10.06.09
Enterprise Architecture and E-Discovery
E-Discovery has become a significant factor in litigation. Obviously, this has occurred since electronic records and electronic text documents are the primary forms of creating and storing information. Since this makes e-Discovery an important aspect of corporate life, how can Enterprise Architecture help to organize this complex issue?
First off, this issue is technically similar to other issues that have occurred. Building data warehouses for business intelligence, integrating all financial information, tracking all corporate assets, business rules management, and managing the supply chain are some of the other major issues. Each of these issues has resulted in tentacles reaching out to all applications for information. These tentacles, like duct tape, have wrapped around the core applications and technologies to a point where corporate agility has almost been snuffed out.
E-Discovery is similar to these other issues in the approach to management as recommended by consultants. The recommendation is for a centralized “Records Management” group that works directly and regularly with IT. This means staffing another organization and extending the staff of IT. Oh, and let us not forget, this initiative will require senior management commitment.
Another approach, within the Enterprise Architecture, is the adoption of standards for defining integration points. The definition of these integration points would be under the authority of the existing line-of-business units. In this model, each line-of-business would work to maximize the reuse of existing integration points. They would shape the integration points from a business perspective. They would only call upon IT to provide new or improved integration points.
Each line-of-business would be responsible for guaranteeing that their retention policies are followed. They would provide the integration points to be used by the Corporate Legal Department’s e-Discovery application. Legal would work with those having the greatest knowledge of the business, the management and staff of each line-of-business.
Just like the other issues listed, e-Discovery could be solved with a “quick and dirty” solution of more staff and duct tape. We can just dump the problem on IT again. Why not? IT understands all that technology stuff. Or, we could take a step back and realize we have done this before.
It is time to recognize that Enterprise Architecture can bring decentralization back. Each line-of-business can actually manage their own data. Not only can they do it, they can do it better at a much lower cost. E-Discovery is just one more reason for centralizing the models through Enterprise Architecture while decentralizing the control of IT.
