Post by Bret Walker on Mar 7, 2005 16:42:34 GMT -5
This was sent out by Anne Harlan, the director of the FAA Tech Center (where I work) regarding a recent mail storm we had at the TC:
Mail Storm (once again) On Tuesday, a retirement announcement was inadvertently sent to 37,743 people in the FAA. I am actually a friend of Beth Erickson, whose retirement was being announced, and though she is extremely well known and liked within FAA, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know 37,000 people. This was an e-mail message sent to the wrong mailing list by accident. However, that wasn’t what created the overall problem, since one e-mail going to that number of people would only generate 37,743 messages…a lot, but not overwhelming to the system. Unfortunately, 35 people chose to “reply to all” expressing their concern about receiving the message. When you take 36 (the original and the 35 who replied) and multiply it by 37,743, you discover that it produced approximately 1.4 million messages in a short period of time. Compare that to 570,000 messages the system typically processes in a single day. According to the folks in IT, this snafu cost the agency approximately $140,000 in lost productivity not to mention lost tempers. But beyond the lost productivity, those who chose to “respond to all” also lost their e-mail privileges, had to face their supervisors for counseling and ask their supervisors to request their e-mail be reinstated. That’s not something anyone here wants to do. So, please be careful to follow the correct procedure when you want to announce something like a retirement, and no matter what, don’t hit that “reply to all” button if you get an errant message.
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Somehow, I doubt the lost productivity was in the range of $140,000. But whatever. I missed this mail storm, too, it happened on the week I was out sick. See what I miss?
Mail Storm (once again) On Tuesday, a retirement announcement was inadvertently sent to 37,743 people in the FAA. I am actually a friend of Beth Erickson, whose retirement was being announced, and though she is extremely well known and liked within FAA, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know 37,000 people. This was an e-mail message sent to the wrong mailing list by accident. However, that wasn’t what created the overall problem, since one e-mail going to that number of people would only generate 37,743 messages…a lot, but not overwhelming to the system. Unfortunately, 35 people chose to “reply to all” expressing their concern about receiving the message. When you take 36 (the original and the 35 who replied) and multiply it by 37,743, you discover that it produced approximately 1.4 million messages in a short period of time. Compare that to 570,000 messages the system typically processes in a single day. According to the folks in IT, this snafu cost the agency approximately $140,000 in lost productivity not to mention lost tempers. But beyond the lost productivity, those who chose to “respond to all” also lost their e-mail privileges, had to face their supervisors for counseling and ask their supervisors to request their e-mail be reinstated. That’s not something anyone here wants to do. So, please be careful to follow the correct procedure when you want to announce something like a retirement, and no matter what, don’t hit that “reply to all” button if you get an errant message.
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Somehow, I doubt the lost productivity was in the range of $140,000. But whatever. I missed this mail storm, too, it happened on the week I was out sick. See what I miss?