Paper vs. Electronic Records

Per a press release at sourcewire.com, it’s reported that paper records are managed much more by businesses than their electronic ones.  The survey, done by AIIM – a content management community based in the UK, was taken by 768 of the AIIM community.  Here are some interesting numbers:

• 26% of organisations have no record management system in place for the majority of its electronic documents
• 56% of a procedure in place to freeze electronic documents in times of litigation, compared to 71% who have one in place for paper.  Leaving an astounding 29% with no procedure at all.
• Over 50% are increasing their paper records, while 21% are decreasing
• 40% print electronic records in order to store them
• 1/3 aren’t confident their records would not be changed, deleted or inappropriately accessed (43% for companies with over 5,000 employees)

With a lot of experience in the document management field, I find this survey astonishing.  Of course, I’d like to see the trend here in the US.  Either way, this is a trend that must be realized by any organization whether people want to recognize it or not.  Think of the CMS as an insurance policy against incurring tremendous time and costs.  Companies should be consulting with professionals about the type of information that is created and transferred during the regular course of business.  Some should go as far as automating the categorization of their records on a consistent basis.  So when litigation does happen, the tedious and costly chore of gathering, sorting and categorizing records can be well along its way, and possibly even skipped.

eDiscovery Webinar on Law.com Tomorrow!

Hosted by StoreIQ and Symantec, a webinar on proactive eDiscovery can be found on law.com tomorrow at 1pm.  It’s available for CLE.  Go here for registration and more info.

eDiscovery News for Sept. 22nd 2009

Tuesday’s news full of eDiscovery:

• Boeing becomes the 32nd company in the Fortune 100 to contract with CaseCentral for its eDiscovery review software.  Meanwhile, the City of Tacoma has signed on with Autonomy.
• Messaging Architects announces the launch of their new eDiscovery Resource Center.  Known for their email risk management services, it makes sense to expand into the management of electronic data as it pertains to litigation, audits, access and IP considerations.
• Dr. Ramon Barquin has an interesting article over at the B-eye-Network.  He writes about cloud computing and how the Feds have just entered its own cloud with www.apps.gov.  He has a few issues with this, one being the issue of electronic discovery where a 3rd party is storing the documents.
• Women in eDiscovery and American Society of Digital Forensics & eDiscovery host their first regional event.  The event is to bring together legal professionals, technologists and law enforcement personnel in the southeast region.
• Iris Data Systems has announced the hire of Ryan Rhodes as the Regional Director serving Texas.