On 9/27/06, Laura Bell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> With all the talk of the disappearing emails, I found the ARMA website
> post on Digital rights Management capabilities interesting.  If you get
> time today you should check it out at:
> http://www.arma.org/news/enewsletters/index.cfm?ID=1446
>
> When I first heard of emails that you could not forward or print I
> cringed as a records management nightmare took place -what if the
> recipients or those who took action did not take responsibility for
> filing their actions relating to it?  This article also references the
> limited time viewing for emails set by the sender.  Technology seems to
> make us and break us at the same time.
>
>
Snipped from the InfoWire article on the ARMA site:

"Of concern to records management professionals are products that take the
approach of obliterating e-mail messages according to the sender's granting
of limited-time viewing privileges. Using a product called Kablooey from CDS
Technologies, the sender goes to a website, composes the e-mail, and sets a
limited time for the receiver to view it, after which the e-mail is
destroyed at the website and no longer viewable. A copy is saved to the
sender's email account, where the sender can opt to delete it.  In this
scenario, it is possible for the e-mail to appear not to exist. Microsoft
Outlook 2007, expected to be available next year, will also allow e-mail
senders to set expiration dates for e-mails, making them unviewable after a
certain time has elapsed. One possible complication is that e-mails that
should be considered corporate records could disappear."


Laura's right that there are concerns regarding these technologies, but I
don't agree that they can "make us or break us"... it's up to an
organization to make a decision if they allow technologies that put them in
violation of their legal, statutory or regulatory requirements for the
retention of e-mail (or anything else) as a record to be deployed.

And sure, they can make them available and then tell people "only use this
for personal or inconsequential communications", but it is irresponsible to
place that level of  decision-making on the employee.

This is really not too much different than the organizations who choose to
deploy "e-mail archiving" applications that essentially harvest and store
EVERY E-MAIL MESSAGE received or sent by an organization, but fail to
properly index them or assign a retention period that is based on the
content of the messages.  When these companies face a litigation and are
requested to produce all records, including e-mail, related to a specific
topic or incident and then cry foul that they have to spend tens of
thousands of dollars to search these "archives", it's their own fault for
deploying them in such an ineffective manner.

There really isn't a silver bullet for e-mail management, it DOES take human
intervention.. sure, you can do some rules based and role based segregation
of messages and make blind assumptions that because it comes from a certain
function or a person in  a specific capacity that the e-mail POSSIBLY has
"X" value and should be assigned "Y" retention period, but that's a crap
shoot unless you go back and review them for accuracy and then "tweak" the
system until it's got a level of accuracy you can live with.   And
naturally, you can full text index the 1,000,000 e-mail messages that pass
through your servers a month and then use software to look for strings of
text to make assumptions of the value and assign a retention period, but
these messages become HUGE when indexed, and again, you need to review them
for accuracy and "tweak" the taxonomy search and classification engine until
you're satisfied with the results.

I'm still in favor of the concept of educating employees clearly on WHAT A
RECORD is to your organization, then giving them a "3 bucket model"...

   - non-record: destroy as soon as possible,
   - transitory record: retain for 2 years,
   - record: evaluate for content and assign appropriate retention

This 3rd bucket is where you would use your indexing, taxonomy and
classification capabilities and you'd have a much smaller population of
e-mail to search through, and eventually, after some adjustments, you will
get close to accurate.

Larry

-- 
Larry Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972

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