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Sent to you by pakurilecz via Google Reader: Medical and Education
Record Retention and Purge Policy via Electronic Data Records Law | How
to Win E-Discovery by Benjamin Wright on 9/19/08
Tiered e-Archives for Patient Records and Electronic Mail

How long should an enterprise retain e-data? What's a smart policy on
e-record destruction? Hear how East Carolina University answered the
questions for e-mail, medical records and security videos.

The institution retains those three classes of data in a dedicated
archival system (more than just normal production records and backup).

East Carolina retains e-mail of top school administrators seven years,
then purges it. In my experience, seven years is the
traditionally-recognized period for responsible retention of important
financial records.

East Carolina elected to retain e-mail of faculty and staff for three
years.

It archives security videos . . .

(very voluminous) 30 days.

The university saves patient records until 20 years after patient's
death.

To reduce costs, the university retains archives in tiers. Newer or
higher-priority archives are in higher-performance "primary" storage,
whereas older archives are relegated to slower storage, outside the
network backup program.

On the topic of tiers, I’ll go one step further than what I read about
East Carolina U. I envision another, even lower and less expensive
tier, where archives are retained and organized but not accessible by
fully-automated means.

 From the perspective of e-discovery theory, a rationale for tiered
storage is this: E-discovery law is most intolerant when records are
destroyed too early. In the e-records world, too-early destruction is
the most common type of "spoliation" or "obstruction of justice".
E-discovery law is also intolerant (but maybe a bit less so) when a
litigant possesses records, but she doesn’t know it and can’t find them.

Finally, e-discovery law seems to be more tolerant when a litigant
possesses records, knows she possesses them, knows more or less where
they are, but just can't get to them very easily. When this is the case
in a lawsuit, a litigant is much less likely to be charged with
spoliation. Instead, the plaintiff and defendant are prone to go before
the judge and argue about the extent to which the dusty old e-archives
are important and about who should pay for how much of the cost of
retrieving them.

-–Benjamin Wright

Mr. Wright is an advisor to Messaging Architects, thought leader in
e-record archival.

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