Search OutlookPower's 9,069 Outlook and all-things-email article archive 
Home
EasyPrint
News details Click here for the RSS feed's XML code. This is not a browser URL.
Articles-only Click here for the RSS feed's XML code. This is not a browser URL.
Twitter Feed Click here for the Twitter feed.
The White House email controversy: our formal recommendations (continued)

Since email, computer files in the form of attachments, key contact lists, and so much more are accessible from and stored within these tiny potential nightmares, we believe they need the same careful and integrated oversight that White House email should be getting.

Recommendation: manage political email via the Electronic Communication Protection Detail
Once a candidate wins an election and moves into the White House, all electronic communication, political or otherwise, needs to be managed by the proposed Electronic Communication Protection Detail.

We discussed the reasoning for this earlier, in our Hatch Act recommendation, but we feel it's necessary that the Electronic Communication Protection Detail be clearly tasked with the management of all White House email, not just email that's purely government related.

We have absolutely no problem with the Republican National Committee using a firm like SMARTech to manage non-White House email or email for presidential candidates. In fact, our limited research into SMARTech indicated a company that seems to know its stuff.

However, once a candidate becomes president, the game changes. No longer is the candidate transported in his campaign bus, now The President is transported in Marine One and Air Force One.

Likewise, as we've made abundantly clear in our investigation, White House email, political and otherwise, must be managed by a professional, career Electronic Communication Protection Detail.

Recommendation: archiving must be managed professionally
Without a doubt, enterprise-quality archiving servers need to be set up for the management of all White House email. This technology is offered by many companies, it's solid, tested, and used by the very largest of corporations to comply with their own government-mandated record-keeping regulations.

"The practice of archiving is a technical act, while the practice of disclosing is a political or policy act."

Once again, we recommend the Electronic Communication Protection Detail manage these systems. We also recommend that all email, policy, political, or otherwise, be archived. Remember that archiving doesn't mean disclosing and the practice of archiving is a technical act, while the practice of disclosing is a political or policy act.

It's up to the politicians to determine whether anything from the archives should be disclosed. But it's up to experienced IT professionals to make sure everything's available if disclosure becomes necessary.

Because technology, media, and file formats are changing at breakneck pace, another responsibility of the Electronic Communication Protection Detail with regard to archiving would be the regularly updating of archives to new formats. In fact, we recommend that the entire cumulative library of archives be checked and migrated every four years as technology and file formats change.

Recommendation: handhelds need management, tracking, and self-destruct
Given the rigors of the job, it's not surprising that White House staffers are human. People sometimes lose things. Given the long hours and high stress, we're not surprised that Karl Rove and likely other staffers have lost BlackBerry handhelds. In fact, we'd be surprised if they didn't.


« Previous  ·  1  ·  2  ·  3  ·  4  ·  5  ·  6  ·  Next »
Other articles you might like
Home > Special Reports > White House Email Controversy (24 articles)
   Obama's DOJ quietly sought dismissal of missing emails lawsuit
   Here come the judge, Barack's BlackBerry, David does CNN, and more
   Please treat the White House computers like crime scene evidence
Get Weekly Email Updates
Subscribe to our regular weekly email newsletter. It's packed with tips, reviews, deep analysis, and the latest news.
 
Recent OutlookPower Articles
Removing an Office installation that doesn't want to go away
Using Office on more than one computer
How to fall back in love with your email
Where'd my To-Do Bar go?
Running auto-respond rules when Outlook is closed
Running rules when Outlook is closed
Disappearing text that's not supposed to disappear
OutlookPower News Center
Koobface gang refresh botnet to beat takedown
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme 6-Core Processor Review
DocAve v5.4 Delivers Beta Support for SharePoint 2010
ENow Announces New Exchange 2010 Monitoring and Reporting Features
Microsoft boffin wins Turing Award
Remote-Code Vulnerability Being Exploited in IE 6 and 7
Raxco Software Releases PerfectDisk 11 Disk Defrag Software
>> Read all the news
More from the ZATZ journals
Computing Unplugged: Make Mafia Wars an offer it can't refuse
David Gewirtz Online: CNN commentary and analysis
DominoPower: Application development, William Shatner, and the origin of the universe
-- Advertisement --

Write for OutlookPower today!
Share your experience and expertise with other Outlook and Exchange users, administrators, and developers. OutlookPower Magazine has grown nicely and now has new opportunities for contributing authors and editors.

Write about something you're an expert on and get your name in lights.

For Writers' Guidelines and to discuss topics, contact Staff Editor Steve Niles. This is your opportunity to shine in front of your peers, your clients, and other readers.

Click for more info!

-- Advertisement --

Take Control Over Both Your Incoming And Outgoing Emails
File everything quickly and logically at the click of a mouse

Just tell QuickFile once where you want emails from each sender to be filed, and from then on a simple mouse click files them away automatically.

We know how important your sent emails are. With one click, your outgoing mail is sent and filed to the correct folder, automatically.

No more digging. It's all where it's supposed to be. Automatically.

Tap here to download a fully-functional 30-day trial.

ZATZ Home  ·  News  ·  Back Issues  ·  Credits/Trademarks ·  Link To Us
The Power Magazine for Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Users at OutlookPower.com
Copyright © 1998-2010, ZATZ Publishing. All rights reserved worldwide.
Outlook is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
Editor's Login