I’m sure it wasn’t intended as a humor piece, but this morning’s NPR radio report about the e-mail gaffe that occurred at the Bush White House in 2002 and 2003 was fine entertainment. In particular, this quote from Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy from 2007 made me laugh: “That’s like saying the dog ate my homework. Those e-mails are there. They just don’t want to produce them.”
While many companies do have admirable archiving systems in place, just as many firms leave the details up to chance, the honor system, and other faulty methods.
Although I have never tried to get out of an assignment by saying a dog ate my homework, I have fouled up plenty, and confessing was quite difficult in some cases. But, what I have learned over the years is that if you ask for help, you will commit fewer blunders and have less mess to clean up.*
Back to the government e-mail issue. According to an article by Computerworld’s Patrick Thibodeau, the whole mess stemmed from a Domino/Notes-to-Microsoft Exchange migration. The old archiving system was phased out, but the new one was never implemented. From that point on, Thibodeau explains, the government manually archived messages. The result was millions of “missing” e-mails.
Jump back to March 2008. Computerworld blogger Douglas Schweitzer, while reporting about the missing e-mails, asserted that by not automating its archiving, the government went against what is “considered ‘fundamental principles that well-run private companies adhere to routinely.’”
Routinely?
While many companies do have admirable archiving systems in place, just as many firms leave the details up to chance, the honor system, and other faulty methods. This apathy’s driving force is money, or lack thereof. (In a financial crisis, the IT budget’s the first to be cut.) The result is corporate workers who have no choice but to “wing it” and find their own workarounds. The government’s gaffe demonstrates just how much money “winging it” will save you.
Read Thibodeau’s piece here; Schweitzer’s here; and NPR’s here.
*By offering employees software training and support, companies can make it OK to ask for help, despite this culture’s innate “by-the-bootstraps” attitude.
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