Address Information Governance Now to Avoid Legal Headaches Later

New research by the Information Governance Initiative (IGI) found that 98 percent of 400 information management professionals surveyed had records that needed to be kept for 10 years or more. Nevertheless, strategy to protect and govern long-term digital information storage is often lacking. While 97 percent of those surveyed understood the need for a specialized approach to critical digital information assets, only 11 percent were storing them in systems designed to ensure long-term protection and access. Digital content and records are at serious risk of being lost forever, as the hardware and software used to access them becomes obsolete or is decommissioned, and the problem is only going to get worse as technology refresh cycles get shorter. File formats and software are changing at an unprecedented rate.

When respondents were asked what digital preservation systems or strategies were in place, only 11 percent could say they were using a standards-based digital preservation system built to safeguard information. More than 60 percent are keeping information on shared network drives, which are notoriously difficult to govern properly and raise trust issues

Museums, state archives and universities have been early adopters of digital preservation systems, but we are now seeing many commercial and government organizations waking up to the issue.

For general counsel, digital preservation systems can ensure that information is available in a readable and trustworthy format, something that could be of significant benefit when meeting statutory and legal defense needs.