Glen,

While agreeing in general that archiving all mail off to an archive isn't 
good RIM  there may be instances where the archiving of mail considered a 
record could be adequate and acceptable from a risk standpoint for a 
company.  This would depend on the particular companies situation 
(non-regulated) and risk management strategy.  To me having a process and 
following it consistently is better than no process at all

The archiving solution could also be a step in moving toward good RIM and 
at the same time lower both liability and cost to a company.  While full 
management of messages in an ERM is best practice an interim step of 
bucketing messages into record series categories could be beneficial in 
movement toward that best practice.  It's been a sort double edged sword 
at my employer as its worked well from an IT /legal side ,not quite as 
well from the RIM side but its better than it was and the next step will 
involve less change management and be almost transparent to the end -user.

Again its a matter of putting a good  plan together and gaining the 
management /end-user approval needed to keep moving the process toward a 
best practice endstate.

Small steps- small wins  can move a RIM program toward the best practice 
endstate while not causing major chaos in the enterprise.

My 2 cents

Steve Petersen CRM
Records Manager
Rockwell Collins Inc
319.295.5244

"Bringing Order Out of Chaos"

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