U.S. K-12 Schools Must Comply With e-Discovery Rule

Lucas123 writes "K-12 school districts throughout the US have a daunting IT homework assignment over the summer: Develop systems that ensure their electronic documents, email and instant messages are in compliance with new federal e-discovery regulations, much in the same way corporations have been preparing over the past year. The new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) are expected to be widely enforced by the end of 2007, according to a Computerworld story. '"A lack of preparation could prove dire for K-12 school districts, which oftentimes lack technical proficiency, funding and legal expertise," said Robert Ayers, technology coordinator for the Kingston, Pa.-based Luzerne Intermediate Unit 18 school district.'"

Comments

E-Discovery?

[smartbei]

For those (like me) unaware of this terminology: (from TFA)

September 2005 updates to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) require that electronic documents -- including e-mail and perhaps even instant messaging logs -- be available as evidence in civil court cases. Observers note that widespread enforcement of the rules will likely begin by the end of 2007, a year later than expected (see "New e-discovery rules go into effect in December ").

Heh..

[Anonymous Coward]

K-12 school districts, which oftentimes lack technical proficiency

In much the same way as birds oftentimes lack gills.

Re:Not just schools

[RingDev]

Hey, if the President's IT Staff can lose e-mails, I'm sure the rest of us can too ;)

-Rick

Another law made by non-it people

[guruevi]

I am assigned to a committee to see how to implement these 'new' laws into our infrastructure. It's really amazing how incompetent these laws are. They require documents to be stored forever or to expire at a certain date, and as soon as it expires, nothing about the document is allowed to be found. So as soon as the document expires, somebody has to go through all backups, tapes, computers, usb sticks etc. and delete all traces of the document.

Not only is it near-impossible to implement, the only possible implementation would be a solution similar to DRM on media, which as we all know doesn't work, since you already have the content at that moment. Of course vendors like IBM and Microsoft would love to sell you their solution (that requires call-back to the central server which has to be accessible from both inside and outside the network (if you would like to use your documents elsewhere than within the office)) which not only costs a horrible amount of money, the implementation itself is flawed (as is any DRM-solution) and has so many requirements that managing and securing the solutions is going to be a major issue.

I think it's disgusting how companies and their lobby push for these impossible laws so they can sell their software.

Re:Another law made by non-it people

[yar]

The Federal Rules of Evidence aren't quite as unreasonable as people seem to think. IMHO, the article is overstating the effects of the newly implemented rules. Important things to remember are
A) Have a records retention policy, and
B) follow that records retention policy.
If you're a public school, you probably have a records retention policy already. Many schools don't follow those policies for electronic records like they're supposed to, but there's very likely one that exists. Applying records retention policies to electronic media has been a problem with many public schools and many government organizations. It doesn't necessarily require going through one of those vendors or using those tools- it does require planning.

IT people were definitely involved in the creation of these rules.

I'm not sure what you mean that nothing is allowed to be found- that's what the discovery rules address. The new rules of evidence provide ways to share or shift costs of finding that information. In the past, you would have to pay those costs. With the new rules, either those costs are shared, or if it truly would be very burdensome to recover that information, the company seeking that information could pay those costs.

Small businesses

[Normal Dan]

It is becoming increasingly hard for small businesses to do any business these days. Not because they are being crowded out by the larger ones, but because one must higher several employees just to do all the paperwork required to run a business.

Now they have to log all electronic communication. Why? How is an email or test message any different than calling someone on the phone or meeting face to face? Will we have to bring a tape recorder to every meeting from now on? When will it end?

Data DESTRUCTION policy....

[nweaver]

Rather than trying to archive everything, there is an important alternative, a data destruction policy. You can't discover what doesn't exist.

You just need to have the policy long in place before someone even thinks of suing you.

ALERT! - This is all VENDOR HYPE!!!

[spiedrazer]

I manage the networks for a K-12 school district and I am being bombarded by this same info, most of it feuled by vendor FUD!! The Rules of discovery that everyone is referencing do NOT say in any way that all electronic communications need to be stored or archived in any way.

