Data is contagious and any attempt to categorise or organise ‘data’ may please someone and/or upset someone somewhere from the legal to IT to the end user. All things digital makes life interesting and/or complicated and I can safely say ediscovery/edisclosure is no different. So I will just say ‘all things e-‘ for ediscovery/edisclosure related stuff from protocols, guidelines, standards, process, models, framework etc. With ‘all things e-‘ coming from the various bodies and institutions, the following list is just a starting point for further add-ons.

~Guidelines ~
The International Center for Dispute Resolution (ICDR) published ‘Guidelines For Arbitrators Concerning Exchanges of Information’ available in pdf. An extract from the Guidelines “The purpose of these guidelines is to make it clear to arbitrators that they have the authority, the responsibility and, in certain jurisdictions, the mandatory duty to manage arbitration proceedings so as to achieve the goal of providing a simpler, less expensive, and more expeditious process. Unless the parties agree otherwise in writing, these guidelines will become effective in all international cases administered by the ICDR commenced after May 31, 2008, and may be adopted at the discretion of the tribunal in pending cases. They will be reflected in amendments incorporated into the next revision of the International Arbitration Rules. They may be adopted in arbitration clauses or by agreement at any time in any other arbitration administered by the AAA.”

The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) published ‘Protocol for E-disclosure in Arbitration’ again available in pdf. The protocols covered every possible steps including “The Tribunal may, after discussion with the parties, obtain technical guidance on e-disclosure issues” (Paragraph 5 (13). Seems that there are ‘e-disclosure issues’ that are not covered by the Protocol. Well it is a Protocol and not a detailed list of e-disclosure issues. So I’m rather surprised to read in Paragraph 7, which states “The primary source of disclosure of electronic documents should be reasonably accessible data; namely, active data, near-line data or offline data on disks”. This categorising of data can be confusing especially as nowadays other expressions are also used to denote the ‘state’ of the data e.g. data-in-motion, data-at-rest, data-in-use. The state and storage of the data should not be confused when stating the ‘primary source of disclosure…’ .What happens if the active data is stored in ‘archives’ and with changes in technology, these ‘archives’ will be reasonably accessible? This is already taking shape in MoReq2.
The Protocol strives to be comprehensive and cautious with the declaration that “The Protocol is for use in those cases (not all) in which potentially disclosable documents are in electronic form and in which the time and cost for giving disclosure may be an issue”.

The following are some ‘nuts and bolts’ from various UK/European industry bodies.

~Standards~

On the BSI website the BS 10008 Legal admissibility and evidential weight of information stored electronically is available to purchase. I reported on this here.

Under the auspices of The Document Lifecycle Management (DLM) Forum and its Model Requirements for the Management of Electronic Records (MoReq) Working Group, MoReq2 is now out. For further details check out at The AIIM. MoReq2 is also driven at the EU level and may become a pan-European standard (although it’s a model/framework with standard for testing the model).
Stock, an EU co-funded project, is a framework for European electronic ID interoperability. According to the blurbs published on the website, Stock aims at implementing an EU wide interoperable system for recognition of eID and authentication that will enable businesses, citizens and government employees to use their national electronic identities in any Member State.

I came across a ARMA Baltimore, 2007 which gives a list of standards etc.

To be continued…

Next event, Data Loss Prevention is on my diary: 12th March 2008, Farmers’ and Fletchers’ Hall, 2 Cloth Street, London, EC1A 7LD

Events about ‘People’ issues are too ‘soft’ for IT or Legal people to hold talks or events on .

Not sure whether the study is still ongoing as the study was posted around 2003.
Interesting to note that the UC Berkeley’s School of Information Management and Systems is the first school in the nation to explicitly address the growing need to manage information more effectively.