eDiscovery Trends: CGOC’s Information Lifecycle Governance Leader Reference Guide

http://ow.ly/aNlUz

An article by Doug Austin posted on the eDiscovery Daily Blog.

This article discusses information governance practices, and looks at ways to prevent sanctions for failure to preserve electronically stored information that may be requested during the discovery phase of litigation.

The author states, "With all of the recent attention on technology-assisted review and current case law related to that subject, it’s sometimes easy to forget that most sanctions are issued because of failure to preserve potentially responsive data. A sound Information Governance (aka Records Management) policy is the first step to enabling organizations to meet their preservation obligations by getting control of the data up front. Organizations such as EDRM and ARMA have focused on Information Governance and have even collaborated on a January report on Information Governance. Another organization focused on Information Governance is the Compliance, Governance and Oversight Council (CGOC). In the fall of 2010, CGOC issued its Information Governance Benchmark Report, which presented findings from their first survey of legal, records management (RIM) and IT practitioners in Global 1000 companies."  Links to the referenced reports are provided in the article, and there is also mention of a recent GGOC report focusing on the economics of eDiscovery.


The article further states, "For most organizations, information volume doubles every 18-24 months and 90% of the data in the world has been created in the last two years. In a typical company in 2011, storing that data consumed about 10% of the IT budget. At a growth rate of 40% (even as storage unit costs decline), storing this data will consume over20% of the typical IT budget by 2014. Accumulating, storing and litigating data without value is simply no longer an economically viable proposition. The 36 page Information Lifecycle Governance Leader Reference Guide (written by Deidre Paknad and Rani Hublou) provides a program for operationalizing an eff­ective defensive disposal program for expired data and overcome the barriers to do so."   The article provides a link that will require registration to download the referenced 36 page report.

The author describes the content of the Information Lifecycle report, as being divided into 5 sections, not including the introduction and conclusion, as follows:

• Defining Program Strategy
• Setting Quantifiable Cost and Risk Reduction Goals 
• Operationalizing the Strategy 
• Program Leadership
• Process Maturity and Management

P.S.  With a continuing convergence taking place of eDiscovery, regulatory compliance, and information governance within corporations, this Information Lifecycle report can prove to be a useful resource for companies that are currently addressing these issues.