Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
June 2008
Enterprise content management (ECM) has been on the verge of mass adoption—both at insurance companies and across the IT landscape—for years now, according to the recent State of the Industry survey from AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association based in Silver Spring, Md. However, even with ECM sitting on the precipice of popular adoption, AIIM finds that it still hasn’t tipped over into the mainstream of IT spending.
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As cited in AIIM’s report, the Department of Commerce’s annual Information and Communication Technology survey found that U.S. companies spend $91.9 billion in non-capitalized expenditures and $141.6 billion in capital expenditures on IT each year. Of these expenditures, $78.9 billion is spent on computers and peripheral equipment and $104 billion is spent on computer software. In spite of this spending, AIIM President John Mancini believes the nearly quarter-trillion dollars spent on IT is disproportionate to the problem facing organizations relative to the management of unstructured information.
The survey polled 308 organizations (insurers accounted for 6% of respondents) ranging in size from one to more than 1,000 employees—53% in the United States—about their ECM knowledge in regard to information management. The majority of companies were not overly confident in their effectiveness in managing, controlling and utilizing electronic information.
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Posted in Compliance Management, E-Discovery | No Comments »
Friday, November 2nd, 2007
From: www.cio.com – Judi Hasson, CIO - October 30, 2007
No one wants to be sued, that’s for sure. But in today’s litigious world, it is rare that any company can escape a lawsuit in its business life. It is becoming the CIO’s job to make sure, when the time comes, that IT is ready for the onslaught of directives to turn over all electronic documents in a legal case. And that’s where the headaches start for any IT department that does not have a good e-mail retention and retrieval system.
The need for better electronic record keeping evolved nearly a year ago, when the federal government overhauled its rules of civil procedure and made electronic documents an official part of the discovery process during a lawsuit. The rules for what is called "e-discovery" that took effect Dec. 1, 2006, make production of electronic documents as important as turning over hard copies of material in any legal case. Companies typically have 30 days to answer any e-discovery request (though the court may grant extensions) and face thousands of dollars in fines—not to mention risk forfeiting the case—if they fail to respond promptly.
In this new world that marries the legal system with technology, the CIO is adding company archivist to his job description. IT departments must work with the legal department to come up with a plan that saves necessary e-mails and makes them easily retrievable. Yet there are few rules for setting up an electronic records management system, training employees to catalog their e-mail and creating a standard procedure so employees consistently follow the procedures to turn over electronic documents quickly. And so, many CIOs are still scrambling to organize their corporate e-mail and keep track of these records in a comprehensive way.
The key to compliance with e-discovery rules, say legal experts and IT leaders who have already tackled the problem, is to establish enterprisewide document management and retention practices for e-mail and other types of digital documents, then deploy the appropriate software to support them. "You can achieve a lot of protection, reduce your risk and reduce the cost of discovery by adopting reasonable, repeatable and scalable processes and tools," says John Rosenthal, a partner and co-chair of the e-discovery committee at Howrey, a Washington, D.C., law firm.
Here are ways to get ready for the inevitable:
1. Get in sync with legal and business leaders.
"The problem with e-discovery is the first time it hits your radar screen is when the general counsel calls and tells you what the court wants," says Paul Zazzera, a consultant and former CIO at Time. To mitigate such surprises, IT and legal should work to develop processes, policies and tools for saving e-mail that everyone in the company follows. "A CIO and the legal department should be fused at the hip," Zazzera says.
And don’t leave business leaders out of the discussion. "Too many CIOs think of litigation as something that belongs to the legal department," says Leslie Wharton, who heads the e-discovery team at the Arnold and Porter law firm. "Litigation is something that belongs to the company, and whether the company is a plaintiff or defendant, the company [as a whole] must be able to meet document preservation and production obligations."
Such preparation makes you "discovery ready," according to Mark Reichenbach, the former director of discovery and regulatory response with Merrill Lynch., rather than needing to react to litigation or regulatory investigations when they come up. Some companies have even begun to appoint cross-functional e-discovery teams to address the issue, adds Zazzera, run either by IT or the general counsel’s office.
2. Get rid of unneeded documents.
For example, if the statute of limitations has passed in a tax case or environmental issue, delete the associated records. Many companies keep data from legacy systems that are obsolete, so there’s no business reason—and unlikely any legal reason—to have them around, observes Julie Brickell, associate general counsel at Altria Corporate Services, which handles tobacco litigation for affiliate Philip Morris USA.
Defining what you should preserve is murky, however, and depends on what kind of business you’re in. Most important, says Zazzera, is to have a consistent policy for what is permissible to delete—and what is not. Have the same rules for e-mail as for other electronic documents.
"You really have to think through a policy about everything," Zazzera says. "What records you are keeping and how you are keeping them." Most companies will say that all electronic and paper documents generated by company employees on company property can become part of the e-discovery record. But there are gray areas. For example, if a person sends a personal e-mail using a company computer, should that be turned over in e-discovery? And if a person sends e-mail from his own computer about company business, can it be protected?
READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE!!!
Posted in Business Continuity Management, Compliance Management, Disaster Recovery, E-Discovery, General, Risk Management | No Comments »
Friday, August 24th, 2007
The incredibly quick growth of digital data has companies of all sizes scrambling to figure out how to store it and how to use it to make better business decisions.
But they also need to be concerned with how to manage it to comply with rules introduced last December that dictate the way electronic evidence is used in legal proceedings.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) pose a special challenge for SMBs, notes a recent E-Commerce Times article, because they generally lack a dedicated internal legal team to deal with the related issues. And the outside legal counsel hired by many SMBs often lacks federal experience, which will be needed if a lawsuit involves interstate commerce, says an e-discovery expert in the article.
So what’s an SMB to do? The article’s major point is that proactive planning is always preferable to a reactive strategy that won’t kick in until a lawsuit is filed.
Do some research on where possible electronic evidence may be found and how to preserve it. While a formal, documented process for dealing with such data is best, just knowing where the data is located is a good first step.
Another piece of good advice, from an IT Business Edge interview with the CEO of Solix Technologies, a provider of e-discovery software, New E-Discovery Rules Will Change Document Management: Consider a single tool for managing data rather than multiple tools for documents, e-mail, electronic chats and applications.
Posted in Compliance Management, E-Discovery | No Comments »
