Disclosures

Once the parameters of the potential disclosure are settled, the live search(es) may proceed.
Straight forward requests are often dealt with at service level with the relevant service/business area taking the lead in gathering the necessary information to fulfil the request.
However, complex disclosure requests tend to be managed centrally by Information Governance (IG) practitioners and/or subject matter legal experts (for example, legal specialists in child protection law and those responsible for instituting, conducting, prosecuting, defending, or settling any actual or threatened legal proceedings against a public authority).
For legal, security and practical reasons, it is not appropriate for IG practitioners and/or legal experts to have unlimited access to live systems/applications to identify the necessary information.
Practitioners rely on business owners with direct knowledge of the service area(s) and/or the IT Department with responsibility for corporate systems/applications, to conduct these searches.
But these searches may involve multiple business systems/applications and increasingly, media storage devices and digital collaboration tools.

Search Methodology/Tools:
Manual or electronic searches may be insufficiently precise to accurately identify the required information, leading either to:
the failure to collect all the necessary information in scope, or conversely: the over-collection of out-of-scope information
In the first instance, this may compromise compliance requirements and/or evidential rules in legal proceedings.
In the second, this could lead to potentially unnecessary personal data processing which may, for example, risk breaching data protection law.
From a practical viewpoint, over collection means that the time and cost in responding is longer than necessary because more resources are needed to identify and exclude out-of-scope information.
“It may not be technically possible for information in different formats to be brought together (by public bodies) in a holistic and searchable way.”
– Managing the search outputs: In practice, the business owner for the service area and/or the IT personnel responsible for corporate systems/applications will need to:
identify the relevant information based on business knowledge and/or IT search techniques; copy the identified information so that it can be reviewed outside the live system/application.
But this becomes problematic, especially where information is drawn from multiple sources in different formats as:
the copying process may remove or reduce search facilities that would normally be available in the live system; the copied information may lack the metadata necessary for audit verification purposes;
it may not be technically possible for information in different formats to be brought together in a holistic and searchable way.

Informa’s cloud-based disclosure management platform benefits from machine learning technology.
Sophisticated search capabilities are designed to minimise the under and/or over collection of information.
This not only improves effectiveness and compliance but avoids lengthy effort and cost otherwise spent on tedious manual processes such as the removal of out-of-scope information.
Informa’s search functionality is also able to identify images embedded in documents and read any scanned text separately to ensure it is not overlooked in the search process.
Once collected, the information is accessible to reviewers and decision-makers within a single searchable repository, regardless of format.
The metadata linked to the original source of the copied file is also preserved as are for example, the threads in email chains.
As the following sections explain, even though the information may be in multiple formats copied from a range of systems and/or applications, all the stages necessary to prepare the information for disclosure, including the redaction process, can be undertaken within Informa’s Disclosure Management Platform.

Once the parameters of the potential disclosure are settled, the live search(es) may proceed.
Straight forward requests are often dealt with at service level with the relevant service/business area taking the lead in gathering the necessary information to fulfil the request.
However, complex disclosure requests tend to be managed centrally by Information Governance (IG) practitioners and/or subject matter legal experts (for example, legal specialists in child protection law and those responsible for instituting, conducting, prosecuting, defending, or settling any actual or threatened legal proceedings against a public authority).
For legal, security and practical reasons, it is not appropriate for IG practitioners and/or legal experts to have unlimited access to live systems/applications to identify the necessary information.
Practitioners rely on business owners with direct knowledge of the service area(s) and/or the IT Department with responsibility for corporate systems/applications, to conduct these searches.
But these searches may involve multiple business systems/applications and increasingly, media storage devices and digital collaboration tools.

