Government Technology - April 2008 - (Page 49)

The Washington records vault will, it is hoped, manage all electronic documents pertaining to the daily operations of state agencies. The system will use two of Symantec’s Enterprise Vault products: Mailbox Archiving for Microsoft Exchange as well as the Journaling and Discovery Accelerator. The system is being built in stages; the first stage will manage e-mail, the most prolific source of electronic records. “We are then following up with even more searchable tools that we’re going to put on, so that you can do what they refer to as a contextual search — you can enter more information, not just a word search,” Webster said. “It’s more knowledge on how you do your search, and it will assist agencies with getting better searching on the records that are in the vault.” But the project doesn’t end there. Webster said plans include expanding beyond e-mail to other kinds of electronic documents, including PDF, PowerPoint, and audio and video files. Multiple document formats make for an interesting wrinkle in electronic records management. Among states, there is no agreed-upon strategy for enterprisewide document management. What’s more, there isn’t even agreement about what an agency or government should consider an electronic document. For some, it could be anything from e-mail to voicemail to cell phone video. For others, it may only be some of those. One of the most vexing problems for agencies is instant messaging (IM). More often, employees are communicating via an IM client, causing some to wonder if IMs qualify as electronic records that must be stored and made discoverable. Robinson and Webster said they would like to treat IM conversations similarly to e-mail. Washington is working with Symantec to deploy an IM logging application using the company’s IM archiving software. Reader Survey: E-Discovery In January, we surveyed a random selection of our readership on the topic of electronic discovery. Of the 117 respondents, 42 percent were local government readers, 35 percent were from state government, 10 percent from federal government, 9 percent from education, and 5 percent categorized themselves as “other.” 1. Which of the following do you deﬁne as a “document”? (Please check all that apply.) Paper Form Electronic form E-mail Instant message Video data Voicemail 2. How familiar are you with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure? Very knowledgeable Somewhat knowledgeable Heard of them, but don’t know much about them Never heard of them 6.0% 25.6% 52.1% 16.2% 100% 94.9% 81.2% 33.3% 37.6% 24.8% 3. Does your organization have a policy for dealing with e-discovery requirements? Yes No Don’t know 43.1% 23.3% 33.6% 4. If your organization were to be involved in litigation, on a scale of 1 to 5, how do you rate your ability to produce documents requested for discovery purposes? (1=unable to produce requested documentation, 5=could produce quickly any documentation listed in question No. 1) 1 2 3 4 5 Don’t know 3.4% 12.8% 27.4% 39.3% 13.7% 3.4% 5. On a scale of 1 to 5, how do you rate the level of priority placed on e-discovery in your organization? (1=not a priority, 5=top priority) 1 2 3 4 5 Don’t know 9.5% 19.8% 24.1% 16.4% 10.3% 19.8% Other Challenges Of all the nightmare scenarios that may befall a public agency, becoming entangled in litigation surely ranks high on the list of ones to avoid. One purpose of Washington’s vault system is to help state agencies comply when an e-discovery request is made. If an agency is involved in a civil suit, for example, it would likely be required to produce at least some documentation. If that requested document 49 http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - April 2008

Government Technology - April 2008 Contents Point of View Big Picture The Last Mile On the Scene Four Questions for... Freeze Frame How Safe Is Your Data? Easy Street Gadget Overload Indiana Overhaul First Person: A Better Bill Data Defense Strength in Numbers Public Storage Products Two Cents Spectrum Personal Computing signal:noise

Government Technology - April 2008

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