eDiscovery and Records Management a Perfect Storm

http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/eDiscovery-and-Records-Management-a-Perfect-

Article by Mark Mandel, RM Practice Manager at OpenText Public Sector Solutions, Inc., posted on the AIM.org website.

This article discusses the connections in the relationship between I.T., eDiscovery and Records Management.

As the article states, eDiscovery obligations attach to electronic communications, in a corporate environment, whether or not the communication constitutes and official business record.

As the article states, "...rather than having RM become an afterthought it needs to effectively deal with as much of the ESI landscape as possible.

The ultimate objective is to accomplish these critical functions:

Effectively classify and categorize ESI so that eDiscovery is less costly, less resource intensive, and more complete.

Provide mechanisms to search for relevant ESI and place it on litigation hold, culling it to package all that is required for court cases.

Provide mechanisms to destroy ESI according to published retention policy, in a manner that will stand up in court.

Accomplish all of this in the most effective and efficient manner, with the least impact on end users.

Do this while at the same time addressing IT needs to ensure optimum performance of production systems such as Email, document management and tracking systems, and reducing the storage footprint for electronic and physical records."

This is a very informative article and provides insight into issues that will make eDiscovery an important consideration for corporations for the long term future.