Start with e-mail! (Technology).

Electronic mail has become both an indispensable communications tool for office workers and a nightmare for company executives attempting to reduce business risk. Over the last 20 years, e-mail messages have evolved from simple text characters sent over phone lines to full-color documents with embedded graphics, voice, and video. The average office worker sends and receives hundreds of e-mails each week, and disk drives fill quickly with both important records and annoying junk messages. Many people feel extremely frustrated if they lose contact with business associates, customers, or friends when e-mail systems are inaccessible or inoperable.

Electronic mail's evolution from simple text formats to complex documents illustrates how a technology's utility changes as it matures and its functionality expands to meet market-driven needs. E-mail's transition from limited, departmental implementations to global, inter-organizational use shows that important workplace cultural norms can change over time, giving rise to new policies regarding the use of information assets and tools. As e-mail documents are used in place of formal, paper-based correspondence, managing them as business records grows more important than in the days when litigation was not as likely - or as costly - an undertaking. In addition, e-mail is often the first document type considered in efforts to implement electronic recordkeeping systems because of its daily volume and the potential for significant return on investment if e-mail can be managed effectively and efficiently.

Most typical electronic records issues can be observed in e-mail use (and misuse); therefore, e-mail systems should be the initial focus of electronic records management efforts. A broad workplace acceptance of e-mail use means that large numbers of employees understand the need to create and store reliable electronic business records. E-mail, more than any other technology-driven document type, imparts organizational lessons learned, introduces opportunities for new policy implementation, and presents recordkeeping system issues. Appropriate e-mail use creates opportunities for adding visible value from professional records management practices.

Maturing Technologies

E-mail systems have been around for 20 years or more. First commonly used in government computer systems using primitive networks to transmit text messages in the 1970s, e-mail has been in use by the general public since the dawn of the personal computer. This author first used e-mail in 1981 using a CompuServe-based messaging system on a Radio Shack color computer with only four kilobytes of memory, a 300-baud acoustic coupler telephone modem, and no disk drive. Although primitive by modern standards, the system did allow text message communication with any other CompuServe members, including several banking services that would pay bills.

Early electronic mail systems adopted in the late 1980s and early 1990s - such as those supported by Banyan, Novell, Lotus Development Corporation, Qualcomm, and Microsoft - were implemented as simple desktop applications that office workers could use or ignore. (Initially, executive management universally ignored messages until an assistant read and printed them.) With a client kernel of software installed on a desktop computer, a user would receive primarily departmental communications from others who were connected with compatible architectures, local area network interface cards, and ethernet-based communication protocols. Early users rarely received e-mail from outside their own organization and were often discouraged or prevented from doing so. Junk e-mail was rare, and official, intra-departmental communications were often sent by e-mail transmission, bulletin board posting, and paper-based correspondence just to ensure that everyone received them.

Despite the existence of CompuServe, America Online, and other telephone modem dial-up services, e-mail use within organizations was like closed-circuit television - only those specifically connected with the same networks and software could read and respond to e-mail. However, as the use of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), invented by the United States Department of Defense, became more widespread as a reliable means of communication, numerous cooperating, publicly, and privately funded sub-networks agreed to interconnection and thus became the worldwide networking system known today as the Internet. With this readily available infrastructure, e-mail use for personal and inter-organizational communications exploded. Network services support vendors began allowing recognition of messages from competitors' networks, and interoperability between e-mail software packages became the norm. It soon became obvious that everyone wanted to be able to reach everyone by e-mail.

It is now possible to send e-mail between publicly funded government networks and privately funded commercial networks across international boundaries. Individuals using different e-mail software packages expect to read any received messages and accept any data files attached to them. Messages have become more sophisticated: Word processor or Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) formats have become common. E-mail now can contain color graphics, audio, and video information. There are even free e-mail services accessible from personal computers with Internet Web browser software.

This seamless connectivity and interoperability function well, for the most part. E-mail's ease of use and low cost have precipitated its actually replacing paper correspondence over the last few years. It is faster and less expensive to transmit an electronic document across geographic distances than to use postal services or private couriers. (This is a major factor in the continuing cycle of postal rate increases experienced by United States residents.) Bulk distribution of electronic mail is also inexpensive, thus creating an overload of relevant and irrelevant communications in most organizations. However, as e-mail use rises and the nature of e-mail changes, this wonderful communications technology seems a mixed blessing.

e-Mail Documents

All of the usual document management system mistakes - low quality indexing, inadequate document classification schemes, non-existent quality control processes, and insufficient repository and network planning - can contribute to e-mail system ineffectiveness and rising maintenance costs. The inefficiencies found in poorly managed paper-based systems are catastrophes in an electronic environment. Without adequate indexing, e-mail messages are located by scanning the messages' complete text, a much slower process than searching targeted, indexed message fields. Without classification terminology standards, users can select different terms for classifying the same message content, using their own professional perspectives. For example, is the message with a subject line "Buy one hundred barrels of oil" simply correspondence or a procurement request? Without anyone quality-checking the message classification, only the users really know how to find e-mail stored on "their" computer. Storing volumes of poorly organized e-mail messages clogs disk drives and increases system maintenance costs.

