Re:not only at schools... (Score 2, Interesting)

This is a policy failure at a CTO level. It indicates that no adequate policy exists. If that is the case, then it follows that the company is likely to be hurt by any lawsuit that suppenaes records, as well as opening up the company to suits by empoyees. There is no excuse at all for ever including a 20mb PowerPoint presentation in email, unless it is ultra secret and no one else should see it. Even then, why would it be in that form. Yes, I understand that there are a few high-level circumstances where such info must be kept absolutely secure, but to send it through email without encrytion negates that premise. Within a company, assuming that they have a resonable secured network, there is no need to send this things all over -- in fact it is an offense to good business practice. Almost all modern mail clients can handle URLs effectively. Most modern business tools can handle multiple simultaneous edits of content. The concept is called Groupware. Adobe claims to invented it, but it is simply a combination of the USENET, FTP, and web technologies. Regardless of platform combinations, there are tech solutions available. The key is documentation, education, and a little bit of technology, in that order. In your quest for senior management to adopt and enforce reasonable standards, which might get you a good promotion or raise, here are a few points to help. If the network load on the mail servers was reduced, what would be the cost savings? Fewer employees, less maintainance, higher uptime? If all staff involved in a project could simultaneously edit a presentation, document, graphic, etc., and then they could be discussed as a group, how much time would be saved? How many manhours? How much diskspace/server time? If each employee was able to see the proposed changes by the others, how much duplication of effort could be eliminated? Sending out a document (in any form) via email can only tell you who recieved it. A web server can tell you not only who viewed the document, but which pages they viewed. Think about it. "I disagree with your whole presentation." "Umm, but according to the logs, you never looked past the opening page, Mr. Ihateyou, would you like to see the rest? I can do it now, but I assumed that we all had seen it." It can also tell you how long the viewer spent on each page, although this is subject to many other factors. It can also tell who dialed in from home to read the pages again. If I were a manager, and thankfully I no longer am, this would be one factor that I would care about. Who cared about it enough to give it a second round? Again, I say: documentation, education, and a little technology. The order is significant. First the policy is defined, in writing and distributed to all employees. Then we teach them to use the tools they have been ignoring. Then we provide the bridge. Pretty simple, eh? Like I said before, do you want a big raise or promotion? This is a great opportunity for you. One caveat is to know all of the solutions for what you propose before you propose them. The best way to do this is to get "unofficial" outside quotes, on the nature of "what if", from at least 3 sources before you take on the task. You can find references to much of that info here. "What if we used Apache and Php to set up group-password protected areas to handle group documents?" What would the cost be? Or do we even have such functionality available now, in our existing network stucture? Next is to discover the impact on the decision makers. Does your CEO actually handle his own mail or does his admin handle it for him. This is an important point. Does your CTO (or vp technology, or CIO, or director of Technical Operations) handle their own email or do they pawn it off? I once had a CEO who would have his secretary read all of his email and fax him copies of the most important (in her estimation) ones to him wherever he was. To all others, she would simply reply that he was too busy to be bothered by their email. She did this for two years with the CEO's wife and mistress, before she got caught and fired. :-) Anyone, unless they have an MSCE could quickly configure your network for such information sharing. My intent is not to demean those that have an MSCE certificate, but instead to imply that such changes require experience and such servers are better not left to NT. Oh geeze, I'm gonna get basted alive by the NT folks, so let me amplify. In my humble opinion, NT is now able to compete with certain variants on the front end. I respect the work of David Crocker in creating this platform, as he did so many other places. I respected his work in creating VMS, although I hated it from the first day I saw it. NT2000 is far worse than VMS in that it, oh never mind.... Regardless of the platform that your business has adopted, you can make a difference. You can stop the bloat, at least within your company. I wish you luck. Contact me if you need some advice.