More eDiscovery Numbers…Companies Still Not Prepared
Interesting numbers put forth by TechRepublic last month:
- Only 25% of companies have policies and procedures for retention and archiving
- 71% of companies don’t provide ESI/eDiscovery training
- 59% of companies archive email but not IM
I can’t say I’m surprised. For those of us in the eDiscovery business, it’s very easy to forget that most people don’t have a clue that eDiscovery even exists, let alone realize how much money is wasted on it due to lack of preparation.
Yes, email archiving is hot and many companies are kicking off projects, but the projects are still early stage…and many companies are still driving archiving from a storage optimization perspective - they don’t have reasonable retention policies. While this survey reports that 25% of companies have policies, I would guess that only half those policies that exist are even reasonable. Most of the policies that I have seen are either too aggressive (90 days and delete) or so long as to be useless (keep everything for 10 years).
The policies that do exist are typically not broadcast well to employees. What is most interesting to me is that 29% of companies are saying they provide ESI/eDiscovery training…that seems way higher than what I would expect. Most employees at most companies would say they have no idea what the retention policies of their company is, or what to do if they are informed they are on legal hold.
Of the last numbers - about archiving email, but not IMs - what I will say is that we do need to cut companies a bit of a break. It’s hard to get all content under control and you have to start somewhere. That said, we all need to be looking at how employees communicate and IM is increasingly pervasive. The courts have shown that they will not allow ignorance to be an excuse. The technology is there to capture and monitor IMs…companies that don’t do so at their own peril.
What do you think of these numbers?
