One of the many shifts the emerging technologies bring us, is the almost unlimited possibilities of recording information, and moreover of transport and dissemination of information - and people make use of it. I am not directly referring to databases that may often have equivalents in paper index cards trays or filing cabinets. Instead, let us look at electronic mail as an example, of which most of us have personal experience today. Apart from the technology, e-mail appears to be a rather new sort of communication, a socially interesting mixture of what we might call informal and formal communications. That mixture is rather complex.
Some messages are merely informal, some doubtless are formal instead.
Many messages, however, have a mixed nature, containing both information with a personal flavour and formal business information. In the paper environment many messages would not have been recorded, or rather, never have been transmitted in any kind of written format. But the White House case is certainly not the only possible example. At each level of society we may find similar cases. But, if it is not possible to bind messages to business processes, then we cannot apply functional appraisal.