Federal Government Called to Legislate Document Retention
Federal Government Called to Legislate Document Retention
Nov 24, 2005: AXS-One head David Thompson has called upon the Federal Government to take the lead and create legislation for electronic document retention before things get out of hand.
Currently, each state is introducing its own legislation to tackle the problem. However, this will rapidly turn into a nightmare for national companies to operate compliantly.
Email is the major area in need of attention, with around 80 per cent of company communication now handled via email and instant messages. Thompson believes it is essential that companies have an email retention policy. But the majority don't. Emails can potentially be used one day in court, but many companies still don’t store them properly, if at all.
"Australia needs a federal approach to document retention and monitoring around electronic documents, particularly email as this is the worst offender" says Thompson.
He suggests a legislation similar to the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act or 17a-4 from the Securities Exchange Comission where there aren’t any conflicts with state-based laws.
"A national approach that is also consistent with regulations that are being enacted globally, should be implemented," says Thompson.
Thompson backs up his call with these figures from the US:
- There are approximately 125 ongoing legal matters in a typical Fortune 500 company, with at least 75 per cent of them requiring e-discovery.
- US firms are expected to spend $US1.2 billion on outside e-discovery services in 2005, projected at $1.9 billion in 2006.
- 10 per cent of corporate lawyers reported their businesses settled a case rather than incur the cost of e-discovery.
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