Understanding Records Management through Illustration

In case you haven’t seen it, you should check out James Lappin’s records management blog called Thinking Records. He blogs on a variety of records management topics, but does so with a twist. Over the past two months, he’s been doing an animated series on the Ontario Email Deletion Scandal. I think this is such a easy-to-understand way to convey information about the whole case from closing of the gas plant to the investigation into missing emails to the way the server handles email. So far, there are five parts to the story:

• The Ontario E-mail Deletion Scandal (Part 1)
• The Ontario E-mail Deletion Scandal (Part 2) – The Investigation Begins
• The Ontario E-mail Deletion Scandal (Part 3) – The Microsoft Exchange Server
• The Ontario E-mail Deletion Scandal (Part 4) – The RAID Server
• The Ontario E-mail Deletion Scandal (Part 5) – The Backup Tapes

In yesterday’s most recent post, Mr. Lappin summarized the story so far:

A member of the Ontarian Parliament has alleged that Craig MacLennan had broken Ontario’s Archives and Recordkeeping Act by deleting e-mails relating to two controversial gas plant closures.  The Information and Privacy Commissioner is investigating.  All other attempts to locate, restore or salvage the e-mails of Craig MacLennan having failed, the last hope lies with the backup tapes.

Stay tuned for upcoming episodes and follow his blog here. I hope to see more stories like this in the future!