While technology has made a significant contribution to ongoing business operations, it has also contributed to the proliferation of electronically stored information (ESI). Unfortunately, most companies do not have well-defined information management policies in place to manage the explosive growth of this data, much of which is often unstructured and unmanaged. As a consequence, the rapid growth of uncontrolled ESI can significantly contribute to high legal costs around e-disclosure requests.
E-disclosure is the process of isolating all the ESI that is relevant to a particular legal matter. "Reactive" e-disclosure means waiting until you face a legal matter and then trying to find what you need scattered around the organisation. "Proactive" e-disclosure means putting processes in place in advance to classify, organise, and manage information so that you can respond quickly, easily, and at a much reduced cost when you're faced with a discovery request.
The key to effective e-disclosure is effective information management delivered through an intelligent information management technology strategy, with key policies, processes and procedures in place. This will help you to know who 'owns' your data, where it is, how it is organised and how to find it.
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