In my book, the technology, declaration process, and system
configuration is the easy part.

My biggest issue was the social and cultural re-engineering that has to
take place in order to train users on what to declare as a record.

In my universe, there is a difference between actual business records
that are stored as a legitimate output of an approved business process
and the "white noise" of day to day operational communications.  

It has been my experience that "white noise" gets saved more often in an
environment where training has not taken place, or where the tone of
management is such that people feel the need to hoard their email in
order to defend themselves against a potential adverse reaction.  People
also tend to declare "white noise" communications as a record in order
to maintain their train of thought on how certain decisions were reached
or simply to defend a decision internally if a conflict arises.

The training and cultural issues have to be dealt with early on because
people can get creative about how they operate outside of the email
declaration process.  If you don't give them an alternate way of
recording how some decisions were reached, the email gets hoarded in
such a way that drafts and "early thoughts" are preserved long after the
"final" record has met its end and that can be high risk in a discovery
process.

I've spent months trying to train people to use task lists, calendars,
project office, and the contacts list in lieu of hoarding tons of email
in public folders.  And, I also did away with public folders.  However,
a "safe zone" was created during the transition period so that people
could get a practice run at modeling the email retention business rules
that would be in place when the email management software is turned on.

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