In October, Professor James L. Kirtley, Jr. published a Faculty Newsletter article which attacked MIT's Reengineering program in general and the mail system in particular. It has spent several millions of dollars and produced a dysfunctional mail system and a bunch of promises. Fortunately for both the Mail Services staff and for the Institute as a whole, what Kirtley saw as permanent problems turned out to be transitional stumbles which have been corrected over time. Early in 1996, Mail Services embarked on an intensive and continuing communications campaign designed to identify and remedy user dissatisfaction, but also to remind the MIT community of the critical resource management issues which made a new mail system so important. Today, the new system is no longer so new.
Users are more familiar with it, and some have even grown to appreciate it.
Best of all, the numbers are in, and the savings and performance appear to justify the effort. It would save them a lot of money, and would cut down on unwanted on-campus mail. Of course, it would also cut down on Mail Services revenues, but I'm pushing for it because I think it's good for the Institute as a whole.