On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 7:10 AM, Wayne Hoff <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I agree that aggressively deleting all email without consideration to their
> content is a dangerous thing to do.
>
> When I speak to legal types and other higher-up people, though, they have
> issues with the traditional model that Larry describes, and their issues
> aren't
> without merit.  They boil down to, basically, a) there's just way, way too
> much email to process without end users managing their own messages, and
> b) the company takes big chances by putting its trust in end users,
> especially
> in highly-regulated industries; end users typically suffer from ignorance,
> self-
> motivated interests, or indifference.
>

A couple of thoughts here... as to Senior Execs, my exposure to discussing
these issues with them is they can't be bothered with the effort required
to 'cull' their e-mail and keep anything of significance, and that term
always resonates better with them than trying to get them to buy into the
whole record deal.  For the most part, the more senior the exec, the less
e-mail they actually see themselves on the first pass... generally, they
have an admin who does the initial "wheat from chaff" sorting for them, and
then they leave what they feel will be of interest or value for the exec to
go though.

As for "putting trust in end users"... well, here's how I see it.  Everyone
looks at their in-box and in most cases, makes a decision based on the
subject matter if they are going to bother looking at an e-mail message or
not... if NOT, they typically put in the deleted folder or trash, then go
back through what's left to make a second cut.  Isn't this how many/most of
you do it? If so, when this happens, I'd say 40-50% (minimum) of the
incoming mail is discarded.  On the second pass, you typically scan the
subject line and make a decision to read or set aside, and here's where I
think the rubber meets the road.

EVERY USER has to "action" a message once they read it: your choices are
delete, save in a folder, forward on to someone else, respond and still do
one of the above, or take the easy way out and "do nothing". If you
discard, no impact.  If you file, and your folders are subject based and
have a retention (or not) associated with them, little if any future
problem. but if you do nothing, all you're doing is creating a later
problem for the organization.

Now, how many of you do this? Maybe it's just me, but this is how I handle
my personal AND work email.

If policy is set that e-mail messages NOT PLACED IN FOLDERS will be deleted
after X days, and users are trained to understand this, it incentivizes
them to act on the messages on receipt (and the same/similar policy can
apply to the Sent folder).


>
> In my opinion, as Larry alludes to, that should lead to very long retention
> periods for email (i.e. keep all email for decades).  IT doesn't like that
> much
> because it creates massive email repositories (do some math... if most
> employees get 100 emails a day, and the average size of an email is about
> 100K - how much storage space would your company need for that after 10
> years?)... maybe that's why there's a drive for aggressive retention.
>

While Wayne is correct in saying "IT doesn't like this much", the vast
majority of IT shops within an organization are the ones who champion the
deployment of an "email archiving solution", which is neither an archive OR
a solution... it's simply a digital haystack. It becomes an out of sight,
out of mind dumping ground... until there is a legal action. Then it turns
into a digital minefield.  Oh, and on the '100 a day, X people' issue?  My
organization receives on average +/- 53 MILLION messages a month.

To answer your question, Thom, about operational concerns and legal risk:
>
> - Your employees are going to find a workaround.  You will have emails
> stored
> in PST's, on shared drives, in Dropbox, in SharePoint, on C: drives, on
> thumb
> drives, and in Gmail.  People need email to do their jobs, and if you take
> it
> away they will find ways to hang onto it.  Instead of creating a cleaner
> environment, instead you create a messier environment, and one where the
> mess is hidden from view.  Imagine dealing with that after getting hit
> with a
> massive litigation or audit.
>
> - The legal risk should be apparent... how do you conduct an audit or a
> legal
> matter (whether as plaintiff or defendent) without the communication that
> went on around it?  Email content is often critical to court cases.
>

While there is some truth to the workaround problem, if you have a strong
policy and provide regular mandatory training and annual refreshers
requiring an acknowledgement, you eliminate SOME (not all) of this.  If you
have periodic audits for compliance... you eliminate MORE of it.  If there
are consequences for those caught out of compliance in the audit ... you
eliminate EVEN MORE.

Larry
[log in to unmask]
-- 


*Lawrence J. Medina Danville, CARIM Professional since 1972*

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