The audits you perform can include identifying: Understanding how to manage a litigation-driven document discovery process  before it happens saves a great deal of time  and  money. The negative effect of a  document discovery process can be mitigated by ensuring that your organization  has effective procedures around the way documents, e-mail, and data are stored. Document discovery events can be very costly exercises that potentially fail for  any of a number of reasons. Usually the failure occurs due to a lack of  advanced planning — legal staff descending on the IT/IS department with demands for data  and documents to be produced quickly around key terms causes disruption. A  large amount of business may be transacted through e-mail systems.  Planning for document discovery can take the following form: This can include mail databases, file directories, other databases, backup  systems (including all media types such as tape and optical). Data  repositories may be geographically dispersed (as in the case of regional or  head offices) as well as under the control of users on their local workstations. The longer it takes to locate and retrieve data, the more costly the discovery  task will be. Retrieved data is not of much use if it is in a format that you can no longer  support. This could include backups that may have been taken using older  backup technology. GLYPH<SM590000> Average mail database size. GLYPH<SM590000> Volume of inbound and outbound e-mail for a given time period. GLYPH<SM590000> The largest users of the system in terms of mail database size and usage. GLYPH<SM590000> Age of e-mail that exists in people’s mail database. This is useful to  understand how relevant older e-mail may be to user’s current work. GLYPH<SM590000> Average time users spend managing their mail files and if this is due to any  mail database quotas imposed on their databases or in searching for e-mail. GLYPH<SM590000> Why e-mail is kept for long periods of time. Can it be because a user is keen  to cover themselves in case of subsequent inquiries? GLYPH<SM590000> Understand the range of data your organization holds.  GLYPH<SM590000> Locate the repositories of data.  GLYPH<SM590000> Understand how to retrieve the data quickly. GLYPH<SM590000> Understand in what format the data may exist.  GLYPH<SM590000> After the data has been retrieved, understand how it can be searched.  118  E-mail Archiving and Records Management Integrated Solution Guide  This can be both electronic and paper-based.  Planning for discovery