I’ve only ever been to court once… as a empanelled juror on a criminal case I might add.
I found the whole process interesting, but at the end of each day I knew that (on the balance of probabilities) I would be going home, how much choice I’d have for choosing my dinner and what I’d be up to the next day.
Choice is great. A bit like freedom: better to have it than not, right?
I’m not a lawyer. More specifically I am not your lawyer and the following is most certainly not legal advice.
Equally neither am I offering you professional advice. If I were then we’d certainly have a contract in place and we’d absolutely not be having this conversation in a public forum!
What I am going to share is my own personal opinon.
Okay? ‘kay.
Whatever you do or don’t do, just as how you do almost anything, potentially can lead you to end up in court.
It may be as a victim, as a witness or in extremis as an accused person.
How you treat information, and by extension data and knowledge, matters.
Don’t think so? Go check out and see the various actions the Information Commissioner’s Office have taken. It’s a matter of public record after all:
Now you or any organisation you belong to or represent may not fall under the jurisidiction of the ICO, but your activities will likely fall under someones jurisdiction somewhere at some point.
Remember folks: the cloud is just sombody elses computer server running in a data centre somewhere.
Do you know which country they are hosted in? If not why not?
I encourage everyone to treat information appropriately. At its heart that’s what information governance is all about.
If you’re doing business in the United Kingdom there’s more to it that just being aware of and complying with the Data Protection Act 2018, GDPR and privacy related matters… though those are all very important (see above).
Just what is appropriate, however, is going to depend on a number of variables. For example:
- What is the content or nature of the information?
- What format does it take? Digital? Hardcopy? Other?
- Who is sending what to whom?
- From where and how?
- Who needs it and why? When?
- Who is accountable for the information and is authorised to make any changes?
- How long must the information be retained for?
- What is the appropriate means of archiving or disposal?
… and so on and so forth.
I don’t need to be a lawyer (remember that I’m not one) to know that compliance with relevant regulatory requirements is not just necessary it is mandatory.
Good news for those in the legal professions: you’re not going out of fashion anytime soon!
Now exactly how you approach and sustain the treatment, routing, securing, preservation, categorisation, processing, auditing, sharing and gaining value from the information you generate, receive or transmit as it pertains to your own needs?
Well those can make for some interesting conversations indeed!