In article <2264197.UPJNVn817g@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Politicians just don't get IT
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | The president replied that he does use "the Google" (his words) on
> | occasion to "pull up maps" -- "I forgot the name of the program, but
> | you get the satellite ..." -- for viewing his ranch.
> |
> | This exchange has prompted chuckles among techies and non- across the
> | Internets -- another famous reference by Bush from 2004. (More
> | troubling to me in that CNBC interview is Bush's admission that he
> | will not use e-mail: "I don-t e-mail, because of the different
> | record requests that can happen to a president.")
> `----
>
> http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/008606.html
Why is not using email troubling?
In the United States, various government officials and agencies are
subject to record keeping laws that require that certain documents be
preserved for a certain time. It can be a major pain in the ass if you
get some document or correspondence via email and it falls under one of
these record keeping requirements.
Suppose you had an email, and a legal requirement to keep it for 40
years. How would you do it? Save it to CD? It's questionable whether
a CD will last 40 years. Same with tape. What many have found is that
the best way to deal with an email that you are required to preserve for
20 or 30 or 50 years is to *print* it, because the library folks have
figured out how to preserve paper documents for a long time.
The bottom line is that if you are subject to record keeping laws, it
often turns out the best way to handle it is have everything on paper,
stored using a good filing system.
Given that, there is nothing at all troubling with someone not using
email for official business.
--
--Tim Smith
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