ECM Briefs

Another ARMA International has come and gone with huge success! The Open Text booth saw three times the traffic of last year and we were able to connect with close to 1,100 attendees. We heard a lot of buzz around email management, eDiscovery, and the management of SharePoint content. There was also a low rumbling around the concept of Web 2.0 and the effects for records management.

During the conference we introduced an expansion of our content lifecycle management (CLM) services for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, extending the solution to our eDOCS customers. CLM Services for SharePoint, eDOCS Edition by SeeUnity will provide eDOCS customers integrated records management and archiving capabilities to improve compliance initiatives in a market where growing regulatory demands and risk management are major concerns.

This year we also offered the "spin to win" activity where visitors were given the chance to spin the wheel to win a prize. It was lined up each day and drew great attention to the booth.

Our speaker at the event was EVP of Marketing Bill Forquer. Bill spoke with a number of industry analysts, press, fellow industry colleagues and practitioners. Here are some observations and threads of his conversations...

• Re-evaluations of business strategy and corresponding IT priorities triggered by economic uncertainty
• Information governance is moving up the priority list; it is the foundation for lots of benefits
• Increased blurring of records and eDiscovery processes; they are becoming more closely aligned
• Increased attention on retention and disposition, and not just with formal records programs
• Federated vs. centralized records strategies. The aspiration for federated is there; the legacy of centralized remains.
• "We don't have retention problems, we have disposition problems. We retain just fine."

This year's conference really adapted well to the Las Vegas theme. Each day we got to experience records mangers and information professionals doing either karaoke, dancing with the stars, or playing Guitar Hero. You could not walk through the exhibit hall without witnessing either Elvis or a Las Vegas show girl. Lots of fun was had, there was much to learn and many great conversations were shared. My hats are tipped to the organizers and we look forward to returning next year.

eDiscovery has been top of mind for organizations in multiple industries in the United States - spoliation, smoking guns, litigation, court fines and sanctions; eDiscovery costs, as well as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure amendments which stipulate that organizations must have defensible policies and practices in place for the management of electronically-stored information. On top of this, many organizations face numerous compliance regulations that require certain documents and emails to be retained for a specific retention periods.

Energy organizations are far from exempt from eDiscovery issues. In fact, research from Fulbright & Jaworski LLP on litigation trends found that Energy was the only industry in which more than half of the companies surveyed had regulatory proceedings initiated or filed against them in the past year. To make it more meaningful, Energy companies are operating in turbulent times as it relates to pricing, costs, geopolitical risk, etc. and they frequently engage in aggressive and risky exploration/capital project investments.

So what to do? Well first, you can listen to a podcast we recorded that features Rebecca Ptaszynski, an associate in the Commercial Litigation Group at Vedder Price, as well as Stephen Ludlow, program manager, eDiscovery for Open Text, and Hugh Ritchie, program manager for manufacturing and energy at Open Text. They provide some great information to get energy companies thinking about eDiscovery.

In the podcast, Stephen talks about some key things energy organizations need to do to be prepared for eDiscovery requests. They're outlined below:

1. Conduct a thorough risk assessment on your litigation readiness. Review your policies and capabilities for both information disposition and for the capability of putting content on litigation hold. Assess your records environment - what you have in place, what you are lacking, and the risks and vulnerabilities found within your records management procedures. If you were faced with litigation tomorrow, determine what risks you would face and what potential problems you would have in producing the information that is requested. Determine how ready your company is from a policy perspective to be able to respond promptly to litigation.

2. Develop an internal team of eDiscovery specialists. This team of specialists will help to ensure you have the capability of being able to respond to eDiscovery from an IT perspective, and from a legal perspective. Specialists will work with the content being collected and put on preservation hold, and help you understand the content, search through the content and eventually make the content available for legal review. Having a specialist in house provides the capability to reduce the amount of content that is handed over for legal review. They also help to ensure that the searches and the collection of content are done defensibly should you be challenged.

3. Look at each case separately. Organizations need to look at every case separately to determine how they will respond internally from an eDiscovery perspective. A risk assessment should be conducted on every case and determine if your current procedures are relevant. Keeping it in-house makes sense, but there are some cases where it is still a good idea to get a specialist in to do the eDiscovery work.

4. Implement an Enterprise Content Management Strategy. An Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system, containing solid records management policies, helps energy organizations understand the content they have within their organization. It allows them to put disposition policies on their information to get the sheer amount of information growing in their organization under control. An ECM system also enables organizations to broadly implement litigation holds on content so that when they are subject to litigation, they have the capabilities to put the content on hold and ensure that content does not get disposed of inadvertently during the case or prior to the case.

This week, Open Text will be at the ARMA International's 53rd Annual Conference and Expo in Las Vegas. "This world-renown event is where professionals go for real business solutions, best practices, technology tools and innovative ideas".

