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Feature

Betsy Atkins
CEO
Baja Corp.

Is Your Company’s E-Discovery Infrastructure Able to Deliver?
Well-organized, well-preserved, accessible electronic data is now expected as fundamental to any well-governed company.

By Betsy Atkins

For too long, those who specialize in “corporate governance” and “information governance” have paid little attention to each other.

Boards of directors oversaw corporate governance by monitoring the company and its management team. Information technology staff provided information governance by focusing on the performance and risk management of technology systems.

However, courts and regulators are forcing that disinterest to an end.

As the legal liability and costs for managing (or mismanaging) electronic data have steadily increased, so have legislation and regulations. In 2006, new amendments were made to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure regarding electronic discovery of evidence. This codified and simplified electronic evidence discovery matters and forced companies to better organize their data management processes.

The litigation cost alone of badly retained and organized data to corporations is staggering. Today, “should have known” is an apt description of the evolving philosophy driving information governance and corporate governance into the same boardroom. Regulators have established that well-organized, well-preserved, accessible electronic data is now expected as fundamental to any well-governed company.

A ‘Data Retention,’ Not ‘Data Deletion,’ Policy

Board members can no longer simply approve IT budgets and hope for the best; they must insist on smart, best-practice data retention policies. The more material you cache the more you have to inventory, evaluate, store — and possibly mismanage. Additionally, an e-discovery solution that prompts a general “data dump” could include sensitive, compromising material that legally need not have been retained, adding needless risk.

Good corporate governance of IT demands a comprehensive, uniform, legally savvy retention policy that focuses on the data you need to keep as much as on what you should toss. It’s also wise to have a “legal hold” policy to kick-in immediately should a court or regulatory action be launched.

One of the biggest governance demands in recent years has been for modern information management systems that provide simple, but revealing, indicators that allow busy board members to gain a good read on complex functions. These new tools not only streamline, cut costs, and improve results, but also give the board the “dashboard” tools it needs for effective IT oversight of several areas, such as audit, finance, and risk management.

Requirements for an e-Discovery Platform

New “intelligent” information management platforms, such as StoredIQ, and Symantec Enterprise Vault are meeting these governance goals and helping organizations:

• Comply with all corporate policy and government regulations by tracking where information is stored;

• Reduce risk, preempt litigation, and avoid fines by easily identifying and securing documents as required by law or possible litigation;

• Ensure that valuable business information is safe and accessible to authorized personnel only;

• Segregate older, infrequently accessed material to less expensive storage facilities;

• Enforce record retention schedules through automated identification and retention of records to permanent storage; and,

• Identify and destroy documents whose age exceeds document retention policies.

The intelligent data management platforms of today are designed to meet the needs of all parties — including board members, IT, corporate counsel, and GRC staff — and be uniformly accessible to them. This makes them an effective interface and powerful litigation tool for a firm, saving time and cost, and helping counsel, management, and the board better gauge the company’s exposure collectively.

Corporate governance and information governance are now inextricably tied and at the top of every boardroom agenda. Boards of directors will likely never have the time and skills required to become technical information governance experts, but, with the right data management platform, they needn’t be.

Betsy Atkins is the CEO and chairman of Clear Standards Inc., a provider of enterprise carbon management and sustainability solutions. The firm offers “Sustainability 2.0” software to help organizations accurately measure, mitigate, and monetize carbon emissions and other environmental impacts. SAP AG announced its intent to acquire Clear Standards in May 2009.

In addition to her executive duties, Ms. Atkins is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and corporate director. Her background includes co-founding Ascend Communications Inc., which was acquired by Lucent Technologies in 1999, upon which she joined the Lucent board. She has served as CEO of several companies, including Key Computer Labs and NCI Inc., a nutraceutical food company. She currently serves on four public company boards: Polycom Inc., Chico’s FAS, Reynolds American Inc., and SunPower Corp., and is an adviser to British Telecom.

She is CEO of Baja Corp., a venture capital firm that she founded in 1991. Ms. Atkins is also a recognized “expert witness” on corporate governance best practices, testifying in the Adelphia bankruptcy case as well as before Congress on governance reform.

She can be contacted at betsy@bajacorp.com.