Lawyers may be enthusiastic about the prospect of comprehensive information governance as a means to reduce litigation e-discovery risks, but a survey of small and medium business by US analyst firm 451 Research indicates that non-lawyers, senior executives, and IT staff may not be placing a high priority on these legal and regulatory needs. 

In addition, recent case law and the enterprise ‘BYOD’ trend indicate that the state of corporate data is more like the Wild, Wild West than a realm of comprehensively governed information.

After surveying more than 2000 US companies in November and December 2012, it found  less than 50% were convinced of the importance of  information governance program to their organization.

This was not spread evenly across roles, as while the majority of IT workers did think it was important, only 32 percent of senior management concurred. 

"A development that bodes poorly for the future development of information governance programs," said lawyer David Horrigan, ediscovery and information governance analyst and author of the 451 Research report.

"Social media and mobile data have changed the legal landscape in e-discovery, as the proliferation of social data has made ediscovery a factor in legal matters where it was rarely an issue before – from everyday slip-and-fall cases to divorce actions. 

"E-discovery isn’t just for big cases tried by big law firms anymore, and we see this trend continuing because social media platforms aren’t going away anytime soon. In addition, this social media information – and other types of data – are found increasingly on mobile devices, further complicating the e-discovery challenges.

"Assisted-review technologies such as predictive coding – which employ artificial intelligence in an iterative learning process to assist attorneys in the e-discovery document-review process – gained greater acceptance in 2012, beginning with the first known judicial blessing of predictive coding in February. 

"Assisted-review technologies gained traction throughout the year in a series of court cases, culminating in a court ordering predictive coding in October without the litigants even asking for it. We see this trend continuing in 2013, if for no other reason than that legal teams are being buried under an avalanche of big data.

"Differing global views of data privacy have been important factors in international litigation for some time, but with the explosion of big data and new data privacy initiatives under consideration in Europe, the international data-privacy divide is growing, and we expect this issue to persist."

The report is available online for $US3750