Mission Improbable? Matching University Employee Behavior to Email Management Guidelines
Tim Pyatt
Duke University Archivist

We have had great success in gathering a wealth of data, both from the surveys and the interviews. The numbers have been coded, crunched, folded, but hopefully not mutilated! My role in this project, along with Duke's Records Manager, David Mitchell, and UNC's University Archivist, Janis Holder and Records Manager, Frank Holt, is to take these data and apply them in the workplace. So how can we use this valuable information collected to inform, improve, and encourage better email management?

In our proposal to NHPRC, we proposed several ways to apply this knowledge gained -

• a best practice guidelines for email management
• user education, both workshops and online tutorials
• consideration of future electronic records management systems
  

My talk today will focus on the first two elements, best practice guidelines and user education.

Guideline challenges

Based on the surveys and interviews, we have some good ideas about the areas where employees were looking for help: they want to know what to save, what to delete, and how to handle attachments - no great surprises in that area. Our next step was to determine the best manner to present this information to our email users. We started with the guidelines issued by the state of North Carolina, and reviewed policies issued by over two dozen other states, universities, and government entities. Much was similar, all were informative, and all made (without much exception) very dry reading. Even with our terrific data, we weren't sure how effective another set of guidelines would be. And if we find them difficult to read, how would we convince employees to read them?

Our concern led us to consider the formats used by the guidelines we reviewed. Two of the existing guidelines had sections that intrigued us. The University of Melbourne's "Managing your Electronic Mail" guidelines has a question and answer format called "Checklist for disposal of electronic documents." We also liked the University of Cincinnati's six short guidelines for "ensuring effective, efficient, and legal retention and disposition of electronic mail." We decided rather than create another set of guidelines we would create a more fluid document based on the questions raised by employees. We believed that a brief, web-based Q & A format, something like the typical FAQ pages many websites offer, might be something that employees might actually read and consult.

In developing the FAQs we still faced several challenges.

1. Decentralized email systems.

While UNC has moved to a unique id system and has a primary campus email system, Duke has over 50 email systems running (that we know about). Duke is moving to a unique id system but it is not linked to employee email.

2. Different email applications.

Unlike the corporate world, we can't force campus units to use the same email software. Even UNC, with its mostly centralized email network, has numerous software packages interfacing their system.

3. No central repository for permanent electronic records.

Duke is in the planning stages, but permanent electronic records are maintained by the originating unit at present (if at all).

4. Retention schedules only in early stages of implementation.

Schedules are still a new concept at Duke, and while more established at UNC, still have a paper record emphasis

5. Promotion, training, and use of guidelines.

Plans to promulgate the FAQs needs to be developed once pages are live.

Guideline format

With those challenges in mind, we began to draft some initial FAQs. We wanted them to be:

• Brief format (one screen)
• Easy to add on
• Not software specific

Our first six were:

• Is email considered an official University record at UNC/Duke?
• Should I handle my personal email differently than my work email (UNC/Duke)?
• What email can I delete?
• How do I file the email I need to keep?
• When and how should I save email attachments?
• What information should a printed email message include?
  

Testing the FAQs

Our next step was to test the FAQs. With funding from a Duke/UNC collaboration grant, we held a 50 person workshop last March 10th at Duke with roughly an even number of Duke and UNC participates. Attendees were selected from the interviewee pool and "project groupies" on each campus who had expressed interest in our project. Our workshop ran from 9:30 to 1:30 with lots of refreshments and lunch (the carrot). We also scheduled the workshop to coincide with spring break on each campus. The six FAQs were divided among the project team members and each explained "their" FAQ to the attendees. Over lunch, we broke into pre-assigned groups of roughly eight each. Project team members led the discussion about a FAQ. After lunch we presented the results back to the group.

Results

So what did we learn?

• They liked the FAQ format
• No one said would read longer information; they preferred even shorter ones and suggested we sub-divide questions
• Clear definitions are needed for all FAQs. Make they are sure jargon-free as much as possible
• Need more IT involvement-both in training for IT staff to be records-management/archives aware themselves and for them to pass info along to users.
• The issue of "ownership" needs to be clarified, i.e., what really belongs to the university (public or private)? Is personal email on a university server university property?
  

Next steps? Web presence for FAQs

From the comments and workshop discussion, we felt that the participants liked the FAQ concept and mostly liked the initial content. In trying to develop the web presence, Megan and our project manager (Kim Chang) found it difficult to map the paper FAQs we discussed at the workshop into a web interface that presented the content in an interesting and effective manner. Going to back the workshop comments, they broke the FAQs into smaller parts and looked for a different question framework. We also developed five FAQ categories to provide an organizational matrix for the information:

• Guidelines and Policies
• Keeping and Deleting
• Management
• Access & Security
• Training
• Definitions

We then revised the FAQs to use actual questions from survey respondents (with some edits for clarity). We also included FAQs on behaviors we want to encourage (such as filing, separation of personal email, etc.). Our next goal is to test the FAQ matrix with campus IT folks and project "groupies." We are also hoping to involve you in this project by getting our colleagues to examine the site. The URL is:
http://ils.unc.edu/digitaldesktop/TEST/FAQ/index.html