Interesting developments south of the border...

On July 30, 2008, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted "unanimously" to start looking at web sites - specifically emerging interactive technology - as new ways to open up channels of communication and disclosure between corporations and the investor and shareholder community. According to SEC Chairman Christopher Cox in the July 30 statement, "Ongoing developments in technology have increased both the markets' and investors' demand for more timely company disclosure on the Web, and in turn, raised new securities law issues for public companies to consider".

While on the surface this new guidance might not have direct applicability to Canadian public sector, this statement represents a critical turning point in the journey to Government 2.0. Increasingly regulatory and legislative bodies are being compelled by emerging technology and changing information worker habits to look at new content forms and channels. This SEC development recognizes that corporate disclosures can now legitimately be made through new communication channels - including blogs and investor communities or forums. Companies who want to pursue cost effective and interactive shareholder communication can now explore these Web 2.0 inspired tools that have proved so valuable in other areas of customer engagement.

Open Text will be watching this interesting collision between 2.0 culture and content and the legal compliance obligations we see in both private and public sector. As new forms of content and online communication become more widely accepted in the eyes of courts, regulatory bodies and public sector agencies, those of us who are concerned about records retention, preservation, corporate memory retention and appropriate disposal policies need to think hard about how new 2.0 content types are handled. Ensuring that information governance strategies and retention best practices extend to the next generation of electronic content is what we do best.

Click here if you've thought about these issues. We want to know: Are You Ready?

Originally posted on blog.gtec.com