Search Methodology/Tools:
Manual or electronic searches may be insufficiently precise to accurately identify the required information, leading either to:
the failure to collect all the necessary information in scope, or conversely: the over-collection of out-of-scope information
In the first instance, this may compromise compliance requirements and/or evidential rules in legal proceedings.
In the second, this could lead to potentially unnecessary personal data processing which may, for example, risk breaching data protection law.
From a practical viewpoint, over collection means that the time and cost in responding is longer than necessary because more resources are needed to identify and exclude out-of-scope information.
“It may not be technically possible for information in different formats to be brought together (by public bodies) in a holistic and searchable way.”
– Managing the search outputs: In practice, the business owner for the service area and/or the IT personnel responsible for corporate systems/applications will need to:
identify the relevant information based on business knowledge and/or IT search techniques; copy the identified information so that it can be reviewed outside the live system/application.
But this becomes problematic, especially where information is drawn from multiple sources in different formats as:
the copying process may remove or reduce search facilities that would normally be available in the live system; the copied information may lack the metadata necessary for audit verification purposes;
it may not be technically possible for information in different formats to be brought together in a holistic and searchable way.

Informa’s cloud-based disclosure management platform benefits from machine learning technology.
Sophisticated search capabilities are designed to minimise the under and/or over collection of information.
This not only improves effectiveness and compliance but avoids lengthy effort and cost otherwise spent on tedious manual processes such as the removal of out-of-scope information.
Informa’s search functionality is also able to identify images embedded in documents and read any scanned text separately to ensure it is not overlooked in the search process.
Once collected, the information is accessible to reviewers and decision-makers within a single searchable repository, regardless of format.
The metadata linked to the original source of the copied file is also preserved as are for example, the threads in email chains.
As the following sections explain, even though the information may be in multiple formats copied from a range of systems and/or applications, all the stages necessary to prepare the information for disclosure, including the redaction process, can be undertaken within Informa’s Disclosure Management Platform.

Once the parameters of the potential disclosure are settled, the live search(es) may proceed.
Straight forward requests are often dealt with at service level with the relevant service/business area taking the lead in gathering the necessary information to fulfil the request.
However, complex disclosure requests tend to be managed centrally by Information Governance (IG) practitioners and/or subject matter legal experts (for example, legal specialists in child protection law and those responsible for instituting, conducting, prosecuting, defending, or settling any actual or threatened legal proceedings against a public authority).
For legal, security and practical reasons, it is not appropriate for IG practitioners and/or legal experts to have unlimited access to live systems/applications to identify the necessary information.
Practitioners rely on business owners with direct knowledge of the service area(s) and/or the IT Department with responsibility for corporate systems/applications, to conduct these searches.
But these searches may involve multiple business systems/applications and increasingly, media storage devices and digital collaboration tools.

Search Methodology/Tools:
Manual or electronic searches may be insufficiently precise to accurately identify the required information, leading either to:
the failure to collect all the necessary information in scope, or conversely: the over-collection of out-of-scope information
In the first instance, this may compromise compliance requirements and/or evidential rules in legal proceedings.
In the second, this could lead to potentially unnecessary personal data processing which may, for example, risk breaching data protection law.
From a practical viewpoint, over collection means that the time and cost in responding is longer than necessary because more resources are needed to identify and exclude out-of-scope information.
“It may not be technically possible for information in different formats to be brought together (by public bodies) in a holistic and searchable way.”
– Managing the search outputs: In practice, the business owner for the service area and/or the IT personnel responsible for corporate systems/applications will need to:
identify the relevant information based on business knowledge and/or IT search techniques; copy the identified information so that it can be reviewed outside the live system/application.
But this becomes problematic, especially where information is drawn from multiple sources in different formats as:
the copying process may remove or reduce search facilities that would normally be available in the live system; the copied information may lack the metadata necessary for audit verification purposes;
it may not be technically possible for information in different formats to be brought together in a holistic and searchable way.

Informa’s cloud-based disclosure management platform benefits from machine learning technology.
Sophisticated search capabilities are designed to minimise the under and/or over collection of information.
This not only improves effectiveness and compliance but avoids lengthy effort and cost otherwise spent on tedious manual processes such as the removal of out-of-scope information.
Informa’s search functionality is also able to identify images embedded in documents and read any scanned text separately to ensure it is not overlooked in the search process.
Once collected, the information is accessible to reviewers and decision-makers within a single searchable repository, regardless of format.
The metadata linked to the original source of the copied file is also preserved as are for example, the threads in email chains.
As the following sections explain, even though the information may be in multiple formats copied from a range of systems and/or applications, all the stages necessary to prepare the information for disclosure, including the redaction process, can be undertaken within Informa’s Disclosure Management Platform.