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Whitehouse Emails Were Lost Due to "Upgrade"
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "We now know how the Whitehouse managed to lose about five million emails. It seems that they 'upgraded' their Lotus Notes system, which had an automatic retention and backup system, for Microsoft Exchange, which did not support the automatic system. So they changed it to a manual process, where aides would manually sort emails one by one into individual PST files, which they call a 'journaling' archive system. They're still building a replacement for the retention system. Right when they had one finished, the White House CIO complained that it made Microsoft Exchange too slow, so they hired yet another contractor to build another one, causing a senior IT official to quit in protest. So they still haven't completed the project after almost eight years, and rely on humans to sort millions of emails."
"Strategic Incompetence"
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between subterfuge and sheer incompetence.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with saying "Never blame on malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence."
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The White House's failure to follow records retention laws was due to deficiencies in Microsoft software?
I predict this will lead to a civil, thoughtful Slashdot discussion which results in many useful recommendations for avoiding similar problems in the future.
I recommend fire.
Not to defend microsoft, but COME ON! Who do they have doing their tech support? Is Bush doing it himself?
I find this frankly impossible to believe, and insulting on top of that.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Seriously, this is the least bullshit excuse the could come up with? If ANY corporation in the US tried this kind of thing, the wrath of SARBOX would rain down on them like you wouldn't believe.
Even given the staggering incompetence of the Bush administration in nearly all aspects, this just doesn't pass the laugh test.
1) To bad the Whitehouse isn't using an e-mail system like millions of other people. Wait they are. Like it or not MS Exchange is everywhere.
2) To bad the requirement for e-mail archiving and retention is unique to government. Wait, most publicly traded companies have legal and compliance requirements to do so.
3) To bad there is no market for software to archive and retain e-mail on one of the most common e-mail platforms. Wait, there is, and its huge.
4) To bad nobody has nobody has developed technology for this market. Wait, there are dozens of solutions.
To bad no one is getting fired, imprisoned or impeached over this one.
Or perhaps an example of really good planning. If I was planning to make sure a few million potentially incriminating emails never found their way into the public eye, that is how I might do it. Certainly if I had spent a number of meetings discussing how and when Americans should torture people I would be motivated to do so.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It fits the results better, actually.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.