It could have been avoided

Ensure that your company content is managed according to government legislation and regulations, industry standards, and internal policies and procedures and the implications of social media

London, UK - 2010-02-26 - The news that three Google executives were convicted in a landmark privacy case has lifted the veil on the importance of corporate governance. This is according to Craig Hepburn, Director of Social Media at Open Text, who argues that this should never have happened in the first place if effective governance procedures were in place.

In what some legal experts described as a "chilling ruling", the judge in Milan imposed suspended prison sentences on the men who he said were criminally liable for allowing the posting of a clip on Google's video service which featured the bullying of an autistic child.

Google's senior vice-president and chief legal officer, David Drummond, the former Google Italy board member George De Los Reyes and global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, were all found guilty of violating the boy's privacy.

Craig Hepburn stated: During the trial the prosecutors accused Google of negligence, saying the video remained online for two months, even though web users had already posted comments asking for it to be removed. But Google argued that it had complied with the law by taking it down when contacted by the Italian authorities and assisted prosecutors in bringing those responsible to court.

But the plain simple truth is that this could have been avoided if Google Italy had put in place an effective governance process to ensure this sort of content was never posted in the first place.

Many large organisations are feeling pressure to engage and leverage social networks and social media as part of their enterprise content management strategy, but this case now shows that it s imperative companies realise the legal implications and put in place a compliant content strategy.

How a company is managed and the measure of its content compliance efforts has a direct impact on shareholder value and in this case reputation. Poor management and non-compliance can lead to lost business, financial penalties, indefinite suspension of operations, and as we have seen in Italy even criminal charges.

While compliance is quickly becoming a requirement for all organisations-whether public or private, and regardless of in which industry they operate-there is much more to compliance than simply following the rules, he added. Organisations need to not only achieve compliance-they must be able to demonstrate it as well.

Industry regulations and standards are founded on the proven principles and practices of doing good business, best practices that have derived from daily operations in each industry to prevent adversities from being repeated.

The case arose in late 2006 when students at a school in Turin filmed and then uploaded a video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The complaint was brought by the boy's father with an Italian advocacy group for people with Down's syndrome, Vivi Down, although the boy had autism, not Down's.

Being compliant and promoting good content governance is about much more than mitigating risk-it ensures the long-term success and quality of operations throughout your organisation, he concluded.

About Open Text

Open Text, an enterprise software company and leader in enterprise content management, helps organizations manage and gain the true value of their business content. Open Text brings two decades of expertise supporting 46,000 customers and millions of users in 114 countries. Working with our customers and partners, we bring together leading Content Experts to help organizations capture and preserve corporate memory, increase brand equity, automate processes, mitigate risk, manage compliance and improve competitiveness. For more information, visit http://www.opentext.com/uk.

For more information, please contact

Rob Jessel / Rob Forbes
Spreckley Partners Ltd
+44 (0)20 7388 9988
opentext@spreckley.co.uk