I look forward to having the opportunity to speak to records managers and information management professionals about their take on "everything 2.0". What are their thoughts on digital content preservation, how do we manage content that is either user generated or heavily socialized? Are these questions keeping them up at night?

With the digitization of our information I am starting to wonder; what content will be left behind as artifacts for the next generations? Is it safe to assume that content that we deem as important will be reproducible in 20 years time?

Digital content - unlike paper - cannot be stored safely away for others to view in years to come, or can it? Digital content is more complex in nature, as we are talking about 'content in action'. Also, we are no longer creating content as a 'party of one', we are socializing our content. We are creating our content using tools such as wikis, blogs and chat instances.

In my humble opinion, if we are doing this in an enterprise arena, than it should be constituted as a record. There is no question that the long standing and revered requirement to preserve and manage records is continuing to grow in magnitude as information becomes more pervasive and yet more fluid in the digital age. The question becomes how do we retain the contextual premise of the content? How do we classify it? These amongst many other are questions that I will save for the professionals to answer next week.

We'll be providing regular updates here @ ECM Briefs including the buzz from the show floor. Or follow my real-time updates on Twitter here, using the hashtag #ARMA2008. If you are attending the show, stop by booth #711 and say hello. We are there October 20th though to the 23rd.

News south (err... north) of the border this week as controversy erupts over the email of a current state governor and vice-presidential nominee. This issue first hit the radar with the apparent hacking and inappropriate distribution of email sent through a free hosted service but has now resurfaced as the focal point of a debate over transparency, email records and appropriate use of communication forms that could be subject to Open Records legislation. Alaska's Open Records Act defines public records very much like any North American jurisdiction with Access to Information or Freedom of Information "sunshine" laws:

books, papers, files, accounts, writings, including drafts and memorializations of conversations, and other items, regardless of format or physical characteristics, that are developed or received by a public agency, or by a private contractor for a public agency, and that are preserved for their informational value or as evidence of the organization or operation of the public agency

While this particular incident is receiving front-page attention because of the impending U.S. election, it most surely is not an isolated incident or one restricted to public sector. Enterprise Content Management and Records Management professionals have, since 2001, been working to develop awareness, solutions and information governance strategies to meet rigorous disclosure, records retention and electronic discovery requirements in the U.S. and increasingly in Canada.

The Alaskan email controversy serves as a wake up call to information management practitioners regardless of the jurisdiction or department we serve - public business communication must be preserved, protected and disclosed regardless of the individual format, program or communication channel that is used.

Back to basics - manage the content, not the container it came in. Use of unsanctioned email, text, chat or other electronic communication tools does not preclude the record from inclusion in an ATIP/FOI or discovery order in most jurisdictions. Unmanaged, uncontrolled business correspondence is a time bomb in government and commercial enterprise.

Transparency is as crucial a component of compliance as is a retention schedule.

What does the current financial crisis in the global markets mean for organizations when it comes to ECM? According to Open Text's Director of Collaborative Content Management, Cheryl McKinnon, it will likely add fuel to the trend toward better information governance, something that got its start in the wake of Enron.

In a press release issued by Open Text today, McKinnon points out that better information governance can help organizations maintain stakeholder trust, improve transparency and uncover new opportunities for cost reductions. Many organizations are in a better position today than a few years ago because they are continuing to build on the work they've done since Enron.

McKinnon said, "For large companies, information governance is a major challenge, given the complexity of information systems across many departments, plus a store of electronic content that grows daily. Companies in many industries have made progress over the last few years to tap into this mountain of information to improve controls. But there's still more to do in corporations and government to establish comprehensive governance strategies, particularly with today's increasingly global, distributed work environment."

The potential for new regulations in the U.S. and other countries in the wake of the Wall Street crisis is another driver of renewed information governance efforts: "An information governance strategy prepares your organization to meet new regulatory rules sooner, because processes and controls are already in place: there is full transparency into how information flows through the organization," said McKinnon.

Besides meeting regulatory and legal rules, information governance provides other benefits which can come in handy during a slower economy. McKinnon points to being able to reduce costs and improve processes in transaction-oriented systems such as accounts payable. Companies can also establish a corporate memory that captures information from worker collaboration so that best practices can be preserved for future projects. This can be critical if disruptive forces in the economy cause workers to shift jobs, leave the organization or face merger and acquisition upheavals.

The key requirement for success, according to McKinnon is to establish information governance as an enterprise-wide initiative, rather than limited to specific departments: "You may decide to address information governance requirements in stages over time, but your strategy should be based on a review of people, processes and content across the organization. Companies that take this approach often expose potential legal or regulatory risks and can act to minimize the threat."