I think that it varies by industry and by the maturity level of the use of 
email as a business record.  When I worked for a large retail organization 
where content lifecycles were routinely shorter than 7 years and we dealt 
with 7.5 mllion emails monthly, the average "declaration" rate was about 
5.5%.  In the medical device manufacturing industry where I worked before 
(much more highly regulated) and where email was used as part of "approval" 
and "validation" transactions, the rate was 8.2%.

In my current industry, transportation (also highly regulated), I started 
tracking my personal statistics just to see how I stacked up in order to 
build a program for my organization.  I am averaging 2.5% for "approvals", 
another 6.2% for "trackable business transactions" that require me to keep 
records longer than 60 days, and the rest is just "white noise" in terms of 
communications.

One of the things that I am attempting to develop is a definition of "white 
noise" vs. "business transaction" and that has been an interesting evolution 
for me.  I believe that it varies from organization to organizatoin, but we 
Records and Information professionals are in a unique position to bring this 
to the attention of our organizations and help define policy so that we can 
develop the education necessary to educate end users for how to sort 
"business transactions" from "white noise" communication that is sometimes 
retained because of cultural reasons (fear, distrust, anxiety, corporate 
memory, protection of self aka "cya", lack of knowledge on how to declare a 
record, etc.).

I have been privately researching "cultural" reasons that people keep email 
and the results are interesting.  It is like having a tape recorder in the 
room when you are communicating with another party.  It is also the main 
reason that my executive email training program can be summoned up in five 
words....BACK AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD!  I strongly encourage senior 
management to NEVER discuss anything in email other than exchange of 
reports, golf and lunch dates, and casual communication.  The rest 
is....NOYB and should literally take place behind closed doors or in other 
venues that are more private and not subject to surveillance by the IT 
department

Warmest regards,
Angela Fares
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Melvin Baskin" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2014 9:22 AM
Subject: Email Records


>I am trying to find some data on the percentage of emails declared as 
>records in a
> business with 1000 to 10,000 users.  I would like to use the data for a 
> RIM
> campaign to encourage users to declare emails in our ERMS.  Any assistance
> would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks
>
>
> Melvin D. Baskin
> Corporate Records Manager
> Verisign, Inc.
> Reston, VA
>
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