True. I just yesterday got my .mil computer back from a reimageing. Which is one of the reasons my emails (and everyone elses) are stored o the DISA server. In fact the most annoying thing about getting a new image is waiting while outlook re downloads my whole mailbox. Takes forever.
The only time the .gov computers have "lost" email in my 13 years of full time work for them is when we switched exchanges. And there was 6 months of emails and warnings that would happen.
Yup. I can't believe any .gov office would still have local mailservers, leaving it up to local network admins (often collateral duty) to backup mail whenever they get around to it and on whatever schedule.
Data, on the other hand, is another story. There are supposed to be rules for it, but there is no .gov-wide requirement to backup data to centralized servers. Part of it is due to bandwidth. Often field offices just don't have the bandwidth to be able to backup all computers to someplace in DC or wherever. While there are "rules" for daily backup, I saw my share of those rules being ignored or modified. For instance, site admins would do daily backups and offsite backups of whatever was stored on the local servers, but they would leave it up to individual users to put their files on the server. So if somebody had a bunch of important files on their assigned computer, but didn't move copies to the local server, if the computer crashed, those files were just gone.
Again, I saw this mostly at field sites. A DC or other big regional office would generally have the staff and bandwidth to back everything up centrally, and offsite for COOP. Though from what I've been reading, IRS IT sounds like kind of a mess all around. At least the management part.
