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Technology News You Can UseApril 2009 – Issue XLVIn This Newsletter
Comments from the EditorsIt is our pleasure to bring you another interesting and educational Tech News You Can Use newsletter. Thanks very much to the authors of this month’s articles on peer review and eDiscovery. Speaking of eDiscovery, if you were unable to attend the North Chamber’s Technology Speaker Series breakfast on eDiscovery on April 16, you missed a humdinger of a program. Our experienced panelists discussed the costs and benefits of eDiscovery at length and answered many questions from the audience. Stay tuned to your email and this newsletter for announcements about our next Technology Speaker Series event. As always, please email us or the authors if you have any questions or would like more information about the topics discussed. And if you have an informative topic that you’d like to share with your fellow North Chamber members, would you please consider submitting an article for next month’s issue? Thanks and have a productive day! Brent Daugherty and Matt Reedy
Peer Interviewing: Educate to lead your IT staff to the next Level; James Raab, Methodist Healthcare SystemPeer interviewing is the process of using staff members to interview potential candidates. The goal is to have these interviewers ask behavioral-based questions to see if the candidates fit the culture of the team and organization. The specifics of peer interviewing will not be covered in this article as there are many web resources out there that explain the process and procedures. Peer interviewing only gets better when it is used often in the hiring process. This article is about a failure in peer interviewing and the lessons learned by the IT staff. The goal is to prevent this type of error from occurring as new groups start using the peer interview process. When the process was completed, the staff thought we had hired the best candidate for the job. Who was hired? A person who packed up 15 minutes early and with the laptop on his shoulder would ask, “Is there anything I can help you with?” This was a person who had voicemail disabled on his company 24/7 cell phone. A person who absolutely bungled every project he was placed on. You must have faith in the process. The peer group must have the ability to hire. In this case, the candidate chosen was not the Director’s choice. The Director believed in the peer interviewing philosophy so he supported the group’s decision. So, when the candidate left the Director went back to the group for accountability in the hiring process. In the failure, the staff met to ask what when wrong? How was it that this candidate got hired? So what did go wrong? Evidently, the team did not ask enough questions and asked the wrong questions during the peer interview. Good questions were asked and great answers were given. However, the staff in hindsight realized they did not follow-up the great answers to determine the depth of the answer. The candidate should be given enough rope to either build a bridge or hang himself or herself. In this case, the rope was never provided to the candidate. As a result, there was not enough meat in the answers to make the correct assessment. Eva, a member of the peer group said, “I think there are so many lessons to learn through peer interviewing. One of them would have to be the GIGO (“garbage in, garbage out”) theory. The results are directly related to the effort we put in, so one lesson I've tucked away for future use is to help the whole team understand just how important our preparation is in the process.” There is no school for this kind of education. The group returned to the rehire process. Their questions were sharpened to consist of detailed follow-up questions, asking for examples based on previous questions, and actual daily scenarios needing attention. This educated group pounced on textbook answers and asked for the supporting documentation. They now know not to take things at face value. The resume got the candidate to this spot. The Peer team was here to dig and find the actual best candidate for the job. This was a skill set they will be able to take with them in their successful careers. Good or bad, with education throughout the process, the goal of peer interviewing is to find the true quality of a candidate. Once hired, that person can make or break the team that hired it. Use the process well and your team will find the right candidate to take it and the organization to the next level. E-Discovery - Are your Human Resources and Information Technology Departments Ready? Dave Gallant, Gallant Computer Investigative ServicesMost people think that E-Discovery applies only to corporate counsel or the senior staff in your company, but in actuality, E-Discovery laws may apply to you as well. If your company believes litigation may occur, they are required under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures to place a "Litigation Hold" on any and all documents that may relate to the matter. This includes all electronic documents. So how does this apply to HR and IT? Let's say there is an employee who is terminated or resigns, and during the course of their employment something happens that causes management to reasonably suspect the employee could later sue them; that is sufficient to start the litigation hold process. Now we all know that when an employee leaves, their computer is typically send to the IT folks for reissue. Sometimes that means a new operating system in installed on it so the next user gets a "clean system," but sometimes that computer is simply issued to another user and only a new account is created. Either scenario is problematic if litigation is reasonably anticipated as the former employee's data is overwritten, or at best, their deleted information is eventually overwritten. This information is "discoverable" under the federal (and most state) rules, so the company could be sanctioned for "spoliation," a legal term for destruction of evidence. Sanctions are serious business in the legal world, and might even result in a summary judgement against your company! That means that you LOSE your case, even if you would have likely one the suit based on the merits of the case. So what is the best course of action? HR and IT need to have a written plan for employee terminations. If litigation is reasonably anticipated, at a minimum, the following should steps should be taken: 1. Remove the employee's computer from service. The most prudent step is to remove the hard drive and secure it somewhere safe. Annotate on it who removed it, write the date on it, and initial it. This essentially creates custody of the drive by the individual who secured it. As long as the drive remains in the sole care and custody of that individual, that should suffice, but seek guidance from your legal advisor to see if they recommend a formal chain of custody form. 2. An alternative to the above is to create a forensic mirror image of the drive and establish a chain of custody on the image. Forensic mirror images are a special type of backup and must be performed by someone trained in the technique using software designed for that purpose. GHOST IMAGES WILL NOT SUFFICE. 3. If you use an email server, any mail remaining on the server must be preserved. The best way is to burn the file(s) to a CD/
4. If the former employee had a share in which they had write permissions, those files should be preserved in the same manner as the email server. This is by no means an all inclusive litigation hold plan for this scenario, but these steps are typically overlooked and need to be taken at the time of the termination of employment. By incorporating this into your policies, you will take significant steps to be ready to defend a law suit and avoid the severe sanctions that typically accompany spoliation charges. Mobility and the
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