While email has all of the inherent complexities mentioned below, that does
create unique challenges to the management of it, I must agree with Steve
and Larry, that how we manage email, meaning the length of time to retain,
and the disposition there after (delete or preserve for historical
purposes), must be driven by the content of the email, not the medium in
which the information was created, delivered or stored in.

We cannot set retention and disposition by medium type.  We must look at the
content and determine our R&D policy.  If we don't we will be losing
valuable information that we may be required to keep permanently, or loose
our collective corporate memory by deleting all email after 30, 60 or 90
days, like so many corporations are still doing.

To overcome some of the inherent problems with managing email, firm
corporate polices and procedures need to be developed on the proper use of
email.  Users have to be trained on how to create subject Meta data and how
to recognize when a thread has ended, so a new topic with appropriate
subject Meta data will be started.  You can't look for a magic solution from
vendors, if the end user isn't savvy enough to use email correctly.  End
users must be trained to use email more judiciously; without end user
compliance the best solution will fail.
 
Deborah I. Gouin, MA, CA
Electronic Records Archivist
University Archives and Historical Collections
Michigan State University
101 Conrad Hall
E. Lansing, MI 48824-1327
(517) 355-2330  voice
(517) 353-9319  FAX
[log in to unmask]
www.archives.msu.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Jesse Wilkins
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 1:39 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: E-mail Business Rules

Email is NOT as simple as Steve and Larry describe - otherwise more
organizations would already have applied 60+ years of RM best practices to
the problem and have solved it, thereby rendering those vendors' unnecessary
solutions, well, unnecessary. 

I do not claim that "the sky is falling". I do claim that because of the
intrinsic qualities of email including but not limited to ease of
forwarding, Ccing, BCCing, multiple attachments of any type which themselves
might be records, the tendency to have multiple messages as part of a single
message (as Steve just demonstrated) which are editable prior to
replying/forwarding, the tendency to keep the same subject line for that
thread ten messages after the thrust of the thread has changed completely,
the fact that emails are sent to and received from inside and outside the
organization, often as part of the same thread and at different times in the
conversation to different individuals and groups, the different electronic
formats available for email messages and the applications used to create and
store them (3 different things here), and most importantly the sheer volumes
involved, that email cannot be addressed in the exact same fashion as paper
records or even many other types of electronic records, which otherwise
might be addressable in the fashion Steve describes (although I reserve
judgment on that as well in many instances). 

I think this is akin to arguing that microfilm is just another record media
and should not be treated any differently. This is also not true - from the
physical storage to the indexing mechanisms used to retrieve a requested
frame to how that information can be shared with others, we do treat
microfilm slightly differently. And multipart forms. And physical records
like core samples. And notarized documents. And the list goes on and on and
on. Or that CAD files are just another file format and can be treated as
their paper counterparts, while ignoring the unique things having the
original electronic file provides (views and layers as a starting point). 

If your organization has already solved the email challenge, and you're
declaring as high a percentage of those email messages that rise to the
level of records and as accurately as you do paper, congratulations. Of
course, you probably don't need an ERMS either - because since electronic
records are the same as paper, just a different media, it's unnecessary;
only vendors who assert that "the sky is falling" would design solutions to
address electronic records; and only users who have been hornswoggled would
ever buy those solutions. 

Cheers, 

Jesse Wilkins
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