>> What thoughts do you have about how Records and Information Managers
might best promote the free flow if ideas and the use of advanced
technologies while minimizing risk to their organizations and by
ensuring compliance? <<

I'm very much a newbie to the world of RIM, so I can't offer the kind of
wisdom and knowledge that most everyone else on this list does on a
regular basis.  One thing I've learned over the past few months is that
RIM is full of challenges and tradeoffs.  The answers are far from
obvious and depend greatly on specific circumstances.  The Law will
define boundaries, but those boundaries are often subject to *some*
interpretation, and that provides *some* flexibility.  My approach is
pretty much what I used in my earlier life as a data architect:
Understand the problem, bring together the right people with the right
backgrounds, get agreement on the desired outcome (usually in the form
of guiding principles such as those I mentioned earlier), and then get
to work.  I've worked very closely with our company's Legal and IT
teams, as well as the process owners and/or subject matter experts.
Legal helps us understand what is acceptable - where the ultimate
boundaries lie.  IT provides the enabling technologies and how best to
leverage them.  The process owners help assemble the pieces and make it
work in the real world.  Establish a foundation of trust, mutual
respect, a clear understanding of what the goals and general tradeoffs
are, and then put these resources to work in a collaborative
environment.

We've done this with email management.  We recognize we do not have a
perfect solution, but we believe it is a big step in the right
direction.   We've had to make tradeoffs.  We've favored education and
simplicity over system-enforced restrictions and detailed classification
schemes.  We have added some cost controls, as well as preservation,
protection, and retention enforcement - enough to make our new approach
a definite step forward in those areas.  But we've also kept a close eye
on impact to productivity, and we believe we are on balance enhancing
productivity by improving search capabilities and performance,
centralizing content away from scattered and inaccessible PSTs, adding
redundancy to protect that content, and allowing users to keep some
business-critical, though non-record content indefinitely (a capability
we will be monitoring for abuse).  There are some holes, but our Legal
team feels comfortable with both the defensibility and risk profile of
our approach - and far more so than with the status quo.

One item that's particularly noteworthy.  I am no lawyer, but the sense
I get from our Legal team is that there is a great deal of hype and FUD
out there about what's "required" - "if you don't do X, you'll go to
jail or pay huge fines".  I am not advocating playing fast and loose
with the Law, but the other extreme is often oppressively impractical.
So you have to find a middle ground (i.e. what's "defensible enough").
That's why it's absolutely imperative that RIM and Legal work very
closely.

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