Integreon

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) project, founded by George Socha and Tom Gelbmann, last week held its mid-year meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota. Autumn was clearly evident all around, which I thought an interesting contrast with the EDRM’s “evergreen” approach to ensuring that the Electronic Discovery Reference Model is always current, practical and relevant. The organization brings together a wide range of industry professionals in a non-profit group with the goal of developing (and continually refreshing) “guidelines and standards for e-discovery consumers and providers”. As co-chair on the EDRM’s Evergreen committee, here are my thoughts and observations from our mid-year meeting.

Everyone was pleased that EDRM has now debuted a new, much easier-on-the-eyes, www.EDRM.net. All EDRM working groups use this site to highlight completed content. The site also consolidates a lot of past research and standards materials. In addition, the EDRM launched a new Twitter feed via @EDRM to facilitate broader awareness about the organization’s on-going activities and accomplishments. (Speaking of Twitter, follow Integreon via @IntegreonEDD and me, personally, via @Babfab.)

The main action during the mid-year meeting took place in the working group discussions.  Here are some highlights:

An updated sample e-discovery data set

The Data Set Working Group reported on extensive collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a US-government agency that sets many technical standards, including for the SHA-1 algorithm used in data (file) de-duplication. (And yes, the MD-5 hash is still commonly used as well).

NIST also maintains a database of known operating system files, program files and other non-user file types. Vendors and legal organizations that process data use the “NIST list” to help “separate the wheat from the chaff”. That is, a simple step to reduce data volume requiring review is to eliminate from data sets all of the program and other files that do not contain user data. This process does not rely on file names or extensions, but rather on digital signatures.

Because of collaborating with the NIST, the Data Set group has gained a much better understanding of NIST objectives and processes for determining which file types get added to their list, the methods for updating such lists, and even some considerations for maintaining chain of custody. Understanding why many file types don’t make it onto the NIST’s list has helped the Data Set group develop a strategy for targeting additional file types that should be included in the EDRM’s e-discovery test data set. The term “de-Nist” was used extensively by the working group team leaders in reference to the process for removing non-user files from data sets. Interestingly, the NIST itself had never actually heard this term before, but NIST participants were pleasantly surprised to learn of its existence, as well as its importance as an e-discovery term of art.

Standardized metrics for e-discovery

The Metrics Working Group completed a Quick Start Guide and a number of tool templates, including ones for ROI tools, ECA cost estimation, collection and review tracking, and data mapping. The group helped build some new American Bar Association (ABA) tools, and helped in jumpstarting the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) Oversight Committee’s e-discovery code set. LEDES is a data standard that law firms and client law departments use to exchange billing information (“e-billing”); with the growing cost of EDD, the goal is to extend LEDES to include more EDD detail.

Searching

Participation in the Search Working Group has mushroomed, going from twenty-eight to eight-six members since earlier this year. The group’s Search guide has been one of the EDRM website’s most popular downloads. Additional resources are planned in the next six months, including XML formatted Search Specifications and a guide to Search Metrics. This group’s goal is to provide a framework for defining and managing various aspects of search – for example, features used in culling and review – to enable more predictable and complete results.

Introducing the Information Management Reference Model (IMRM) Project

The six month old Information Management Working Group has embarked on an Information Management Reference Model project, as a corollary to the existing EDRM model. The team was excited to report that twenty percent of the participants on this project are Records Management professionals. The group’s work is intended to provide a common, practical, flexible framework to help organizations develop and implement effective and actionable information management programs.

Code of Conduct

The Model Code of Conduct Working Group has been working hard on many thorny issues surrounding professional conduct and has just released a draft copy of recommended guidelines for software and services providers. If I weren’t working so much in the Evergreen group, I’d love to get more involved in this. The work being done here is driving development of standard ethical practices for e-discovery.

Sprucing things up

The Evergreen Working Group has a lot to show for its hard work too over these last six months. Our goal is to keep all content across working groups as current as possible. Our sub-committees got together and promoted as much content from working groups up to the website as possible. We really wanted to tie up loose ends and fill in all the blanks. This work, which is still in progress, falls under the umbrella of the Evergreen Content subgroup and should be completed by the Spring meeting. John Turner (Anacomp) was sorely missed at the mid-year meeting, due to a scheduling conflict, but his work on the Review and Analysis stages was warmly appreciated.

The Evergreen Standardize subgroup got off to a roaring start. This group aims to redesign EDRM.net for easier access to content and also to help EDRM participants stay up-to-date with what’s going on in their respective projects.

And now for the Gossip

• The walleye-cake appetizers were surprisingly good.
• George Socha is building a cinder-block bread oven in his backyard.
• We lost some EDRM participants because of the sagging job market. In light of economic stress, EDRM now waives membership fees for individuals who do lose their job, so hopefully this will help. For more information on EDRM memberships, click here.
• There was some prognosticating about future judicial participation in defining
  e-discovery best practices. When it does or doesn’t happen, I’ll hand out the
  ESI-Psychic Award.