White House Upgrade Gone Bad

[jholder]

Ya know... Words can't express....
An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush's lost e-mails: Page 1

[uxbod]

Oops. Probably not heard of Zimbra and the use of ZAD

[Bill Brock]

I thought one didn't have these kind of issues with proprietary solutions. Especially Exchange. :-)

[mmorse]

You forgot the intentional factor

So in the first 2 years trying to make the old lotus archiving system work with the new exchange servers they could at have least started a new archiving setup so that everything would be preserved... Think we have a cure for that (several methods actually) would someone out there get them on the road to recovery and point them at the ZCSExchangeMigrationWizard -jk.

Then again, you always wonder how much mail between 2002 and 2007 was 'accidentally' lost *wink wink, nudge nudge, eyebrows raised with a look of innocence here and there*

Decided to manually grab PST's on a 'periodic' basis!?! Good lord - at least they finally realized how crazy that was and started down the road to putting a server level record in place (plenty of products out there to do this). Oh wait, that had 'inadequacies with segregating official presidential correspondence from political or personal materials' so it was abandoned. (see loophole)

Let the lesson be: Plan. (Or do a better job of faking the inability to fork messages server side!)

The loophole used:

The Presidential Records Act of 1978:
The Act makes clear that the President's records belong to the American public, not to the President or his advisors. The Act requires the President to: take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are maintained as Presidential records.'
The Act also gives important powers and responsibilities to the National Archives and Records Administration, which is headed by the Archivist of the United States. The Archivist's primary responsibility arises at the end of a president's term of office, when he is to "assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President."'
In addition, the Archivist has limited authority over the preservation of presidential records during a President's term. Although the Act gives the President full authority over the management of records during his term, the President is required to obtain the views of the Archivist prior to disposing of any "Presidential records that no longer have administrative, historical, or evidentiary value." The Archivist does not have the authority under the Act to prevent the disposal of these records. He may, however, consult with Congress and require the President to submit a disposal schedule to the appropriate congressional committees 60 days prior to the proposed disposal.'