Larry and Patrick, thanks for the great stuff on RecMan. We have
transitioned to a Google Apps environment, and this is a solution I have
been keeping an eye on.

Just to clarify on this, as I remember discussing this before - it is
possible with the Positini tool to set up different retention levels for
different administrative groupings (essentially big buckets). This does not
require separate domain names - something their web site implies and does
not make clear. However, that does require more administrative effort, and
it is not what I would call a typical records management solution. I do,
however, think you can configure this tool in such a way that it would meet
the needs of a large portion, possibly the majority, of our users in a
manner that complies with public records law. On the downside, it will
result in the retention of large amounts of email unnecessarily - this is
essentially a litigation support "vacuum" solution with a somewhat higher
degree of sophistication in certain areas.

The compelling reason to go to Google Apps relates to the cost reduction in
email and office  suite management, which is quite significant (last I
heard, in our case, more than 50% - that's a lot of public health
nurses!). In our environment, my sense is that the potential risks of such a
sweeping solution are more than offset by the day to day drop in maintenance
costs.

I think the real risk here is less legal in nature (at least in our
setting), and relates to the growing accumulation of relatively disorganized
information and the impact that will have on work, and the longer term risks
of rising costs associated with maintaining that accumulation. One of the
things we are working on is coming up with a simple "trainable" moment on
metadata/taxonomy that is generic enough to apply across platforms (a
Microsoft folder structure, a gmail tagging system, and a Google Docs
collection), but not so generic that it doesn't meet customers' needs. In
the horizon, I see more work in seeing what we can accomplish with the
Postini tool (one challenge relates to the impact of reorganization - you
can't assign 2 retentions to a single account, so what happens if you move
from a longer retention bucket to a shorter one? How difficult is it to
administer for our IT partners?).

I think one will see more development in this space of a records management
nature. Right now (as I have reminded our IT friends on occasion), I'm
hearing very similar things from the Google teams as I did from the
Exchange/Outlook teams years ago: storage is cheap, search tools are
perfect, etc.... However, at this stage of the game, Google Apps has given
us actually better control over our email than was possible in our previous
system, for one simple reason: We couldn't afford or sustain those previous
system's solutions. We couldn't even sustain the systems themselves!

My guess is many local governments (and private businesses for that matter)
are in the same boat - one only has to look at the news about on-going
budget crisis - something that has been impacting my organization for more
than 10 years. My other guess is we will be diving deeply into theory, and
fully utilizing our analysis, development, communications, and training
skills to find simple solutions and workarounds in this new environment that
will serve the public interest. I expect there will be a considerable lag
time before more sophisticated tools become available - its possible we will
begin to see real solutions emerge within 5 years, as in my experience that
is when the "pain points" tend to become more apparent, and the market
starts to respond.

And while I can appreciate the stuff about Google "kids", so far in the few
direct interactions I have had with them, I recognize both a lack of
understanding of RM, but also a willingness to listen - they want to make
this work, particularly in government settings. I think they are trying to
understand this market - a wise choice, for the reasons I have cited above.
For this reason, I would urge anyone anticipating this transition to be "at
the table" so at least these issues get onto the radar screen.
-- 
Dwight Wallis, CRM
Multnomah County Records Management Program
1620 SE 190th Avenue
Portland, OR 97233
ph: (503)988-3741
fax: (503)988-3754
[log in to unmask]

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message.
mailto:[log in to unmask]