Executive Summary

Information Governance (IG) has become an integral part of corporate and regulatory governance. The Information Governance Initiative (IGI) is a think tank that has produced a “boot camp” for IG professionals to help their organizations establish and execute on IG activities that will enable them to better prepare for litigation support or in many cases mitigating litigation altogether.

Introduction

Recently, Neuralytix was invited to attend the one day IGI Boot Camp. The Boot Camp is organized by the Information Governance Initiative (IGI). “The Information Governance Initiative (IGI) is a think tank and community dedicated to advancing the adoption of Information Governance (IG) practices and technologies through research, events, advocacy and peer-to-peer networking. We are dedicated to the professionalization of IG and have called for the creation of a new kind of information leader called the Chief Information Governance Officer.”

The Boot Camp is designed to help IG professionals to organize and execute an IG strategy, and then examine some of the specific rules and regulations and how they have changed and are changing to accommodate the digitization of information. The Boot Camp is offered multiple times throughout the year.

The IGI Boot Camp

There are four sessions in the IGI Boot Camp:

• The First Step: How do you build support for IG at your organization?
• Using our battle-tested methodology for IG project planning and execution
• Action plan and toolset for FRCP-aware data remediation
• How to bake the FRCP’s proportionality and sanctions rules into your IG program.

For most organizations IG facets are segmented; and IG serves as a coordinating function that brings together a comprehensive approach to for litigation support or mitigation. With the explosive growth in data sources such as those from the Internet of Things (e.g. Google glass, smartphones, etc.) the Boot Camp teaches the changes in how the judiciary has recognized the impact of these data sources, and have amended the Federal Civil Rules of Procedures (FCRP) to reflect the digitization around the world.

The Boot Camp was not a day-long Powerpoint deck. Instead, the Boot Camp provided practical hands-on activities throughout the day that helped participants recognize how IG should work, and the pitfalls that they may face as they put together an IG strategy.

One of the biggest challenges for projects such as IG is how to demonstrate ROI. Often IG is implemented after some event (typically negative) that has led to litigation. The Boot Camp engaged participants to identify small, quick projects that demonstrated ROI. It also emphasized why company-wide applications are required in the age of corporate and regulatory governance.

To this end, participates engaged in activities in small groups that provided ways in which the participants can get started with IG projects. One such activity involved objective development, key activities required, milestones and metrics, and what should be, or not be, working assumptions for the project.

By the third session, participants were being made aware of the changes to the FCRP, in particular Rules 26(b)(1) and 37(e) and how they have changed. The goal of the session was to understand remediation (defensible deletion); understand how the new FCRP amendments make remediation projects less risky; learn the organizing principles for remediation projects; and how to integrate meaningful remediation into an IG project.

In the final session, participants were exposed to the idea of how “proportionality” requirement of Rule 26 can be used to help manage the discovery process and discussed how to make a proportionality argument and how to develop an iterative, proportional approach to ESI.  The group saw the approach in action as they applied what they learned to a hypothetical company facing litigation.

The session listed the effects of the amended Rule 26, including, but not limited to the kind of evidence, population of data, and accessibility of the data.

Conclusion

Companies large and small are regularly engaged in litigation. What the IGI Boot Camp provides to its participants are the basic elements required to start, build, execute, and understand the principles behind IG, and why IG is necessary.

While the IGI Boot Camp is not designed to be a legal course, it does touch on many legal principles that IG professionals need to understand. Participants ranged from highly defined IG leaders to records managers, and others who support the IG process.

For the most part, participants came from very large companies where exposure to litigation, or being part of litigation is a regular occurrence. For these participants, having an understanding of the IG process and what is necessary to set up these processes will enable them to hopefully settle litigation quicker.

Neuralytix spoke to all the participants, and all responded that the course gave them new techniques to implement, and the participants unanimously recommended the course to other IG professionals.