Business and personal productivity are important reasons for organizations to have good information management and record keeping practices that ensure quality information and data is available, findable and usable. There are also two other important reasons:

• Access to information requests

• eDiscovery for legal cases or other investigations

What are “access to information” requests?

In Canada, like most countries, there are laws that require governments at all levels to publish information about their activities, policies and budgets, and to respond to public requests for information. At the federal level, the Access to Information Act applies, and each province has their own Freedom of Information Act. Often seen as a fundamental right, freedom of information enables citizens to hold government accountable for their transparency and their actions.

What is eDiscovery?

eDiscovery refers to the obligation for parties involved in a court case to identify, produce or present electronically stored information (ESI) that is relevant to a case. This includes not only the content itself, but also metadata, which includes timestamps, file properties, comments and information about author/source and recipient.

eDiscovery helps clarify the essence and the true facts of the case and streamlines what is to be heard at trial. eDiscovery is an element of broader discovery, which includes information in all forms and formats.  

The process is similar for both

With both access to information and eDiscovery requests, the goal is to provide all relevant, complete and accurate information that is within the organization’s control, in any medium or form, in a timely fashion. The fundamental process is similar as outlined in this simplified eDiscovery reference model:

Non-compliance with access to information legislation and eDiscovery rules can result in significant cost, legal and reputational consequences.

If information is not effectively organized, compliance can also be labor intensive, costly, and have a negative impact on ongoing operations as attention is diverted to finding the necessary content.

To manage the compliance and business risks associated with access to information and eDiscovery, many organizations adopt a readiness strategy. The key elements of a readiness strategy are outlined in The best risk insurance? Good RM.

One of the elements of readiness is using technology strategically. Microsoft provides a significant capability to help manage the process of responding to access to information requests and eDiscovery: Microsoft Purview eDiscovery.

Microsoft provides three levels of capability for access to information requests and eDiscovery;

• Purview Content Search

• eDiscovery Standard

• eDiscovery Premium

The Content Search tool in Microsoft Preview allows you to create, refine and use search queries and conditions to search content in Exchange mailboxes, OneDrive and SharePoint, as well as messaging conversations in Teams and Groups. You then export the search results to your local computer for further analysis and processing. 

eDiscovery Standard builds on Content Search by including simple case management, and the ability to place “holds” on specific content locations or content that matches a specific query to prevent editing or accidental deletion of in-scope content. As with Content Search, relevant content is exported for further process.

eDiscovery Premium adds significant capability to Standard by including advanced features such as:

• End-to-end workflows to manage the process

• Identification and management of content owners/custodians within the process

• Extensive analytics, indexing, filtering and tagging

• Ability to perform and export redactions on review sets

• Conversation threading on content such as email chains

• Including linked files and SharePoint document versions in review sets

• Optical character recognition

• Near duplicate detection for grouping textually similar documents to make the review process more efficient

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning to aid content selection, de-duplication and refinement

eDiscovery Standard vs. Premium

This is a high-level overview of the workflows that are included in Microsoft eDiscovery Standard vs. Premium:

Microsoft has invested in capabilities to help customers through the information management stages within Microsoft 365, which can help consolidate vendors, reduce data and you find what you need so that what you export is the bare minimum.

By the time you get to production and presentation steps, the amount of data should reflect only the information that is relevant to the case.

Responding to an access to information request or participating in eDiscovery can be labor intensive and costly without a foundation of good information governance, and a tool like Microsoft eDiscovery.

When to go with Premium?

If your organization responds to numerous access to information or eDiscovery requests annually, and the cost and effort to respond are significant, we recommend using Microsoft eDiscovery Premium.

The first and most important step is to work with your legal / compliance team and access to information experts. They have the best understanding of risks, obligations, workloads, roles and processes within your organization, and can help identify requirements.  Once you’ve done so, then:

• Based on your requirements, pick and license the right eDiscovery capability.

• Explore and learn about Microsoft’s eDiscovery capability and work to align its use with your internal processes and roles for access to information and eDiscovery.

• Create a few use cases in the context of your organization to test the use of eDiscovery in a “real world” scenario and to strengthen and refine process, internal roles and learning.

How Gravity Union can help

To help organizations get ready for eDiscovery and respond efficiently to access to information requests, Gravity Union can assess and help evolve good information governance as a foundation to improve content discoverability.

Reviews and recommendations are provided in key areas such as security, search, information architecture and taxonomy, applied records and lifecycle management.

Implementing an eDiscovery capability is a learning process for organizations, and Gravity Union can provide “Art of the Possible” overview sessions to inform planning and decision making within specific organizational context.

Gravity Union can work with legal/compliance to understand challenges and opportunities and advise on the right Purview eDiscovery solution for the organization’s needs and help evolve related processes and roles to take advantage of the technology’s capabilities.

Reach out to see how Gravity Union can support planning and implementation, and provide training and coaching on using Microsoft Purview eDiscovery.