What the rules DO now officially state (which they didn't before last year) is that electronic communications must now be treated the same as traditional paper documentation.

Specifically, that means that you cant destroy any correspondance or record HAVING TO DO WITH AN ONGOING LEGAL ACTION/LITIGATION or that you can reasonaby expect may lead to litigation. For my organization, that is less than one percent of the volume of data I have. All the vendors are saying that we need to archive ALL our e-mails in a searchable database yada yada yada so that we can protect ourselves against some unknown threat that we may be found in violation of these rules. That simply isn't the case. We will be in trouble if we destroy evidenmce in an ongoing legal case, but that is about it.

What we DO need to do is insure that the HR department and others that typically deal with sensitive legal topics understand the rules, and that they should print out and save anything that they suspect could come back to bite us, like adverse personell actions. We also need to insure that building administrators do the same when it comes to discipline actions concerning students etc.

AGAIN, anyone who tells you that you NEED to archive/store ALL e-mail or other electronic documents is at best completely mis-informed (like most of the journalists parroting back the FUD)or at worst trying to scam you directly with their FUD.

Re:some schools can't pay for good IT people much.

[Kijori]

The average school in the US spends about 6K per student some of the schools you might consider poor (lets look at DC) spend upwards of twice that. 12K per kid per year that more than double what many elite private schools charge usually only 70% of that (not the kind with ponies and security teams where diplomats send their kids those are in a league of their own). OK, firstly while the average school spends around $6k per child, this doesn't tell the whole story; the variance in the figures is very large. Suburban schools in New York spend between 10 and 19 thousand dollars per child, while inner city schools in Utah struggle to meet the $3k mark. The schools you might consider poor do not spend "upwards of twice" $6k, they struggle to raise half of it.

Your estimates for the costs of private education are just as far off as your estimates of the money involved in public schooling. I suspect you have been misled by figures bandied about in the school voucher debate - these tend to lump secondary schools with elementary schools and even free schools to bring the apparent price down to less than the cost of a public school. For example, an often quoted figure for private school cost is $3600 per child - this is arrived at by taking the average for secondary school, elementary schools, free independent schools and church schools - all designed to make the secondary school cost look low. In truth, the average fee level of a private secondary school is rather higher at about $5,500. The gap between the private and public sector can be explained by a few things, such as reduction in bureaucratic red tape and potential increase in efficiency, but also by their frequent status as charitable organizations soliciting donations that can increase this to meet the public level, and their selectiveness; if you don't have to deal with unruly or disadvantaged children you can cut costs heavily.

My final point is that you seem to underestimate the costs in the day to day running of a school rather heavily! Just taking into account the staffing takes your available funds down to around $4k per pupil (and remember the schools that only make $3k per pupil originally?). Then you have to buy computers, books, stationary and furniture, run activities, organize school board elections, pay for heating, lighting and water and provide a bus for disabled students who can't get in otherwise. Depending on your location security might be an issue. And your building and equipment don't last forever with thousands of children inside - you need to make it to the end of the year with some surplus in case someone's broken a telescope or put a broom through the ceiling. (Or get insurance - but that will of course cost more than the average year's renovation costs; that's how insurance works).

My point with all this is that schools don't have millions of dollars sitting around in a cupboard somewhere. They aren't choosing not to employ a team of network technicians, it's just that even a small technical staff - say 2 people - eats into your budget by around $80k year if they're good at what they do. That money doesn't appear overnight.

That upper-leg tick really needs attention.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Ah, President Bush. I thought I smelled your foul stench.

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are promulgated by the Supreme Court (and written by their employees), after receiving a Congressional rubber stamp. Bush and his whole branch of government aren't even in the loop.

But somehow it's Bush's fault, right? Did you elect him the official scapegoat? (If you get a cold it's Bush's fault. If the Supreme Court promulgates a rule you don't like it's Bush's fault. He wasn't there for the election - but that's HIS fault.)

You really need to get medical attention for that jerking knee.