The audits you perform can include identifying: 

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? 

## Planning for discovery 

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: 

GLYPH<SM590000> Understand the range of data your organization holds. 

This can be both electronic and paper-based. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Locate the repositories of data. 

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. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Understand how to retrieve the data quickly. 

The longer it takes to locate and retrieve data, the more costly the discovery task will be. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Understand in what format the data may exist. 

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> After the data has been retrieved, understand how it can be searched. 

