Pelz-Sharpe Alan Pelz-Sharpe

New e-discovery rules: New opportunity for better lifecycle management

4-Dec-2006

Tags: , Building Business Case, Industry Standards

A little noted but potentially important legal ruling was made in the US last April, and came into force on Dec. 1st. It's buried away in the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure (PDF) but in short, a US Supreme Court rules change means that disputes involving federal litigation are now required to turn-over "electronically stored information." It clarifies and codifies what was previously a grey area, and puts electronic information on the same standing as paper documents. What impact this will have on the management of information remains a little unclear, with conflicting advice coming from law firms. Ideally this is when Record and Document managers (RDMs) should step into the discussion, for as we know even the term "delete" is an ambigious one that should seldom be used. To have any chance of complying with this change in law, electronic information must be managed thoroughly, yet of course it seldom ever is. This is a major opportunity for RDMs to raise their voice and demand that information be subjected to lifecycle management from creation to destruction, as this is the only comprehensive way to meet these requirements. Like any new regulation it will take time to play out in practice, but this is a ruling from the Supreme Court, after all, so it carries a lot of weight -- perhaps enough for RDMs to finally get the ear of the CIO and CEO, but most likely in the short term it will be lawyers (who these days love to specialize in the lucrative practice of e-discovery) making the most noise and money. The RDM community should use this opportunity to press for change

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