Written by Doug Austin, Editor of eDiscovery Today
E-Discovery Day is next week, Friday December 3rd. It’s hard to believe that it’s the seventh E-Discovery Day, but time flies! The day has become significant in terms of educational and networking events and a day that many eDiscovery professionals participate in, either as a participant or attendee in some educational or social event.
Many people like to look forward on E-Discovery and talk about where the industry, and the technology solutions that support it, is going. I like to do that too, but I also like to look back as well as I find you can’t look forward without looking back to see where we’ve been.
Looking Back at The Stampede Toward the Left of the EDRM Model
Many times over the past year and a half on this blog (and also on eDiscovery Today), I have written about the move to the left of the EDRM model and you only have to look at the model itself to see how important information governance has become. Information Governance used to be just another small box in the model called “Information Management” before being changed to a small circle and renamed “Information Governance”.
Today, the EDRM model includes the entire Information Governance Reference Model (IGRM) in place of that simple information governance circle that used to exist within the model. EDRM has even updated the IGRM model this year with a new look and the v4.0 version will go into effect next week and will soon appear in the updated EDRM model as well, no doubt.
I used to call it a “move” to the left of the EDRM model, but it’s more like a stampede. The enormous growth of Big Data has forced organizations to address information governance through best practices and leveraging technology. To succeed today, you need an emphasis on both as best practices without leveraging technology to address the Big Data challenge is doomed to failure – there is simply too much data to rely on best practices alone.
IPRO has led the stampede toward the left – in terms of technology (as last year’s acquisition of NetGovern illustrates) and also in terms of best practices (as last year’s six-part series on IGRM stakeholder groups that I had a blast writing illustrates).
Last year in that Big Data post linked above, I quoted IPRO’s CEO Dean Brown, who stated: “As an industry, we really don’t have much choice but to deal with the data earlier. The sizes of the productions and the sizes of the matters that we see our customers dealing with are already at a scale that is ridiculous and untenable. So, when you talk about bringing the technology to the data, we absolutely concur.”
Reinventing the Future
That takes care of the look back, now for the look forward – and back! Next Friday, December 3rd at 1pm ET, IPRO, in partnership with ACEDS, will present the webinar E-Discovery Day 2021: A Look at Industry Resiliency and Preparations for Reinventing the Future. Join IPRO executives Ryan Joyce, VP of Strategy, and Nick Inglis, Director of Information Governance, for this look at the events that have pushed the industry to adapt, and how a convergence with Information Governance is making a big impact on the future of how law firms and corporations manage their data. You can register for it here – I did!
Conclusion
Just like I’m doing with this blog post, Ryan and Nick will be looking back to set the stage for looking forward. I’m “looking forward” to it! See what I did there? 😉
Seriously, though, you must look back and learn from the past to move forward. So, expect to see Ryan and Nick to do that next week in their E-Discovery Day webinar. And expect me to do that in more blog posts here about the future of information governance. In most stampedes, looking back could get you trampled, but in this one, looking back ensures that the herd is moving in the right direction!
And for more educational topics from me related to eDiscovery, cybersecurity and data privacy, feel free to follow my blog, eDiscovery Today!
