Jesse, thank you for your thoughtful response regarding automatic
classification. If I may comment on your response to Larry's interesting
e-mail and then ask a further question of the list:

> but contrast $1000 for 2 terabytes of storage
(yep, at your local consumer electronics store - check it out) vs. the
ease
of retrieval.

According to John Halamka in the March 5, 2007 edition of Computerworld
(helpfully cited in PeterKs RAIN postings), "enterprise class storage"
costs approximately $20K per terabyte. Mr. Halamka is including the
overhead to manage such storage in that figure. I believe most of the
e-mail solutions we are discussing involve enterprise storage solutions,
and I think its important to consider overhead costs (an analogy would
be to say storage of a records carton costs $1.00 because that's what
the box costs). I think storage may be an important metric in
determining the success of a given approach, and is more important an
issue than generally assumed (at least, that's what my good friends in
our IT department are telling me).

> Would you consider that same "three bucket practice" for paper
records? If
not, why would you treat email differently? Email is or isn't a record
according to content, not format...just like any other record.

Jesse, records retention schedules often apply a one-bucket approach to
mass volumes of records. An analogy would be the application of
functional retentions to correspondence. In my mind, an approach that
told users to delete anything they considered non-record or of limited
value, then keep the remainder for x period of time would work for
probably 75% of our users. That period of time would be determined by a
functional retention schedule. I agree with Bob - the same broad based
approaches applied to large volumes of paper can also work for e-mail.
As noted above, with storage as a metric, you could adjust up or down
the degree of control you needed.

However, I absolutely agree with your comments regarding the efficacy of
relying on training/policy only. Even with the simple approach I cite
above, I doubt most users would comply in the sense that they would
properly apply even the most minimum of retention requirements with any
degree of regularity. I think most users know how to use the delete key
in making an immediate decision of the value of a particular e-mail, but
beyond that I have my doubts.

Here's the dilemma - EDMS/ERMS tools that are often demo'd to me seem
overkill for such a big bucket approach. Yet absent those, we are left
with the policy/training approach. Is anyone aware of software solutions
that would support such a basic approach, and apply the retentions in a
background manner - for example, to an entire users stored e-mail, or
even to selected "big bucket" folders within that system? I'm unaware of
any such capability in current standard office/e-mail systems, nor do my
IT friends seem aware of such a capability.

Dwight "keep it simple and cheap" Wallis, CRM
Records Administrator
Multnomah County Fleet, Records, Electronics, Distribution and Stores
(FREDS)
1620 S.E. 190th Avenue
Portland, OR 97233
Phone: (503)988-3741
Fax: (503)988-3754
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