e-Discovery, Is it Part of Information Governance?
In IT, the big buzz today is about “Information Governance” or IG and e-Discovery. I had a pretty good idea of what they all meant, but wanted to get a clearer definition of what these terms meant and if they related to each other, at least according to the experts.
After a little bit of digging, one of the definition I came across was from Wikipedia, where it states, “Information Governance“, or IG, is the set of multi-disciplinary structures, policies, procedures, processes and controls implemented to manage information at an enterprise level, supporting an organization’s immediate and future regulatory, legal, risk, environmental and operational requirements. IG encompasses more than traditional records management, it incorporates privacy attributes, e-Discovery requirements, storage optimization, and metadata management.
This seems pretty long winded, but after reading it several times I finally understood where and why e-Discovery fits into the Information Governance framework. E-Discovery addresses numerous pieces of the IG puzzle, such as:
- Information and collection
- Compliance
- Review and Analytics
- Searching of Email and archived data
- Legal Hold
- Early Case Assessment
So, the conclusion I came to was, an organization must have a robust e-Discovery solution in place as it is one of the main components within any organizations overall IG strategy.
Additionally, if you are looking to address e-Discovery within the “Information Governance” space, you will likely need to utilize external resources to guide you through the maze. Also, you will need a robust e-Discovery software solution which addresses the areas stated above which can integrate with multiple information sources, such as Exchange, SharePoint, File Servers, Archive Repositories and the cloud.
We are constantly adding more products and services in this area, and if you wish to see our “Information Governance” and e-Discovery solutions, please click on the link below.
Please share this information with your colleagues and send us your questions, comments and feedback to: waynes@flexnet.com . Additionally, we appreciate your time and look forward to answering any Information Governance questions you may have; please contact us at 1 (800) 263-8733.
