Just how far are you going with FRCP compliance?

Eweek just featured an article on compliance with new e-discovery requirements in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. I use the term “new” very loosely, as these rules have been in effect for over a year. The take-home message of the article, though, was that a majority of businesses are either unaware of, or are ignoring the rules. For those of you in the former category,

The new regulations, ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2006, mandate that businesses must be able to quickly produce such data—including e-mail, digital word documents, images and digital audio and video—when required by litigation in a federal court.

While the Eweek article is focused on American business, the rules apply to educational institutions as well. The rules are quite sweeping and have even been interpreted by some as applying to anything that sits, however briefly, in a server’s or computer’s RAM on your network. This would include instant messages in addition to the data noted above. While this appears to be an extreme interpretation, there remains some wiggle room in terms of what we actually need to archive. Unfortunately, this wiggle room exists because no legal precedents have been set testing these rules as applied to educational institutions.

Wiggle room aside, the article quotes IT researcher, Michael Osterman:

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Source: education.zdnet.com