The Basics of E-Discovery: Information Governance

Defining Information Governance

The leading business analyst firm Gartner defines information governance (IG) as:

“The specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to ensure appropriate behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archiving, and deletion of information. It includes the processes, roles, policies, standards, and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information in enabling an organization to achieve its goals.”

That definition is quite dense, but it can be simplified:

Information governance is the set of rules organizations use to control the creation, management, storage, and eventual disposition of data. It applies to all types of organizational data—from paper files, phone records, and voicemails to electronic data such as emails, spreadsheets, documents, presentations, database records, and other forms of electronically stored information (ESI).

Information Governance and the EDRM

If your introduction to e-discovery came through the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), you might assume that information governance is simply the first step in the e-discovery process, as it appears on the far left of the model.

However, that’s not entirely accurate.

In reality, e-discovery is just one component of a broader information governance program. It represents a subset focused on managing legal risk and determining how data is handled—both within the organization and when it must be produced for litigation.

The Value of Information Governance

As organizations increasingly rely on data analytics to interpret vast amounts of information, strong information governance strategies have become essential.

While “Big Data” is often discussed in the context of IT, it presents equally significant challenges for legal teams. Even relatively simple matters can involve hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of documents. Identifying which of those are relevant to a specific case can be overwhelming.

Information governance helps bring order to this complexity by ensuring data is organized, accessible, and properly managed throughout its lifecycle.

Information governance is a broad topic with much more to explore. But if your focus is on e-discovery and its relationship to IG, a foundational guide is a great place to begin.

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