Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: Barry Murphy. Published: 2013-11-03 19:00:00Format, images and links may no longer function correctly.
This year, the ARMA International Conference signaled a real shift in the market – eDiscovery is becoming firmly entrenched in the information governance (IG) category. This does not mean that eDiscovery is no longer a standalone market. But, it does mean that organizations are starting to realize that solid IG programs are the pre-requisite for better, less expensive eDiscovery.
If eDiscovery fits into the IG umbrella, then records managers – the core ARMA membership – need to embrace eDiscovery and become conversant in the areas most related to IG such as Legal hold and information profiling and deletion. Interestingly, I encountered two types of records managers at the ARMA show – those that expressed deep interest in eDiscovery and its requirements and those that ran away from the topic, saying, “that is our Legal team’s domain.”
To be clear, the IG market is not yet well-formed. Organizations are not mature in IG practices and have a long way to go. There is a huge opportunity for records management to evolve into full-blown IG and for records managers to partner closely with their Legal counter-parts to ensure a solid IG foundation that leads to optimized eDiscovery. Many of the folks I spoke with at the show are trying to do just that. I did not have a chance to measure the percentage of records managers embracing eDiscovery versus those running from it, unfortunately.
Based on the content at the conference, the ship is sailing to IG. One of the more popular topics of discussion was about using predictive analytics to make IG more effective. I sensed a huge interest on the part of records managers in using more advanced technology to deal with the huge volumes of electronic information that have built up in organizations. However, records management teams don’t tend to have budget for technology purchases. This means that records managers will need to team with IT counterparts to get budget, and will need to team with Legal to define requirements for IG purchases. If they can do that, the opportunity for heroism is unbound. If you are looking for proof that organizations are moving in this direction, check out this job posting from Biogen Idec – this should be the ideal position going forward.
Barry Murphy can be reached at barry@eDJGroupInc.com for offline comments or questions. His active research topics include information governance, Predictive Coding, and the impact of social media on eDiscovery. Barry’s latest research report is Predictive Coding: What You Need To Know Now .
Connect with Barry:
Twitter: @barryjmurphy