Social Collaboration + E-Discovery = Possible
The enterprise social medium may be new, but corporate governance policies are as demanding as ever. The SEC, for example, requires in-depth records management of all forms of communication (Rule 17a)—including instant messaging, microblog posts and any customer communications. Social computing lends to e-discovery more than you think. . .
Social Computing Lends to E-Discovery More Than You Think
You might think social computing introduces chaos to an established records management program, requiring a wholesale overhaul of governance policies and maybe even waivers from regulators. Fortunately, quite the opposite is true.
Enterprise social business software, like NewsGator Social Sites, provides organizations with the ability to manage the collection, preservation and retrieval of all social content. With this software you can easily create rules to retain, search and access information for litigation purposes. Though compliance-friendly, these tools still allow employees to freely exchange ideas and content behind the firewall. And while it may seem counter-intuitive, social computing solutions actually lay the foundation for monitoring, capturing, storing, archiving, reporting and accessing every bit of content that travels transparently through a company’s corporate network.
Social Business, Records Management and E-Discovery
Social business and records management are strange bedfellows, notes John Mancini, president of AIIM, the community that provides education, research and best practices on information management and collaboration. While there are indeed fundamental forces at hand changing the way we contribute, consume, share and control information, we need to explore whether these changes thwart our ability to produce records and evidence when required.
According to Rachael Heade, Microsoft senior analysis manager for records management, e-discovery and records management are two sides of the same coin. Traditional records management is the practice of classifying, storing, securing, preserving and destroying records; while electronic discovery (e-discovery) is the process of finding, storing, analyzing and producing content in electronic formats for litigation or investigation purposes.
Microsoft saw a need to converge these two intrinsically related, but different, practices in its popular SharePoint collaboration platform. SharePoint now includes crucial compliance features that allow companies to take a proactive approach to e-discovery. These features are sufficient for a good number of companies to meet basic compliance requirements.
However, they do not address the equally important need to capture social “activities” that are occurring on a daily basis within global companies. Complicating matters is the fact that social software encourages users to comment, rate and vote on these activities or perpetuate the activities by sharing them with colleagues. While all this activity greatly improves communication, any single action in the activity stream can be considered legal material in litigation situations (i.e., e-discovery) and add to the sheer volume of records that must be properly managed and accessed. At first glance, it’s a lot for a CIO or general counsel to get their head around.
Legal Hold is Just One E-Discovery Issue Affected by Social Computing
One of the world’s leading food companies uses SharePoint in conjunction with NewsGator Social Sites for employee networking, knowledge sharing and productivity. Prior to launch, the company required Social Sites to be able to automatically check whether an employee is on legal hold, and therefore turn off the automatic deletion settings in their activity stream. (Employees can be put on legal hold for a variety of reasons, including a pending lawsuit, a human resource inquiry, a patent application, etc.).
Because of e-discovery requirements, all activities—whether through a paper trail or an electronic transmission—need to be stored, searchable and accessible for the appropriate regulatory bodies that require them. As a global organization that operates in more than 100 countries and markets, the company’s technology infrastructure needs to accommodate the varying legal requirements they are mandated to meet on a daily basis. The combination of SharePoint and Social Sites allow them to do this successfully with minimal management and monitoring from their IT team.
Companies need to balance the benefits of social collaboration with the ability to meet e-discovery requirements. By providing a flexible, easy-to-use interface for both IT administrators and end users, it is possible to implement a full-featured social collaboration platform without exposing sensitive intellectual property and adhere to e-discovery and records management directives.
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