It's easy once you know what he's talking about

Telephone technician comes to see this city's IT support manager. "He had a question: Who is in charge of the e-mail lists?" reports a pilot fish in the know. 

What do you mean? There are lots of lists, manager tells tech.

Tech tells manager that a city council member called him and asked who's in charge of the e-mail distribution lists.

Baffled manager explains that IT makes the changes to internal lists in response to the needs of the individuals responsible for that function or project.

And for e-mailings that go out to the general public, members of the public sign up themselves for the lists they want, either by mail, phone call or the sign-up service on the city's Web site.

Why does the council member want to know? manager asks.

"He wants to come by and make sure all the lists are right," says tech.

"Right?" Since the public lists are self-subscribing and the project lists are subscribed by the staff involved, they'll all be right based on the public's desires or the project's needs.

Then the light bulb comes on for the manager: There's an election for city council in six weeks. His conclusion: The council member wants to make sure that all the "right" people he's supporting are on all the lists.

"Support manager didn't want to speculate on what the council member would want done if the list was 'wrong' and has the 'wrong' people on it," says fish.

"He told the tech to have the council member contact the CIO to discuss his questions."

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