Consulting Journal: Trends

Trends: IM

by David Blakey

Instant messaging may need control.

[Monday 26 May 2003]

IM is instant messaging. If you do not know what IM is and how it is used, then you can find out now. Basically, it is software tool, used over the Internet, that allows two or more people to ‘chat’. Each can type a message into a box and then send that message to the other. It can used for a simple form of conversation. Its use raises several issues for consultants.

IM began as an ‘add-on’ to Web browser software. Some of the most popular Web browsers are packaged with an email client for sending and receiving email messages, a news client for posting and reading messages on news groups, and an IM client. There are also some separate IM clients that are offered independently of browsers. Many people choose to have a separate email client and a separate news agent, anyway. To them, the software bundled with their Web browser is simply ‘bloat’.

The issues

The issues with IM for consultants are: the keeping and archiving of messages; and the authority to use IM. These are actually linked.

Keeping and archiving

With an email message, it is understood that both the sender and receiver may keep copies. As a result, many people take special care with their email messages. They apply the same rules of quality to their email messages as they do to their written letters. Some people are obliged to take this care because the content of an email message may bind them contractually. Some people are obliged to keep their email messages in an orderly manner by law or regulation.

Authorization

Most organizations provide email facilities to their employees. They know that their employees may send and receive email messages. They often have policies and procedures in place for storing and archiving email messages that are created by or received by their employees.

With IM, however, the employer may have no knowledge that their employees have downloaded and are using the software. This means that, in many cases, there is no mechanism in the organization for recording and archiving the messages sent and received using IM.

The problem

In the US, the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, has imposed fines on securities firms for failing to keep copies of email messages in accordance with the Securities Exchange Act 1934. This obliges certain organizations, including brokers and dealers, to preserve ‘originals of all communications received and copies of all communications sent by such member, broker or dealer (including inter-office memoranda and communications) relating to its business as such’. This would apply to IM as well as to email messages.

The problem does not only apply to the securities industry, of course. Every consulting firm should have copies of all correspondence sent and received by their employees that relates to their business.

The solution

The solution is to apply the same rules that apply to email messages to IM messages as well. This will often need new software to be installed to record and archive IM messages. In some extreme cases, it will need the management of the firm to become aware of IM and its use.

I do not see prohibition as a solution. In fact, I rarely see prohibition as the answer to any problem. Attempts by various countries at various times to prohibit the sale and use of various items have usually led to the law being broken by those who are most at risk and whom the prohibition was often intended to protect. People addicted to gambling, alcohol or other substances have been able to find ways to satisfy their compulsion.

Whether the management of a consulting firm personally dislike IM is not the point. It may be around for a while yet.

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