>> My IT people have asked me about my preferences on an email archiving system<<

I have spent considerable time over the last several years reading about and listening to IT pitches and sales presentations regarding the promise,  possibilities, and value of email archiving solutions.  In the end, my belief remains the unchanged.  Email archiving systems are a major risk to both the organization and to its employees.  Especially those employees who are the key decision makers within the organization.

There have been discussions at length about the risks of retaining everything, difficulty in applying retention requirements, even a note or two about the Safe Harbor aspects for international companies.  I believe there are even larger fundamental problems with the major selling points, single instancing and ediscovery searching.   I see these as two of the largest risks of the technology.

Let's start with the second point first, the ability to search across the entire universe of email.  One of the basic premises of ediscovery is identification of custodians.  These are the individuals who participated in, or are reasonably expected to have knowledge or information regarding the activities or issues in question.   Our obligation is to preserve, review and produce any potentially relevant materials available within their care, custody or control.  To do this we often preserve their materials, negotiate search terms, and search the collection for materials to be reviewed.  Consider the potential difference in applying a defined timeframe and set of search terms to the email collections of twenty or so identified custodians.  Now consider using the same defined parameters against the email collection of the entire organization.  The returned result set is exponentially larger without containing any additional relevant information.  What is the additional expense for content and privilege review.  What about the risks of production of large volumes of information to the opposing party?  Remember, you agreed to provide materials that matched the search terms.  

Single instancing should also be a major concern for the decision makers in your organization.  When I capture a custodians email today, I see what is in their "care, custody, and control.  I preserve a complete copy of their email accounts, including recovered deleted items. The preserved account can be analyzed to determine filing structures, associations and what messages remain unopened by the user.  These are the materials to which the individual is an actual custodian.  Compare that to a search of an email archive which returns every email sent by, received by or copied to the individual.  Emails that were deleted years ago by the user as being unimportant are now included in the search results and need to be reviewed and produced.  The increased volume only increases risk, creates shadows where none should exist, and can puts managers in a very difficult and often uncomfortable position.

I would certainly want my counsel and management to understand the risks before they make the decision. Finally, from experience I can tell you that an email archiving solution is the last thing you want under a legal hold.

Bill Roach, CRM

Opinions are my own and not those of my employer or any other entity or individual.

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