In the last post, I floated the concept that many of us in IT were in the process of becoming more informationists, and less technologists.
Most of IT's historical investment has been focused around managing the technology portfolio; going forward I would predict more focus would be put on managing the information portfolio.
Since I'm an ardent debater, I like to establish corroborating evidence for my positions, especially the esoteric ones. And today, I'd like to talk a bit about the new FRCP (Federal Rules on Civil Procedure) that go into effect this Dec 1st.
Nothing like a new legal rule to make things interesting ...
Most of us have known that during a trial, electronic communications can be submitted as evidence as part of a civil (or criminal!) court proceeding.
What seems to be changing here is that now -- during pre-trial -- that same information needs to be made available in a timely manner, or penalties may apply. More official information can be found here and Byte&Switch has a nice writeup here (thanks to Mary Jander)
This means a couple of things, straight off the bat:
- The frequency of discovery activities faced by most organizations will likely go up in aggregate, as there are many more pre-trial activities that never make it to trial. I'd like to call it "discovery-on-demand".
- IT organizations will need to be prepared to prove that they've found all the relevant information, and there isn't any more squirreled away somewhere, or it could go badly for them.
- Policies on email retention (and disposition!) will likely need a hard, fresh look by most companies, if they haven't done so already.
That's the surface, what's beneath the waterline?
Now, here's where it gets fun.
- although the rules seem to be targeting electronic communication (e.g. email and the like), there is no reason in my mind why it would stop there -- if I've sent you a report, or a file, or a presentation on a topic, or saved a voice mail, well -- that's a form of electronic communcation, isn't it?
- in addition to the normal role of IT in setting policy on email usage, retention, etc. -- I would think that IT would find itself in a role of policing compliance aggressively. Put differently, if you've set a 3-month retention rule for most email, you'd better be darn sure it's getting done without relying on the goodwill of your users.
Another example of how IT will be more about information, and less about technology
So, I'd like to replay some persistent themes that I've been talking about recently:
- IT will ultimately be responsible for the information content, not just the container. FRCP (and HIPAA, and SOX, and ..) is just another example of IT being asked to manage information risk across all business units -- in addition to saving money, delivering high service levels, and creating new value.
- You can't manage what you don't know about. How can IT be held responsible for email policy unless it has the tools to create and enforce that policy? And if IT is going in to the business of discovery-on-demand (not unlikely!), they're going to need tools to do this.
- And, I'd like to remind you, t's not just email, folks. The rules can be construed to imply information of all types: files, databases, voice mails -- it looks wide-open to me.
.... and the informationist view
But, just to simpify the discussion, I'd like to recast the evolution of email and email archiving from an informationist's perspective:
- Email is not only a business communication tool, in many cases it has become the system of record.
- Viewed holistically, it represents an opportunity to save money (by optimizing how it's handled), avoid risk (by automatically enforcing policy), and create value (by making it more accessible and combining it with different forms of information) -- but at different times in its evolution.
- Email archiving first become interesting as a way to save money. Less frequently accessed information ends up on cheaper storage. The primary goal of email archiving is to save money.
- Email archiving then became interesting as a way to avoid risk. If I can't produce an email that I'm supposed to have, I'm in trouble. And, if I can automatically enforce email policy (short retention, scan for inappropriate communication), I can stay out of other kinds of trouble. The primary goal of email archiving is to avoid risk.
- Email archiving is now becoming interesting as a way to generate value -- index and search historical communications to quickly respond to an e-discovery request, or combine with other kinds of information to serve customers better, or get products to market sooner, and so on. The primary goal of email archiving is to create value.
Now, if you put in one email solution to solve the first problem, and then had to move to another solution to solve the second one, and finally a third one to solve the third challenge, you'd be pretty ticked off at the situation, wouldn't you?
But, I would argue, that's exactly the type of road a typical technologist would lead you down. If the problem is X, the solution must be Y. And if X changes, well, you've changed the requirement, so Y isn't valid any more.
I would hope that an informationist would draw a different perspective. Email is valuable information, here's why. Today we need to cost optimize, tomorrow we'll need to avoid risk, and the day after that we'll be looking to exploit that information in new ways -- so design accordingly.
Thanks for listening.
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