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Yesterday, I was a juror at a trial about content management. The judge presented the facts of the case, that two companies had lost files that got into the hands of criminals, thus opening up their customers to all sorts of issues, like identity theft and credt card fraud.

The dispute we heard was between the two companies based in the deep south. Allied Claims Processing Services, is a company that processes and stores insurance claims from service providers such as hospitals and pharmacies. Inland Insurance is an insurance company that provides health insurance as well as other things. Inland uses Allied as its claims processor, and Inland sends Allied its paper files for long term storage.

During Hurricaine Katrina, paper files that were stored by Allied, on behalf of Inland, got washed away forever. In the context of the destruction of the entire city of New Orleans, this might seem minor, but there were numerous disputes between the two companies as to how much of the paper got washed away, how well the warehouse had been guarded during the hurricaine, and whether it was possible that some of the files could have been stolen. It was known that some files were certainly compromised, and some credit card and identity theft fraud took place.

And the question was, who is at fault?

Is it the company who was hired to maintain paper files, only to store them and keep them safe and dry? And in the context of a major natural disaster in which significant parts of the warehouse (in which the paper files are stored) are literally washed down the river, is the company still at fault for loss that is incurred beyond the actual paper loss? Or is the company who let the insurance claims information go out of its purview, without proper assurances that the files would be kept safe beyond a shadow of a doubt, liable to its customers for its identity theft and credit card fraud claims?

And here's why I'm not violating the law by talking about it. This all-too-real scenario was not actually a case on the books, but rather a mock trial, put on by IBM and Filenet (an IBM company) and sponsored by HP. The mock trial was presided over by a real judge and two lawyers arguing on behalf of their company clients. Witnesses were called and the case was decided by the jury, the audience.

I'm not going to tell you the outcome of the case, because that's not the point. The point is, that content management needs to be part of an ongoing process management, compliance and risk management strategy. Content management is clearly an essential part of the business process, and safety of documents is a key factor in business success and continuity.

The message of the mock trial was this: What would happen if you lost all your files, paper, digital or otherwise? What would happen if those files got into the hands of someone you don't trust? And... don't you think you'd better have a plan in place to protect yourself from that ever happening?

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