I work for a consulting engineering firm in the US that has 17 offices.  We have a very limited retention schedule at this point that mainly covers project records which are 90% to 95% of the documents that are created.  It’s very simplistic, project files are kept for 17 years after the close of the project.  We are currently using Groupwise for our e-mail software.  Currently, we have no policies or procedures in place for archiving e-mail.  We are shortly moving to Outlook for e-mail software and Symantic Enterprise Vault for archiving.  I don’t know yet what add-ons for the Vault software we will be using.  The plan at this point is to move all the e-mail on individual hard drives and the e-mail server to the Enterprise Vault.  (IS has asked employees to clean up their e-mail archives before the move.) IS, Finance, which I’m a part of, and Risk Management are starting to panic because they/we have no idea what how to handle the terabytes of e-mail that will be placed in the Vault.  Also, the move to Otulook is an excellent opportunity to get policies and procedures in place for future e-mail. I feel very lucky, I have an excellent working relationship with our IS department.  They realize that I bring skills and knowledge to the table that they don’t possess.  Also, they understand that some issues are records management issues, not IS issues, such as electronic archiving.  The IS Steering Group has been tasked with formulating an e-mail policy.  My boss told me yesterday that I will be involved in this process.  This is my opportunity to shine and have a positive impact on how we operate.  I need to be a wealth of e-mail/records management information and provide handouts for non-records managers for these meetings. I’m not totally ignorant on technical, e-mail or records retention issues but they aren’t my areas of expertise.  What I’m looking for is;v     Information that I can use for eye-catching handouts on records management issues pertaining to e-mail and why it is necessary to have a policyv     Personal experience using Symantic Enterprise Vault v     Personal experience implementing e-mail policies and procedures for the first time in a company that is resistant to change Any information provided will be appreciated.  Laura BoldtCorporate Records Management [log in to unmask] PS  I haven’t looked at the list serve archives yet but I’m going to.

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