In my last blog posting, I discussed e-Discovery in an untethered world and highlighted the e-discovery challenges associated with mobile devices such as the iPad.  Today I’m going to talk about a way to reduce the cost and complexity associated with preservation and collection of these devices – information management.  This is not new – ARMA International has been around since 1955.  However, the centralization, storage, and management of information is becoming more critical than ever in today’s electronic, all-access world.

Centralization & Storage

Having data centralized in one (or a few) location(s) is key to efficient preservation and collection.  When unique data pools exist in a myriad of locations, costs and complexities for preservation and collection can skyrocket.  While a company doesn’t need to turn off the functionality of mobile and untethered devices to store data, they should consider ways to implement timely and tracked replication to centralized devices.  Note that this replication could be multi-step – for example, a smart phone could replicate to a laptop in specific locations (e.g. My Documents), and the laptop could replicate the “My Documents” content to a centralized server.

This type of configuration could be beneficial to both legal and information technology.  Legal can not only save cost associated with preservation and collection, but also reduce the risk associated with not identifying and preserving unique data pools.  Information technology can reduce the cost associated with recovery of lost data from unique data sources, and understand quickly the information exposure if a user’s mobile device is lost or stolen.

Management

It is not sufficient solely to implement a technology that centralizes and minimizes unique data pools.  A company must also build in a management and retention process for that data.  Otherwise, the size of the centralized data pool can quickly grow out of control.  Storage is cheaper than ever these days, but it’s not free. 

Effective management processes would address items such as the following:

• Litigation holds – data that is necessary to be held for current or expected litigation needs to be tracked, at the file or message level, to ensure that it is retained and released accordingly.  A searchable index of the data on litigation would also be beneficial.
• Business records – records that need to be retained for legal or business purposes should be kept in a centralized system that can track, and appropriately remove, records once they have reached their expiration date.
• Essential employee data – information that is critical to the day-to-day operations of the company, but may not be needed for regulatory or legal reasons, should be identified and managed accordingly by the business unit responsible for creation of that data.
• Non-essential employee data – this collection of data can grow quite large, and typically is not purged until the employee leaves.  The management of this data category should include a process that allows the employee to self manage the content, as well as a change in employee behavior (most employees hoard data and do not dispose of it when it is no longer required)

All of this can be overwhelming, and expensive.  In my next blog I’ll discuss ways to approach information management in a phased, cost-effective manner.

About Juilan Ackert

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