Reaching Information Governance Success Through Baby Steps

Newer archiving technology can provide a much better experience for running searches and extracting data for e-discovery or other reasons. Furthermore, these tools often have information governance controls built in. These features include preset retention policies and the ability to identify sensitive information that is being sent outside the company, and stop it before it actually leaves the network. This provides an easy opportunity to show value with information governance, by replacing or enhancing the broken systems. It makes perfect sense to retool the archive with technology that can build toward broader initiatives.

Moving beyond first generation e-discovery. With the extensive awareness most corporations and law firms have today around e-discovery, a surprising number of them are still using first-generation tools for search and retrieval. There are a handful of corporations—typically the heavy litigators—that are on the forefront of emerging technology, but many first-generation tools have trouble with e-discovery from unstructured data sources including SharePoint and the cloud.

With more savvy regulators and plaintiffs than ever before, this is simply no longer acceptable. Collaborative platforms often contain information critical to a case, and most e-discovery requests today are widened past email and desktop data to include file shares and a wide range of data sources. From a tactical standpoint, updating e-discovery software can enable the legal team to deal with matters that are on their desks today, but can also leverage the new tools to build toward better information governance when looked at through that lens.

A recent storage migration at a financial services company serves as one example of an information governance effort done right. This client was switching from one archiving vendor to another, and planned to migrate a petabyte of data as part of the new agreement. Stakeholders from legal and IT first analyzed the data stores before the migration took place. They evaluated what data needed to be saved, and deleted the rest, with the intention of optimizing the new storage from the start. This process was very simple—the team found every personal email archive that was not associated with a current employee or connected to existing legal holds, and deleted them. By running that search, they were able to eliminate 20% of the company’s legacy data before moving to the new system, meaning they never had to deal with that data, never had to search it again for e-discovery, and would never have to put it under legal hold or back it up.

Getting Results

Accessing data, understanding it, classifying it, finding business value in it, and taking action on it are really at the heart of what information governance is all about. And to be effective, information governance initiatives must be able to promise and quickly deliver tangible results that can measure impact. A project must show material reduction of risks, a successful data migration, faster system operations, improved regulatory compliance and/or more efficient e-discovery in order to get the green light from leadership. In addition, the information governance strategy must have buy-in from the C-suite, or else it will be destined to fall short.

The tools needed to effectively implement and sustain this process are the same ones used to conduct e-discovery, leaving a lot of opportunity open for records management professionals to help build and sustain programs. If records managers can get out of their comfort zone and focus on practical, tangible programs, they are uniquely positioned to drive these projects forward and reap the benefits in both the big picture and day-to-day operations. Lastly, let “baby steps” be the mantra, remembering that measurable progress in one or two areas will far surpass any failed attempt at total perfection.