Reducing Costs And Risks Associated With The Preservation Of Electronically Stored Information Through The Remediation Of Legacy Data

http://ow.ly/8EvjX

An article by Matthew Cohen and Brendan Sullivan posted on the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel website.

This article article discusses methods that can be used to limit data preservation costs.

The article discusses the following topics, and provides insight into potential costs savings associated with each issue:

• Data Mapping
• Is It OK For Organizations To Dispose Of Legacy Data? 
• Framework For The Remediation Of Legacy Data 
• What is Legacy Data?

The article in the discussion of disposal of legacy data poses the following questions:

1. Is the retention policy under which the documents are to be destroyed “reasonable”?
2. Are the documents subject to destruction under the policy relevant to past litigation/investigations and if so, with what frequency?
3. Was the retention policy adopted in bad faith? 

With respect to the framework that can be followed to possibly permit deletion of legacy data, the article states, "The process used by the authors to assist clients in analyzing and disposing of legacy data is by necessity flexible and is adapted to suit the particular requirements and circumstances of each project. It is based upon five fundamental steps:

• Catalog and understand the organization’s retention needs and preservation obligations;
• Create an inventory of information that must be retained or preserved – the “obligations matrix”;
• Inventory and categorize legacy data;
• Filter legacy data through the obligations matrix;
• Dispose of data that has no business value and that is not subject to retention or preservation obligations."