I've recently been involved, along with colleagues from JISC and UCISA, in pulling together some guidance for those universities and colleges who are considering outsourcing their student email services to a 3rd party.
One of the most interesting discoveries when working on this was the number of institutions who are either actively considering or actually already going down this path. This is no theoretical 'what if' scenario any more.
Interestingly all institutions have so far limited the scope of their outsourcing to student email services only as these seem to throw up less management issues than working with staff email and related information systems. But if these early projects are successful I wonder how soon it will be before someone decides to extend the reach of their outsourcing solutions to incorporate institutional information and data regardless of these complications.
6 comments:
Steve, here's an issue to watch as private enterprises outsource more of their e-mail and other e-records: Will records in the "cloud" be easier for a legal adversary (like a prosecutor) to get via a search warrant or subpoena? --Ben
Hi Ben, thanks for the comment and for the link to your blog which looks extremely interesting and which i will follow with interest.
With reference to storing records in the cloud making legal discovery 'easier'. I was wondering whether the same was currently true for organisations who store their paper records with commercial storage companies. In your experience does this too increase the risk of inadvertant disclosure to a legal adversary (on the basis that theset too are in the custody of a 3rd party)?
I've been giving a bit of thought to the parallels between these two types of external record storage recently and wonder about the degree to which established good practice in commercial storage of paper records could be applied to use of the cloud for record storage.
Any thoughts?
Steve asked an excellent question: >>With reference to storing records in the cloud making legal discovery 'easier'. I was wondering whether the same was currently true for organisations who store their paper records with commercial storage companies.<<
In theory, I believe the answer is yes. Consider old cases like In re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum, dated Jan. 15, 1986, 797 F.2d 676 (8th Cir.), where the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure were used in a grand jury investigation to tell a third party holding documents to 1. turn the documents over to the prosecutor, but 2. don't tell anyone else (such as the owner of the documents or the party to whom the documents pertain) that the government is looking at the documents.
In the age of information, the rich, the powerful and the authoritative surprisingly find that it is harder to keep secrets. --Ben
Fascinating - thanks Ben. It would be interesting to know whether the same is true 'this side of the pond' and whether there are any examples of this occuring.
Steve: I've been studying whether the law of e-records in the US generally matches with the law outside the US. I am finding some evidence to the affirmative. See for example international mediation rules, German government records law and Australian e-discovery law. Can you point to other research in this field, especially from civil law jurisdictions like Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Japan?
Thanks Ben. No, unfortunately I don't have information on the situation in other countries, but hopefully someone else might...
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