A bit of a cheap shot, don't you think? Anyone that knows me, or has
been reading my posts for any length of time, would really expect me to
advocate, "blah, blah compromising blah, blah", as you suggest (not
likely). On the contrary, by doing something, I meant, and as a records
professional, I'm sure you understood, to actively consider, and give
some attention to whether some of their "stuff" were records, and to
keep that particular e-mail, or discard it. What I was suggesting, and I
think is quite clear, given human behavior, and my own personal
experience, is that if users never have to DO Something about their
growing e-mail collection, then they never will. So an assertion that it
be maintained, "until the information is either deleted or moved to the
appropriate content repository?" is a bit of a pipe dream.
I agree with you about the other places to put e-mails except for an
EDMS, which is a document production system, not an archiving program,
(Interwoven's assertions to the contrary not withstanding). That is not
really an appropriate place to archive e-mails, although something like
80% of law firms that have an EDMS, do exactly that. Just because
something is cheap (because you already own it) popular (because
everyone knows how to use it) or expedient (because your I.T. Group is
too overburdened with requests to research a better solution), doesn't
make it correct, or appropriate.
Allowing e-mail collections to expand without limits or guidelines is
essentially doing nothing. I think that point stands. Creating limits
means that an assessment must be made at some point about the importance
and usefulness of the e-mail. You may not like the assessment (deletion
or save) but the user has, and must have, that power, and make that
call. On the one hand, you may be missing records, but on the other, you
will get rid of a lot of junk that is likely to be more harmful if kept,
than the seemingly unimportant "record" that was discarded, and later
turns out to have some use. At least that is what the liability
insurance industry will tell you, and has been saying for years.
Education and training of your users is an important component of e-mail
management, but before it is effective, you have to provide a place for
users to put those e-mails that they have determined are records and
need preservation. So electronic e-mail archiving of some type is
essential. The fact that so many organizations are still having e-mails
printed out as a way of filing or preserving them is really unfortunate,
and likely results in many users figuring out work arounds to their
companies policies and limitations on e-mail mail boxes, as you have
already pointed out. I believe users want to do the right thing, but it
has to be easy, simple, and at least as good as the work around, or they
won't use it. 
You are right, we can argue about what is a best practice, and a lively
discussion of that certainly contributes to the profession, but
advocating unlimited e-mail boxes as a best practice seems a bit of a
stretch to me. I can't seem to make sense of it from a database
management perspective, a search and retrieval perspective, an economic
perspective, or a records perspective, so I wouldn't want to try to
defend that position to the partnership at my firm, or the Accounting
Dept, or the I.T. Group.
Litigation Holds are an entirely different proposition, an exception, if
you will, not the basis for your overall e-mail management program, and
should be handled as such. We routinely suspend e-mail limits for
certain mail boxes, for fixed periods of time to accommodate legal
holds. There is even third party software to assist you in doing so. 

William Creamer
New York, New York
(212) 728-3448

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