Today, the topic of the day was ediscovery. Lucky for those of us in the IT world, the federal government decided to update the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to better suit our legal system in this "digital age". Basically, we're required to archive, backup and maintain all electronic information. This includes email, instant messaging and even includes websites visited in some extreme cases. If the e-documents that were requested aren't provided the institution could be subject to things like monetary fines, sanctions and beyond that, could even affect the outcome of a court case. One example would be a superintendent of a school district who was busted for surfing child porn at work. The IT staff were smart enough to keep a log of all the websites that users visited. Bad news is, they didn't cache the websites and when the judge asked them to prove that the website was child porn (it had been taken down and was a godaddy placeholder when the judge looked at it) they couldn't do it. The superintendent got his job back and is still working in the district. So..adverse court rulings, that's a pretty big reason to comply. The sad part is, no one understands the full complexity of the issue of non-compliance and since it's such a huge job to tackle, no one wants to face it either. I've been trying to rally the state technology directors and coordinators to get our ISP, who services over 80% of the schools in the state, to comply with this. They want us to do all the legwork even though it is their legal responsibility to comply. I tried to get together some support, and the ISP even offered to facilitate a working group for us to come together and plan a solution, but I believe they did this because they think nothing will come of it. Realistically, how impossible is it going to be to get all of the tech directors together at one time to discuss anything? We're all too busy to even sleep most of the time. So today, in a desperate move, I decided to corner our superintendent for a few minutes to explain the issue to him and see what his take was on it. Thankfully he's going to contact the school attourney and find out how serious the issue really is for us..and he will back me in pushing the ISP to provide a solution if necessary. But man..the appliances that people are selling to take care of e-mail archiving and internet content record alone..the prices are unreal! I was looking at a model that topped out at 500 gb of space. They want $50,000 to purchase it and then $20,000 per year for support and maintenance. WHAT?! It's basically a glorified packet sniffer with a hard drive attached to it ..the thing your paying the most for is the application that they've created that saves the captured packets and leaves them in a user-friendly state for later reference and retrieval. $50,000? They know schools are becoming desperate to comply and I'll bet $50,000 that some schools are paying this outrageous price too. I'll keep you updated on my crusade to archive every piece of electronic media in the state educaitonal system...if you want to read more about ediscovery, google it, you will find plenty to keep you busy.
I'm going to end with a gripe. Sorry folks, but I have to get it out somewhere. Let me toss a question at you. What do you do with a user who refuses to learn. It's not that they CAN'T learn, I know better. It's a complete refusal. It has to be. I've instructed this person numerous times, taking a different approach each time. They've even sat through a 3 hour instruction by yours truly on basic file management. Yet they keep doing the same things wrong, over and over. They keep blaming the issues on the computer instead of themselves and I'm pretty much at the end of my rope when it comes to patience. I've gone as far as to suggest to their superior that they take college classes. I don't know what else I can do, but I may flip out if I keep getting spammed with mail bouncebacks and things like "I don't know where I saved that file to, I don't think the computer saved it right". Any suggestions? I believe I've done all I can do.
In other news, we're getting a new TV, my Xbox broke..going on number 3, and I really need a vacation...from the county.
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