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New Federal Rules for Electronic Archiving
New rules that compel companies to produce electronically stored
information for civil litigation are now in place for tracking and
archiving e-mail, electronic documents, digital images and spreadsheets.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which took effect Dec. 1, are
forcing many IT managers to take a look at their electronic
record-archiving policies.
In the past, courts have awkwardly applied electronic records rules for
producing paper documents for civil litigation. Under the new Federal
Rules of Civil Procedure, businesses have 120 days to turn over
electronic documents requested as evidence in civil cases. And if that
information is going to be prohibitively difficult or expensive to
produce, the onus is on the business to prove that to a judge. While the
rules specifically apply in federal courts, state courts are likely to
adopt them as well.
The rules don't specify what electronic records businesses must retain
or for how long. Companies, in fact, are allowed to purge unneeded
electronic documents as part of their regular data retention practices,
but not if they have been requested for a civil case. Last May,
financial services giant Morgan Stanley paid a $15 million fine to
settle an SEC charge.
IT managers are figuring out that they must be more proactive in
developing policies for what electronic records they retain, for how
long, and how and when to dispose of those documents.
Calling in outside experts to help locate electronic records needed for
litigation can cost upward of $50,000 per day. New electronic record
archiving systems and policies will help reduce those costs, in addition
to complying with the new civil procedure rules.
Some businesses turn to tape backup systems when facing demands for
digital documents in civil litigation. But locating specific documents
and e-mails on backup tapes that contain huge volumes of information is
a tedious and expensive process.
Backup tapes are meant for disaster recovery, not for finding documents.
And failure rates for reading data on aging tapes runs between 30
percent and 50 percent. Businesses are already moving away from tape to
disk for data backup and the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure will
accelerate that trend. .
It will be during 2007 that most businesses discover just how inadequate
their electronic record management systems are, when they find
themselves facing a lawsuit and can't find the electronic records they
need.
The best
plan is to be proactive verses reactive, automatic email logging and
data archiving is the ounce of prevention that is most affordable.
Excerpts
By
Rick Whiting,
V.A.R.Business
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