Government Agencies Look Within to Solve E-Discovery Woes

The Federal Trade Commission recently launched what's likely to be a broad antitrust investigation of Google. David Shonka, the FTC's principal deputy general counsel, says there is a misperception that government agencies have unlimited resources to shoulder the burden of electronic data discovery costs in big cases like this.

"You have to keep in mind that by the time you take $100 billion in tax revenue and divide it [among] the various shops and departments, the allocation available can be very small," says Shonka, who also heads the agency's E-Discovery Steering Committee. "It is not unusual for the FTC to litigate a company over a product that has a larger advertising budget than our entire appropriation."

Individual agencies find it difficult to keep up with the growing costs and complexity of EDD. A few of the larger agencies do have dedicated EDD staff and processes in place, but many others have neither the experience nor expertise to manage electronically stored information. "It's a tale of two cities, rich and poor," says Jason Baron, director of litigation, U.S. National Archives and Records Admini­stra­tion. "If e-discovery is perceived as a core competency for an agency, it is more likely to get budgeted. But if [EDD] is not seen as an immediate threat, then requests for more advanced software are likely ignored."

According to IDC, a technology research firm, 14 government agencies will experience cutbacks in IT spending between 2011 and 2012. Some cuts will be deep — the Department of Housing and Urban Development plans a 41% cut in IT spending for the next fiscal year (bit.ly/LTN1182b). Last summer the White House asked agencies to cut at least 5% from their budgets by identifying programs that do little to advance their core missions.

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Source: law.com
By: Jason Krause