How Exterro helped one federal government agency achieve a range of Legal GRC goals

Government agencies at all levels—state, local, and federal—face significant challenges today thanks in part to a number of requirements designed to help maintain transparency. While state and local governments have begun to modernize their public records requests (PRRs) processes through technology use, federal agencies have done the same by seeking out FedRAMP Authorized e-discovery software.

However, governments of all types must increasingly deal with governance, risk, and compliance issues similar to those that corporate businesses must handle. These initiatives range from e-discovery activities as required by litigation to privacy/cybersecurity compliance and investigations. All of these legal and compliance challenges stem from how the agency handles its data—including how well-organized and readily-available it is, in addition to security and other considerations.

Exterro was approached by a major defense agency in search of a better data management solution that followed FedRAMP protocols and was able to quickly preserve, identify, collect, review, and produce information for a range of needs, including but not limited to:

• Litigation/e-discovery
• Fulfilling PRRs
• Privacy needs
• Investigations
• Congressional requests for information

The agency was in need of a software platform that was able to perform every step of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) process to help curb their legal and financial risks surrounding their data. Their known data universe— not including data on mobile devices—was greater than 2,000 terabytes (or 2 petabytes), with most of it residing in cloud databases, email, and shared drives. They also housed significant volumes of data within SQL databases, hard drives, and SharePoint folders, and needed Azure, AWS, and O365 integrations to connect to the data.

The bottom line: the agency faced significant challenges quickly accessing relevant data across a vast network of servers and systems, and were in need of a more efficient and powerful processing engine.

Seeking a ‘World-Class, User-Friendly, Streamlined Process’ For Finding Data

The agency had a number of stakeholders that had specific use cases, meaning that the software had to be nimble and assist teams across a wide range of needs.

“The agency sought a versatile legal and compliance tool that was truly world-class to help streamline their data processes in a user-friendly way,” said Peter Morse, the Exterro Director of Sales who worked with the agency to find the software solutions they needed. “Their needs stretched across a range of typical government and legal processes, but more than ever, the public sector is seeing new challenges and requirements surrounding their data, meaning that technology to tackle those problems has become more necessary.”

The stakeholder needs were not dissimilar from many private sector needs. For example:

• Senior leadership needed a cost-effective platform that reduced legal and financial risks by helping efficiently produce data
• Legal needed to be able to preserve and collect data across
  a number of data sources and from various individuals across in a timely manner, with comprehensive review capabilities to prepare legal matters for court deadlines
• Technical teams needed to receive collection requests that are as specific as possible, meaning they also needed a tool that could surgically find data across data sources, as well as workflow engines that could orchestrate efficient processes in ways that reduce legal risks

“Among the most critical factors was ensuring that support would be there every step of the way—and that’s something that made Exterro stand above the rest, along with rigorous security standards for housing sensitive data” said Morse. “Ensuring that we would help not only with system installation and cloud deployment, but also in training teams to use and understand all that they can do with the platform. And it’s ongoing, so we’ll be there to help them in the ways that are best for them.”

Technology used: Exterro Legal Hold, Exterro Employee Change Monitor, Exterro, E- Discovery  Data Management Platform (EDDM), Integration Adapters for Microsoft Office 365, Sharepoint and more.

Exterro EDDM can help boost government efforts to improve efficiency and security—and this agency is set up for success well into the future.