Chris McLean General Manager, Technology, Knowledge and Legal, Energetics
Chris McLean Information governance principles for investigation agencies
What?
What is information governance? Ensuring that right information is available to the right people at the right time Ensuring that only authorised people have access to information Minimising the cost to the organisation of 1 & 2
Aim
My aim today To describe some of the information governance issues faced by investigation departments and broader organisations To give an overview of where the IT world is going To provide some practical tips on how to deal with them
Questions How many of you have wholly electronic files? How many have all electronic information on a case available in one place? How many have and actively use a document management system?
Starting out
Initial questions Who is responsible? Is someone in your organisation responsible for information management or is it left by default to IT? What are your limitations? Governing legislation, recordkeeping requirements, security requirements etc
Initial questions What information do you hold? Broad classes Where is your information? Do you know where it all is and is there a standard location for everything? Who needs to access the information? Roles, tasks
Where is your information? Paper files Emails Document stores Document management systems Databases Other local systems Other hosted systems
Where are we going?
Very Near future Most email will move to cloud hosted environments Office 365 Gmail Software will be sold as a subscription even when hosted locally Adobe Creative Suite Microsoft Office 365
Near future Software subscriptions will be bundled Document storage will move to cloud hosting May be private or public cloud Most software will be provided as a service through a web interface Local servers and storage will not be required
How far away is this? June 2013 - NSW trial Gmail and Office 365 email for ServiceFirst April 2014 - QLD government purchase Office 365 for 149,000 public servants across the state in $26.5m deal August 2014 - Microsoft start local hosted version of Office 365 (non Telstra)
What will the impact be? The good Information will be available from anywhere People will be able to work and collaborate from anywhere
What will the impact be? The bad Information will be available from anywhere Information won t be stored locally Information may be spread across a number of providers Systems may not talk to one another
Key things to consider : email
Correspondence: an example The olden days (1995) All correspondence and documents in a paper file Phone calls had paper file notes Electronic versions were considered a backup, not the original
Correspondence: an example Now (19 years later) Documents mixed between paper files, file shares and document management systems Most correspondence by email Email is generally siloed and unstructured
Email Average pages per Gb of email: 100,099 Source: LexisNexis Average pages in a book: 256 Source Amazon (64,000 words at 250 words per page)
Email: Our firm Average mailbox size: 4Gb Average number of pages: 500,495 Average number of books per person: 1,955
Solution: Email in context Email associated with a case, person, client etc Ideally associate email at time of sending Look to automatically associate email when received
How to justify it How to justify moving to in context email
Benefits Prevent information being kept in individual silos Allow someone else to take over or review a case and know that they have all of the information Allow matters to be run between different locations Allow easier archiving of entire case
What do you need to achieve it Some sort of structured email system or a document management system that can deal with email well Policies around filing of email The will to force people to file emails (peer pressure works well for this)
Key things to consider : paper records
Paper records: An example Paper records will eventually go away by themselves its just whether we give them a push or not Consider whether there is a real business benefit Look at both the short and long term benefits Weigh this up against the risks
How to justify it How to justify moving away from paper
Short Term Benefits Work between home and office Collaborate and work between offices Keep all information on a matter/case together Emails and paper documents generally not kept together Find information more easily
Long Term Benefits Cost Re-use of work
Cost Physical storage is now comparatively expensive
Cost Current We currently have 958 boxes in storage Last year we paid $14,840 This includes additions and removal costs Equates to $15.49 per box per year
Cost Cloud storage (assuming storage with Amazon) $ per annum 958 boxes Per year / GB Standard (AU) $ 1.26 $ 1,207.08 Per year / GB Glacier $ 0.14 $ 137.95 Transfer back / GB Standard (AU) $ 0.19 $ 182.02 Transfer back / GB Glacier $ 0.20 $ 191.60 Total Standard (AU) $ 1,389.10 Glacier $ 329.55
Cost Cost comparison Physical Storage $ 14,840.00 Amazon Standard (AU) $ 1,389.10 Amazon Glacier $ 329.55
Cost But remember: You will need some way of storing, filing and retrieving documents stored electronically No matter how you do it, this costs money
When to digitise? Do you go back and scan documents in storage now? Will there be any benefit aside from cost reduction?
Benefit When to digitise? Benefit in both the short and long term Short Term Medium Term Long Term
Benefit When to digitise? Only long term benefits Short Term Medium Term Long Term
Risks Data loss Data corruption
Downside People like paper Easier to review and mark up
What should you do?
Planning for the future Initial Steps Make sure that someone is responsible for information governance Review your legislative requirements Find out what is being planned by IT around systems and storage
Planning for the future Next Steps Review your cost of paper storage and the benefits of electronic files Look at how you store email and the benefits of structured email storage Review how your current email / document management systems can deal with this Review how your future email / document management system will deal with this Get involved with the IT selection process
Help
Moving to the Cloud Australian Government Policy http://www.finance.gov.au/cloud/ http://www.finance.gov.au/files/2012/04/australian-government-cloud- Computing-Policy-Version-2.0.pdf NSW Government Policy http://www.finance.nsw.gov.au/content/dfs-c2013-4-nsw-government-cloudservices-policy-and-guidelines NAA Records Management in the Cloud Checklist http://www.naa.gov.au/images/cloud_checklist_with_logo_and_cc_licence_tcm1 6-44279.pdf
Security Signals Directorate on Cloud Security http://www.asd.gov.au/infosec/cloudsecurity.htm
Questions?
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