ARMA 2007: Identifying and Classifying E-Messages as Records
Jesse Wilkins - Access Sciences Corp
Sunday 10/07/07 1:30 pm
It was Jesse Wilkins who suggested on the ARMA Listserv that some people try to liveblog the conference, so I’m hoping if he reads this he will take into consideration that this is my first attempt.
There is a big crowd in this large room, so it looks (not surprisingly) like a topic lots of ARMA members are interested in.
The director of ARMA Education introduced him and explained that this presentation is a presentation of his research and that Jesse’s paper will be available on the website for the benefit of all ARMA members – pretty cool, I think! She explained that they get their research funding from chapters – two chapters contributed to this research, and she presented those chapters: Houston and Denver Mile High. Believe she also said that Jesse is donating the money back to the ARMA education fund – very cool!
Key Points/Highlights of the session:
The objectives of his presentation were summed up as identifying current practices, identifying available technological solutions, and how to develop an action plan to handle E-message classification.
He recommended a YouTube video on “How not to do PowerPoint” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORxFwBR4smE)– this is really a note to myself for a funny look!
Jesse talked about how he gathered his data through literature review, survey, and interviews. He did a pilot with a small group first and used Surveymonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/) to publish his survey.
I have to say that out of his key findings about how email was used and controlled, the thing I found most interesting was that 30% of those surveyed forward business messages to personal accounts. He attributed this to limits on message size and the like, and I can totally see this, but I wouldn’t have guessed it without seeing it here.
In his survey responses, I guess one of the things I was surprised about was that 60% of respondents archiving emails captured metadata. Jesse did not seem to be. The fact that they capture To, From, Subject, Attachment name, and Date and time did not impress me as “being captured”…that is stuff that is already there. When I’m thinking metadata, I’m thinking something that has to be added. Usually manually. He did admit in those cases there was not much added because no one wants to do that.
When he rolled out the options for strategy, he gave a great example to illustrate the option of declaring and managing messages as records: If you get 200 emails per day, and 10% of them (20) are records, then you spend 30 seconds apiece identifying , 30 seconds deciding it is a record, 30 seconds classifying, 30 seconds moving, etc., that’s about an hour per day just to classify email – which translates into about 6 weeks each year! Can anyone imagine trying to implement that strategy at their organization?! No way.
Basically, with all the solutions available, there still is no one “right” solution for everyone. However he did have some bullet points on what you need to think about and produce to get a program rolling.
Jesse Wilkins - Access Sciences Corp
Sunday 10/07/07 1:30 pm
It was Jesse Wilkins who suggested on the ARMA Listserv that some people try to liveblog the conference, so I’m hoping if he reads this he will take into consideration that this is my first attempt.
There is a big crowd in this large room, so it looks (not surprisingly) like a topic lots of ARMA members are interested in.
The director of ARMA Education introduced him and explained that this presentation is a presentation of his research and that Jesse’s paper will be available on the website for the benefit of all ARMA members – pretty cool, I think! She explained that they get their research funding from chapters – two chapters contributed to this research, and she presented those chapters: Houston and Denver Mile High. Believe she also said that Jesse is donating the money back to the ARMA education fund – very cool!
Key Points/Highlights of the session:
The objectives of his presentation were summed up as identifying current practices, identifying available technological solutions, and how to develop an action plan to handle E-message classification.
He recommended a YouTube video on “How not to do PowerPoint” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORxFwBR4smE)– this is really a note to myself for a funny look!
Jesse talked about how he gathered his data through literature review, survey, and interviews. He did a pilot with a small group first and used Surveymonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/) to publish his survey.
I have to say that out of his key findings about how email was used and controlled, the thing I found most interesting was that 30% of those surveyed forward business messages to personal accounts. He attributed this to limits on message size and the like, and I can totally see this, but I wouldn’t have guessed it without seeing it here.
In his survey responses, I guess one of the things I was surprised about was that 60% of respondents archiving emails captured metadata. Jesse did not seem to be. The fact that they capture To, From, Subject, Attachment name, and Date and time did not impress me as “being captured”…that is stuff that is already there. When I’m thinking metadata, I’m thinking something that has to be added. Usually manually. He did admit in those cases there was not much added because no one wants to do that.
When he rolled out the options for strategy, he gave a great example to illustrate the option of declaring and managing messages as records: If you get 200 emails per day, and 10% of them (20) are records, then you spend 30 seconds apiece identifying , 30 seconds deciding it is a record, 30 seconds classifying, 30 seconds moving, etc., that’s about an hour per day just to classify email – which translates into about 6 weeks each year! Can anyone imagine trying to implement that strategy at their organization?! No way.
Basically, with all the solutions available, there still is no one “right” solution for everyone. However he did have some bullet points on what you need to think about and produce to get a program rolling.
Lot of questions after the session - about very specific about RM theory in this area. Not to helpful for those who have already done a lot of reading on this topic!
Off to my next session....
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