The Electronic Communications Compliance Council (TE3C) held its inaugural roundtable discussion this morning in New York City. Participants included charter board members and members of the press, many of whom joined the conference by phone.

The focus of today's discussion and the group's overall focus is on messaging compliance and to some extent on messaging security. The group is promulgating compliance policies, including proposed guidelines published at www.te3c.com.

The group envisions itself as becoming the authority on messaging policies and regulations, as well as being the catalyst for the development of standards and best messaging practices. It would like to be a catalyst for clarifications of electronic communications compliance regulations as well as an advocate for the development of what it calls "realistically implementable" regulations.

Much of today's discussion focused on the expense and impracticality of some of the archiving regulations, particularly those that have been imposed on financial industry members. At the same time, the group is very aware of unregulated compliance issues, including content regulation that can impact an enterprise's ability to withstand legal action.

TE3C plans to fulfill its objectives by conducting surveys, holding roundtable discussions, and developing industry forums that will expose the issues and discuss solutions to them. It is planning such surveys for the near future and will also solicit and publish white papers on relevant topics.

Charter members of the group include PRISCILLA EMERY of e-Nterprise Advisors who is the TE3C chairperson, Paul Chen of Fortiva, Nancy Flynn of the ePolicy Institute, Peter Mafteiu of BKD Wealth Advisors, and attorney Richard D. Marshall of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham.