Everywhere you look right now, Information Governance, “IG,”
has taken center stage. I have had the
pleasure of speaking twice in a week on the topic – once to records managers at
ARMA’s Northeast Regional Conference and once to litigators at McDermott’s
Technology in the Law Symposium. Why is
IG so hot and why is it overtaking the discussion on eDiscovery?
IG is the
Next Big Thing because it is a catch-all concept that covers a lot of currently
important ground: compliance, data
ethics and breaches, data management and intelligence, workflow, visualization
and analytics. All of these elements
play a key part in IG, and always have.
So, why is it hot now? The
biggest factor is the Target data breach of over 70 million customers’ personal
data. The scope of the breach (nearly
25% of all American citizens were affected) and the wall-to-wall media coverage
has helped propel responsible data management into the forefront of society’s
concerns. In fact, a Pew Research study in January found that over 50% of Americans are “worried
about the amount of personal information available about them…” The IG train of responsible data management
has left the proverbial station and is speeding its way through the legal
system, through Wall St., and through consumers’ concerns and buying
behavior. Nothing speaks louder than
consumers and their wallets. For Target,
“Satisfactionwith the overall shopping experience was down almost 2 percentage points inMarch, with declines “most acute” among middle-and-upper-income shoppers”
as late as April, 2014 -four months after the breach was announced.
Why is the IG discussion eclipsing the eDiscovery discussion?
For
starters, eDiscovery is old news. The
earliest uses of the phrase stem from 2004, nearly a decade ago, and well
before the FRCP changes in late 2006.
Today most litigants, and certainly their outside counsel & advisors
are very familiar with its concepts. In
fact, most service providers in legal, lit support or eDiscovery already have a
wealth of tools and solutions to choose from.
Need Early Case Assessment? ESI
Processing? Predictive Coding for Doc
Review? There are a plethora of
solutions, all heavily vying for your attention. The truth is, it’s just not that complicated
anymore and the solutions have decreased so much in cost that almost all
solutions are accessible to almost all matters.
In short, eDiscovery has become as exciting as word processing or
scanning.
But the
eDiscovery blahs are only half the reason for the decline in discussion. The other half is that intelligent IG encompasses
eDiscovery. eDiscovery is subsumed by
smart DDC (data, document & content) management, right along with
litigation holds, retention policies, workflow routing, exception handling,
data breach response and investigations.
Today, eDiscovery is but one of any number of critical activities undergone
by major corporations all the time. It’s
just not the fire drill it used to be, and those implementing IG will see to
eDiscovery’s needs along the way.
So, where does that leave us?
Unfortunately,
this leaves us woefully and inadequately prepared to handle IG. The passel of eDiscovery tools do little to
solve problems that are much larger than typical litigation matters every
imagined. The the records management
side of the house is of little help with their diminished budgets, and dearth
of tools available for large-scale data mining and management. Thus there is promising opportunity for
IG-oriented solutions that take the best of both worlds, with an eye towards
intelligent DDC management from the outset. Stay tuned, blog readers, and see where Valora heads next...
