ECM Briefs

Much has been said about the impact of recent amendments to the U.S Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) on corporations, but what about government? The FRCP changes, in fact, have a major impact on government agencies –now, more than ever, they face an enormous challenge to bring content under control to manage the costs and risks of litigation.

In a podcast I recorded with attorney Catherine Smith of the law firm Vedder Price, we discussed some of the complex issues involved and what government agencies can do to prepare. The latest software technologies integrating centralized records management and litigation support can help. These solutions can both manage discovery in-house as litigation arises and put in place a program of long-term, proactive management of a wide range of content -- anything from informal email to formal contracts and personnel information -- that may be subject to discovery and require legal holds so they’re not destroyed inadvertently. These technologies can help agencies provide a consistent process for determining what content to keep and what to discard.

Agencies can leverage this technology, sharpen their ability to manage information, and better respond to discovery requests by implementing several key strategies:

• Define defensible policies: Map the governing regulations and internal requirements to the process of identifying what email or document constitutes a record. Understand what is and isn’t a record according to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Agency and Statewide policies.


• Enforce policies with records management: Move policies from theory to practice with a completely automated and secure process for identifying, retaining, and destroying records.


• Monitor and control all enterprise content: Establish control over all enterprise content without changing the way users work with content—including emails and documents in SAP ERP systems, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint.


• Retain business and program records: Manage the cost-effective, physical storage of records in a compliant fashion while destroying non-records appropriately.


• Extend with litigation support: Accelerate the collection, preservation, review and coding, and production of agency records as evidence.

You can find out more by reading the press release we issued today. For more information about records management in government, visit: http://www.opentext.com/2/sol-industry/sol-gov-home.htm