Mapping: your way to compliance with a data atlas.

• Author: Wong, Wayne
• Position: Cover story

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Attention on data maps has been brought to the forefront of organizations' senior management, thanks to new mandates in litigation discovery, but with collaboration among key stakeholders, a data map can be developed into a data atlas, providing a "total information systems overview" that will be an even more valuable tool for effective information governance

The unprecedented proliferation of digital data has increased the pressure for organizations to operate effectively in an increasingly complex information governance environment. The records and information management (RIM) profession is in an era of increased regulatory pressure for retention management, audits, security, and privacy compliance for personally identifiable and personal health information.

Adding to these pressures are the 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which explicitly clarify that electronically stored information (ESI) is discoverable and change previous document discovery strategy by mandating early pre-trial conferences of opposing attorneys to identify, disclose, and agree upon data specific to relevant information.

These issues, as well as many corporate initiatives--to successfully implement an enterprise-wide archiving solution, for example--demand that organizations have detailed knowledge of where information lives, what life cycle should be enforced, and keywords and metadata to be indexed with the full text to facilitate searches and retrieval beyond content text searching. A good data map provides this.

The amended FRCP refers to a data map as a prudent practice to meet today's e-discovery requirements. Indeed, walking into an FRCP Rule 26(f) "meet and confer" session with a good data map is a proactive way to limit the scope of the discovery. This is significant given that several studies confirm that discovery comprises 50% (on average) of the cost of litigation. Hence, it becomes critical for organizations to proactively understand and manage their data in order to be able to efficiently and confidently respond to an incident or litigation within the newly mandated timeframe.

Understanding Data Maps

A data map is a catalog of an organization's ESI by category, location, and custodian or steward, including how it is stored, its accessibility, and associated retention policies and procedures. Unstructured data, the user-created documents (e.g., word processing documents) with no predefined structure or central repository, is particularly troublesome to manage.

To be effective, a data map must function beyond an asset inventory and serve to answer the following questions:

* What specific information exists?

* What is the volume of data?

* What period of time does the data cover?

* Who and what does the data involve?

* Where is the data located?

* What form is the data in?

As it turns out, the concept is straightforward, but the execution can be complex, and, currently, there is no standard depiction of a data map. Furthermore, to remain useful, the data map must be kept "evergreen" and perpetual rather than treated as a one-time initiative.

There are shortcomings to a data map. The term has a very different meaning and context in the IT...