In particular, think about solutions for recovering messages from Notes, Domino servers, Outlook PST files, Exchange servers, Hotmail, Gmail, and so forth.

I'd really like to get your expert input on this. From Lotus experts, I'd like to get any input possible on the question of whether deleted emails can be recovered from NSF files and what you might recommend if a large customer came to you and said, "We lost 5 million email messages from Notes/Domino. Can you help us get them back?" What technical steps are possible?

Likewise, from you Outlook and Exchange experts, I'd like you to comment constructively on the question of whether deleted messages can be recovered from PST files or from Exchange stores and what you might recommend if a large customer came to you and said, "We lost 5 million email messages from our Exchange server. Can you help us get them back?" What technical approaches might you use?

Also consider the second problem, that of archiving. There are easy technical solutions in place, but it's made more complicated by the Hatch Act, which requires political activities to be conducted without Federal resources. Should we modify the Hatch Act? I know that's technically a political question, but sometimes we need to change our laws to take into account technical realities. How can we ensure that verifiable records exist if we use outside firms to do the archiving? What about archiving messages from senior White House staffers' private accounts, AOL accounts, Gmail accounts, and so forth?

The third problem is also interesting. Incoming presidents demand the ability to fully change-up the executive branch. This often goes as far as choosing people to lead the CIA, members of the Defense Departments Joint Chiefs of Staff, and, as we've seen, internal email systems.

Clearly, letting politicians, rather than IT experts, make decisions on changing email systems and migrating to new technology is a bad idea. Likewise, doing a migration like that from Notes to Outlook in wartime is a bad idea. So what can we do? How can we give maximum flexibility to incoming administrations while preventing them from shooting themselves in the foot with a bad IT decision? Again, please be constructive.

What to send me
I'm not asking you to go wild on this. I know all of you are very busy. As I've mentioned, we'll include a link back to your site in the article, which could be quite valuable.

You can send me the following things:

• Three or four paragraphs per solution you want to explore. You can explore only one problem area, two, or all three.
• Your full name, and, if you want, your company name.
• A very short summary of your job qualifications, something like "I'm CTO here and I've been working with large Notes installations since 1994".
• A URL back to your Web site.

Those of you outside the United States are also welcome to respond. Please submit your comments to editor@zatz.com with the subject "WHITE HOUSE EMAIL SOLUTIONS". Deadline is July 19th. Anything that comes in after that will probably not be included.

One final thought: don't underestimate who might be reading this. We know many of our readers are in the Federal government. There is both a good chance you might actually help to solve this problem by sending in your suggestions and, although a bit of a longer shot, you might actually get called on for a gig to help out in a more tangible and profitable way.

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Ian Cherrill is a Product Manager at 4NF Information Technology Ltd. He can be reached at ian@4nf.co.uk.