Process Maturity Model

This new model was introduced to corporate practitioners across legal, RIM and IT functions on January 20, 2010 at the 6th Annual CGOC Summit in Phoenix, Arizona. The CGOC, or Corporate Governance and Oversight Council, is a practitioners' forum started in 2004; it provides corporate leaders with educational seminars, benchmarking surveys, group workshops, white papers by expert faculty, and a professional networking web site in addition to the annual Summit and executive retreat. Speakers from Bank of America, Novartis, Abbott, and others focused on information governance, integrated processes across legal, RIM and IT and best practices for discovery and information management.

Using this model, companies can assess the level of maturity of the thirteen key information governance processes and the impact of their maturity level on legal risk, discovery cost, and data management cost. The information governance process maturity model is the first to tightly couple e-discovery and information management processes under an information governance umbrella and to define risk and cost values for each process and level of maturity.

Using the Process Maturity Model

Process Maturity Steps

Let us show you how you can reduce your cost and risk! Contact us for an interactive maturity assessment with a risk and cost profile that reflects your unique environment.


PROCESS LEVEL 1:
Ad Hoc, Manual, Unstructured		 LEVEL 2:
Manual, Structured		 LEVEL 3:
Semi-Automated within Silo		 LEVEL 4:
Automated and Fully Integrated Across Functions
A.
Legal Hold - Scope Custodians		 Multiple custodian spreadsheets. Centralized custodian spreadsheet. Scope by organization, people; systematically track all custodians in all holds including multiple holds per custodian; scope terminated/transferred employees in real time. Continuous update of custodian roles, responsibilities, automatic employee transition alerts; systematically use existing custodian lists for similar matters.
B.
Hold - Scope Information		 Limited collection from data sources, custodian-based rather than information based; spreadsheet tracking/lists. Identify data sources by organization; understand back up procedures. Have linked legacy tapes and data sources to organizations, and open holds/collections. Automatically scope people, systems and tapes, information and records in holds; Scope terminated employee data and legacy data/tapes where applicable.
C.
Publish Hold		 Manual notices, confirmations, no escalations Ad-hoc description of record or information subject to hold requires interpretation and manual effort to comply. Centralize reply email box for confirmations, Process well communicated, all holds on intranet. Systematically send notices and reminders, require and track confirmations, ability to manage exceptions, employees can look up their holds at any time. Communications tailored to recipient role (IT, RIM, employee). Publish to system, propagate hold, automate hold enforcement. IT Staff have continuous visibility to current discovery duties, holds during routine data management activities; automatically flag records in appropriate systems.
D.
Interview Custodians		 Ad-hoc manual interviews and follow up. Questionnaire mailed to custodians, responses compiled manually for collection and counsel follow up. Online/auto interviews with system follow-up, view individual and aggregated responses, auto non-response escalations, alerts for specific answers, export for O/C. Individual responses propagated to collections, custodian-specific collections instructions, interview results shared with outside counsel to interview by exception.
E.
Collection Workflow		 Detailed and duplicate spreadsheets of custodians and information between IT and Legal; multiple copies of the collected data. Centralized, version controlled spreadsheets of custodians and information; evidence server without inventory. IT can efficiently collect by custodian and content, avoid recollecting, auto logging of files collected, source, chain of custody. IT self-service look up. From their browsers, Attorneys collect directly from custodians or any system.
F.
Review Volume		 Image drives or over-collect from custodians, over scope custodians; high quantity of data for review Image drives or over-collect from custodians, over scope custodians; high quantity of data for review. Quantity of data reviewed from tightly scoped custodians, leveraging prior scoping histories, accurate enterprise map. Quantity of data reviewed from tightly scoped custodians, leveraging prior scoping histories, accurate enterprise map, detailed instructions to IT.
G.
Cost Control		 No assessment of costs prior to collection and review; no cost baseline available. Estimate costs on the "big matters" in spreadsheets or by outside counsel. Discovery cost forecasts are automatically generated as soon as the hold is scoped, costs are calculated continuously for matters. Consistently make cost shifting arguments to limit scope of collection and review; earliest/optimized matter resolution; manage cost at portfolio level.
H.
Monitoring, Compliance		 Each attorney tracks their own matters, status. Formal, but manual reporting of open holds; no summary reporting on interviews, collections, response. Automated reminders and escalations, online audit trail, management reporting on discovery status, visibility within legal dept across custodians, collected inventory, and matters. Appropriate visibility across IT, Legal and Business; self-service dashboards for legal obligations, tasks, risk and cost reduction opportunities.