Web 2.0 and E-Mail

Social Networks and their Impact on Records and Information Management—A study by Helen M. Streck   Funded by the ARMA International Educational Foundation.



Legal Obstacles to E-Mail Message Destruction - English Version—A study by John C. Montana J.D. with assistance from John R. Kain,MA and Kathleen Nolan MD MLS  Funded by the ARMA International Educational Foundation.

Abstract
This project seeks to examine e-mail and the legal doctrines around it, to determine which approach to its retention is the sounder. More precisely it seeks to identify the legal and statutory obstacles which would prevent the adoption of an information management policy requiring the automatic and systematic deletion of all email messages, in all repositories, older than a predefined period." The short answer to this question is a simple one: e-mail cannot be destroyed en mass after an arbitrarily assigned period in any case where a legal duty requires otherwise. The devil is, however, in the details: Legal duties arise from a great variety of sources, and the duties themselves vary quite considerably. Each such duty creates in the data object upon which it is imposed some sort of legal status -- it is an evidentiary object, a regulatory compliance object, a government record, or whatever. The question then is what, if any, status does the law impose upon e-mail?

Abstract
Despite email’s having existed for more than 35 years, and despite the explosion in email volumes and attendant storage requirements, most of the guidance available to organizations today takes the form either of email policies or vendor white papers. Email policies provide a good starting point for email management, but many of them are limited to acceptable usage, privacy, and the occasional nod to litigation holds. And vendor white papers are often suspect because they tend to reflect the vendor’s strategies and approaches. Many of these white papers are written by, or in collaboration with, respected analyst firms but even these can raise more questions than they address because they are sponsored. This white paper is the result of research conducted to understand the current state of affairs with regards to email management today. While some conclusions can be drawn, much work remains to be done in order to identify effective and defensible practices for managing electronic messages effectively.

Big Buckets or Big Ideas? Classification vs. Innovation on the Enterprise 2.0 Desktop—A Study by Patricia Galloway, PhD CDP funded by the ARMA International Educational Foundation with additional funds provided by the Mile High Denver Chapter of ARMA International..

Abstract
The recent interest fostered by the U.S. National Archives in using so-called “big buckets”as a feature of their Flexible Scheduling scheme indicates some hope for a solution to classifying routinized work product not scheduled as permanent. Given that some records managers are looking toward adopting the practice for all records, however, it may prove to be in conflict with current research in information science on the work practices of knowledge workers, especially those whose work implicitly includes problem-solving and innovation. Conceived in another way, however, the “flexibility” provided by the concept may open the door to an application of “Enterprise 2.0” classificatory practices. This is of particular import since electronic record creation is already being supported by software systems designed to optimize flexibility for employee work practices.