Document management difficulties are readily apparent to any e-mail user and illustrate the importance of well-considered electronic records decisions. As the complexity and volume of e-mail messages increase, e-mail system users request more sophisticated software features and require more support from information systems personnel. Management sees the impact via funding requests for additional information technology infrastructure and notices that assistants and other personnel seem to have difficulty locating documents. Serious litigation and a need to produce e-mail messages during document discovery convinces management that many e-mail messages must be treated as records and managed as a part of a comprehensive records management program.

e-Mail Records

The importance of good electronic recordkeeping for e-mail messages can be readily illustrated by focusing on examples that affect group and individual priorities (i.e., quickly finding business records and minimizing risky system overhead through appropriate data destruction).

All document creation, display, transmission, storage, and retrieval issues affect an organization's ability to produce useful records for operational, regulatory, and legal purposes. Being able to locate and produce useable electronic documents for business purposes does not necessarily guarantee verifiably accurate, authentic, and evidentiary-quality records. Many procedural and technology factors must be in place during document creation and subsequent document management activities to produce good quality records. This can be clearly demonstrated to an organization so that the difference between document management and records management becomes evident.

The professional literature states that for records to be admissible in evidence, they must have been produced "during the normal course of business." However, how does one demonstrate an organization's normal course of business in a courtroom if the organization has no explicit policies and procedures and many individuals chart their own course when creating and filing electronic documents? Furthermore, how many people use standard document naming and indexing terms when creating business records? This issue is readily explained to any manager who has been unable to find e-mail messages when support staff is unavailable for a few days. It also is quite apparent to any information systems personnel that may have been asked to find a specific e-mail message in a set of backup tapes intended only for disaster protection and system regeneration.

Without enforced records creation and management standards, is it surprising if e-mail records are misplaced or difficult to regenerate. Management that properly delegates responsibilities will relate to the need for e-mail records filing and retention standards. Information systems personnel are typically data and software oriented and do not like going on searching expeditions to reconstruct lost records because users did not retain significant records creation information. IS staff certainly will not relish the prospect of testifying in court regarding the volumes of e-mail messages that they have decided to "archive" over time in case someone should need to restore their desktop computer system.

E-mail's transitory nature illustrates the difficulties associated with storing records for long periods on electronic systems. Very few users have e-mail older than two or three years because e-mail systems, software, and data migrations typically destroy or distort these, records periodically. Almost no one expects that e-mail records created during the 1980s on Apple Macintosh, Microsoft DOS, UNIX, or other operating systems will be around today. In the early years, when e-mail application and operating system software versions changed,, one either printed e-mail messages or saved them as primitive text files. Since most e-mail was stored on magnetic rather than optical media, when disk drives crashed, were erased, or discarded, few if any archives were left for future records purposes. It is highly unlikely that anyone archived original versions of e-mail software, despite having done so in a few limited cases with word processor, spreadsheet, and graphics software.

Supportive Recordkeeping Technologies

The ephemeral electronic nature of e-mail and the need to take specific actions to preserve electronic messages can be pointed out to management, information systems staff, and end users as illustrative of what can happen without adequate planning for the long-term management of electronic records. Without properly functioning electronic recordkeeping software, it can be very difficult to store and maintain e-mail messages as records for any significant period of time. Although many organizations presently use document management systems, there is typically little or no imbedded records retention functionality available within them. The document management system and user filing of documents on desktop computers can completely disrupt accepted business processes designed to route records to records management personnel for retention decisions.

Electronic recordkeeping software, such as systems offered by Tower Software, TrueArc, Open Text, and Cuadra Associate Inc., offers integration capabilities that enable document creators to file documents to electronic repositories directly from word processor software or electronic mail systems. Instead of filing electronic documents to local disk drives, e-mail software systems on departmental servers, or network resident document management repositories, document creators can file e-mail messages to properly managed electronic records repositories. Placing electronic records into a controlled electronic repository is critical for filing standards, naming conventions, and retention periods to be implemented.

Due to the volatility of e-mail, the uncontrolled nature of filing messages, and the overall lack of retention applied to them, e-mail should be the first application automated when implementing electronic recordkeeping. In addition, message volume and the direct attacks on e-mail systems during litigation indicate that the best return on investment from automated document filing and retention occurs with recordkeeping software and repositories for e-mail. E-mail pilot projects illustrate the importance of retaining an electronic record's presentation format, business context, and complete informational content.

Bull by the Horns

E-mail, more than any other software application, is a default repository of both risky and valuable business records. Depending on an organization's computer infrastructure and the diversity of its business processes, changes with respect to e-mail can be a daunting task. However, sometimes one must "take the bull by the horns" to truly tame the beast.

Selecting e-mail as a first record type in implementing a comprehensive RIM program has many advantages. Everyone uses e-mail, thus making electronic records initiatives high profile. The organization's culture regarding individuals' personal association with their records will be evident. Policies and procedures written to address e-mail must, by definition, have a global perspective and be enterprise oriented, and e-mail as a testing ground will provide rewarding lessons learned. In addition, there is the wonderfully rewarding potential of assisting in the records management activities of every individual in an organization.

John Phillips, CRM, is the Owner of Information Technology Decisions, a management consulting firm. He has more than 20 years of experience in information resources management, specializing in automated records management systems and other technology-related areas. He can be reached at [e-mail].