timed some of our folks yesterday who are doing this for a big FOIA
request.  They approached the 7000 or so e-mails in three stages.  First
pass, they eliminated obvious irrelevant messages by subject line.  This
took an average of 10 seconds per message (including navigating up and
down, reading a subject line, moving to the next message, and moving
possible relevant messages, based on subject line, to a special folder).
Second pass, they opened each possible relevant message and scanned the
message (including whole threads down through the message).  This took
an average of  3 minutes per message (including flagging messages that
may be borderline relevant).  Third pass, they had a second person look
at the flagged messages to determine relevancy.  This took an average of
3-5 minutes per message (including "think" time or "get a third opinion"
time and moving determined irrelevant messages out of the folder and
back to where they were).   I don't know if this will help determine an
average for the project without knowing how many messages would fall
into each category, but you may have to rely on "guesstimation" for the
final average.  The other factor is that each pass involved a more
"senior" person to do the task because of the decision element.

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance