Efficient and Cost-effective Email Management With XML

Complying with mandated e-discovery requirements necessitates the use of XML platforms for optimal email management and storage. Multiple factors exist regarding how organizations approach archiving email in terms of their overall email management plans. Typically, organizations must consider whether they regard email storage as fitting into one or more of the following contexts:

• An IT/storage issue—focus is on saving disk space;
• A customer service/sales issue—focus is on providing better customer service by having all customer communication on-line;
• A project management issue—focus is on operating within the (legal) requirements for keeping all correspondence as part of project management; and
• A compliance/liability issue—focus is on finding out and addressing whether there are special rules for keeping email or if your organization is subject to the risk of subpoenas, which can lead to large-scale discoveries and disclosures.

Regardless of how an organization perceives the goal of its email management needs and responsibilities—or, for that matter, the way in which it needs to manage all of its vital information—its ability to develop and implement a technical solution can be a real challenge, particularly when taking into account the various needs across business units.

Reviewing Compliance and Liability

If compliance and/or liability are your organization's primary drivers for implementing an email management solution, you are probably aware of Congress's recently enacted Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which outlines the required procedures for civil suits in federal courts. Of particular relevance for email management are rules 26 and 34, which provide the guidelines for information discovery and disclosure in a civil context. In essence, an organization has the responsibility to make sure it is thorough in identifying and disclosing all possible sources and types of information that could be relevant to federal proceedings.

With FRCP, if your organization is involved in a lawsuit, an overview of the electronic information you plan to use in the case must be made available before the formal discovery request. Your organization will also be required to take into account all possibly relevant data across every type of media and format, even if this data is stored remotely or by third parties. Bottom line, your organization will need to have constant access to, and control and awareness of, all of its electronic documents and email that could be relevant to a civil case. Moreover, the processes that support these activities need to be in place before any litigation begins because trying to get control of your information "after the fact" will not only be very difficult but will also increase expenditures and organizational risk.

Thinking logically about adherence to FRCP, you can conclude that the following organizational activities need to take place in order to be positioned to meet FRCP guidelines:

• Honestly evaluate your organization's data storage and retrieval needs (in terms of security, data integrity, long-term storage viability and so on);
• Establish appropriate systems to make the searching, finding, retrieving and distributing of relevant data as simple as possible;
• Create an organized and detailed overview of where electronic documents are stored;
• Assess document lifecycle policies, particularly in terms of how well they can account for all your electronic information, especially email files; and
• Ensure broad understanding and "buy in" of document lifecycle policies and implementation processes for possible litigation-relevant information.

In sum, if you want to prevent a very costly investigation involving all PST files and email repositories in your organization (including backup tapes), you will need to have a proper filing plan in place, a digital platform to store your information, the ability to train your users and enforcement and audit mechanisms in place to ensure that the system is properly used. If you do not have these capabilities, you may be forced to turn over every piece of electronic information in your organization. One can only guess how much money this will cost!

Acknowledging Specific Compliance Issues

Given this compliance/liability context, implementing an email management solution means you must be aware that at a certain moment in time you will be asked to find specific emails, review them and disclose them: the e-discovery and e-disclosure process. If you have ever been involved in one of these situations, you know that if you are not properly prepared, the cost of finding relevant messages, de-duplication, review, redaction and disclosure can be astronomical. By being properly prepared,