Reply-all e-mail storm hits State

WASHINGTON — Many "reply all" fiascos result in mere embarrassment, but American diplomats have been told they may be punished for sending mass responses after an e-mail storm nearly knocked out one of the State Department's main electronic communications systems.

A cable sent last week to all employees at the department's Washington headquarters and overseas missions warns of unspecified "disciplinary actions" for using the "reply to all" function on e-mail with large distribution lists.

The cable, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, was prompted by a major interruption in departmental e-mail caused by numerous diplomats hitting "reply all" to an errant message inadvertently addressed and copied to several thousand recipients.

"Department staff hitting 'reply to all' on an e-mail with a large distribution list is causing an e-mail storm on the department's OpenNet e-mail system," says the unclassified cable that was sent Thursday by Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy.

He said the result was "effectively a denial of service as e-mail queues, especially between posts, back up while processing the extra volume of e-mails."

The cable orders employees to "take immediate action" to ensure they and their colleagues are "aware of the negative impact of hitting 'reply all'" and to delete e-mails addressed to large numbers of people that they might receive in error.

"Anyone who disregards these instructions will be subject to disciplinary actions," Kennedy wrote in the cable, which begins: "Please ensure widest distribution of this message."

Officials said the storm started when some diplomats used the 'reply all' function to respond to a blank e-mail sent recently to many people on the department's global address list.

Most demanded to be removed from the list while others used 'reply all' to tell their co-workers, in often less than diplomatic language, to stop responding to the entire group, the officials said.

Some then compounded the problem by trying to recall their initial replies, which generated another round of messages to the group, they said.

Comments

[ThinkEvenMore]

After listening to the horror stories I have heard over the years, I guarantee it will happen again. There are tools to prevent this - Permessa for instance, or Sperry's Reply To All Monitor. It seems a bit harsh to enforce disciplinary action for an error that technology can correct so easily.

[scrambledeggs]

The article keeps saying that "diplomats" were creating/perpetuating the email storm. Not everyone who works for the dept is a diplomat...I work at the dept and have seen all the emails, and maybe I'm snide to point this out, but the vast majority of replies were not sent by diplomats but by support staff, plus a few contractors.

[tables7]

Funny, I actually had to use the state department website today and it's down.

[ignorantwillyharper]

If we have this many government employee's to burn down a system, maybe a house cleaning would be part of the answer.
What ever happen to small government and little spending...on that was that bunch that's leaving office in a few days. These guy's must have written and lived the script "The gang That Couldn't Shoot Stright".

[karinova]

I have long wondered why the "Reply All" button is so prominent in email applications.
It never made sense to me that it should be a one-click operation, for precisely this reason.
"Reply All" has been a well-known problem since Day One.

Simple solution: make "Reply All" a drop-down option of "Reply."
Duh.

[Horus45]

Not all email programs are the same, some do have the option you describe.

[boolbada]

I work for State. We have 10s of thousands of users in the US and all over the world. Less than 8000 are Foreign Service Officers, most are Foreign Service Nationals, locally hired employees, using English as their second language. They work hard and do a lot. I'm sure the Secretary of State is all over this issue and will come the defense of the folks who work for her shortly. Actually, I'm not that sure, but I guess we'll have to wait and see what she does.

[Twopennygal]

To those belaboring "technological nitwits," you should also be aware that at least 90% of computer users in all walks of life are technological nitwits. Even those of us who know our ways around a computer are occasionally technological nitwits.

[Dayahka]

Why don't the system administrators simply make reply-all e-mails unavailable to most people? Punishing people for using the function is pretty silly. Does anyone in government have any technological know-how? Bunch a yahoos!

[ojisout]

So before a terrorist attack, Al Qaeda merely need send some flack at Foggy Bottom a chain letter and cripple State's ability to communicate. I feel so safe.

[optimize]

Simply the result of "doing more with less" on a global scale, as the State dept. has been doing now since about 2003. The system is probably not built to withstand the volume that has been added in this new age of web 2.0 diplomacy.
Maybe Obama can get State more resources relative to DoD. Even Gates agrees.

[bobdob]

This is what happens when you allow technologically clueless nitwits to sit in front of a computer. Some admin should remove the "Reply All" button from the toolbar. That would solve 99% of the problem.

[awpoopy]

It's called OpenNet and it's a Microsoft Exchange / Cisco mess. Maybe, once Obama gets in office we can move to a more stable environment of Linux and BSD systems. (Some may not know - Apple is running FreeBSD underneath) For too long, Microsoft has been on a downward spiral of security holes and stability issues.
How many times was the fix for your windows computer, "Reboot it and see if that fixes it." Guess what -- The same applies for the Microsoft servers. We IT guys get more grey hair wondering how long it will take for that MS box to reboot and hoping with crossed fingers and toes that the boss won't yell too much if the word files that were open aren't too corrupted or the locked up exchange box doesn't kill it's own databases when it died.
We should all expect more for our infrastructure - especially since we took out a very large - high interest rate loan to pay for it.

Demand more from our government. Demand Open Source. Reduce security issues, stabilty issues and cost. Nothing Microsoft makes is good - in *any* sense of the word. (pun intended)

[sparkey]

Starting to get the dreaded 'comment pending' messages again. I never have this problem on raw story. It's starting to annoy me.

[LWkcma]

garbage in ----garbage out

[Yves Papa]

That reminds me of a time at work where our IT person inadvertently put a client on a message meant to be internal only. I hit "reply to all" and the poor dude ended ragging on me when our boss told us he noticed while the message was rather innocuous. Bark on, buddy.

[SiberianRat]

Glad our taxpayer dollars go to hire only the best and brightest.

[Ciganka]

Why not take the exam and see how you stack up against the good folks at foggy bottom? Come on, every organization has technical problems from time to time, the system is in overload and needs to be upgraded. Let us not forget that technology is supposed to serve us, not the other way around.