This has nothing to do with current controversies regarding email and email servers!
It is about any legal restrictions on who can be in an email distribution list (the list of all emails that a post goes to) of a company. I have run into seemingly silly restrictions on who is allowed to be included in a distribution list. At first I attributed it to some silly exercise of power in the first organization (a government, not that it matters). But I have run into this in several different places both public and private. Not everyone is silly in the same way!
I can understand restricting the distribution list to only people that are part of the organization and have a need to know the information. That is in fact the purpose of the distribution list.
But after years of efficient operation, a couple of organizations I am familiar with are restricting distribution lists to only the group of people in that division. Other employees of the organization with a clear need to know are being excluded. Not from the email, main office’s solution to the problem is to add them each time to addressee block of the email. But their email addresses can’t be in the distribution list.
Has anyone heard of a legal case forcing organizations to behave in this odd way? Or has anyone heard of another reason why the membership in a organizational email distribution list is important enough to have difficult restrictions attached to them?
I wouldn’t normally be so puzzled, but it has occurred in several organizations I am aware of in the last 5 years.
The only thing I can think of would be the Sarbanes Oxley (or whatever passes for that law now). All communication within a company has to be preserved for possible investigations. By limiting who gets an email, it is possible to show certain people probably did not know certain things. Best to not circulate any comments or information that is not specifically demanded by the moment.
Or, it could be that inter-departmental communication without the specific approval each time of the boss is not desirable - you’re looking for logic in the operation of a large organization. This is a rarity. It’s likely a policy that got twisted out of recognition, originally intended to simply limit the email flood. Some projects or groups like to flood everyone remotely connected to an issue with every piece of trivia.
I suspect you are correct on the last.
the organization is trying to limit the number of people on the distribution list to limit the email flood. By allowing individual addresses to be added, they allow the people who need to know access, but impose a cost on the sender (the time it takes).
If so, it is yet another example of “improving” an organization with another rule rather than training the employees to be better at their job. Sigh.
I don’t know how the organizations you’re talking about have their email system set up- but in addition to the organization-wide distribution lists at my employer ( which are set up by title and/or location and centrally updated as people change roles and location), I can also set up my own distribution list (including people outside the organization) when it’s worthwhile. That is, there’s an list of all employees in Title A, and one of all employees who work at location C. If I frequently need to send emails to all people in Titles A & B, at locations C & D or a specific group of people at in different titles at various locations , I can set up my own list including only those people.
But assuming that’s not possible at these organizations , I don’t see how it’s ““improving” an organization with another rule rather than training the employees to be better at their job” since the rule seems to be preventing people from getting unnecessary emails and apparently depending on people’s common sense wouldn’t work. Again, I don’t know about the organizations you’re talking about, but in my experience there are many issues that have a list of people who need to know specific to that issue that doesn’t exactly overlap with the people who need to know about a different issue * and it may be that these organizations have had an issue with people sending emails to a entire distribution list because the sender doesn’t want to spend a minute individually selecting the necessary addresses. Even your complaint makes it seem like that’s the case- if you think it’s imposing a cost on the sender to add an individual email address , it would be even more time consuming to delete multiple addresses (of people who don’t need the email) from the distribution list and people likely wouldn’t do it.
For example, if I want to transfer a case to Location 1, the email goes to titles A,B, and D at location 1 and titles B,C,and D at my location. If location 1 rejects the transfer that email goes to titles A,B,C and D at my location and B,C and D at location 1. If my location disputes the rejection, the email goes from title D at my location to title D at location 1. If the dispute is not solved at that point, the next email includes titles D & E at both locations. We’ve got 40 locations in my division, and it would be impossible to set up easily distinguishable distribution lists for every possible permutation.