Six months after new federal rules mandated that schools, businesses, and other organizations keep tabs on all digital communications produced by their employees, an informal survey of K-12 school districts by data-management company CommVault suggests that most schools still aren't prepared to meet the new requirements.

Eighty percent of those questioned were unclear about their district's policies for the retention of electronically stored information, including eMail and instant messages, according to CommVault. And though two out of three IT administrators responsible for managing backup data and archived messages in their districts said they were aware of the amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which went into effect Dec. 1 (see story: Ruling: Schools must archive eMail), 90 percent said they had yet to initiate an FRCP compliance preparedness plan. The rules--which state that any entity involved in litigation must be able to produce "electronically stored information" (ESI) during the discovery process, the process in which opposing sides of a legal dispute must share evidence before a trial--could have significant implications for school technology departments, especially in places where technicians routinely copy over backup disks and other information housed on school servers. CommVault says the results of its informal poll show a marked disconnect between school leaders' awareness of the issues surrounding FRCP compliance and their preparedness for a lawsuit. By not appropriately managing their electronically stored information according to federal rules, administrators are exposing their districts to potentially costly legal action, the company says.

"The new federal rules represent an urgent call to action for educators and school information technology officers to understand how information that is sent and received on school-owned equipment might be used in litigation," said Mike Ivanov, senior director and head of CommVault's Archive Center of Excellence.

"The cost of litigation can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially draining public school districts of valuable education funds. To reduce the impact of such threats, school technology leaders need to become students of these new rules themselves and take stock of their eMail policies and existing technologies to ensure compliance," Ivanov added.

To keep tabs on eMail, instant messages, and other digital communications produced by employees and students, school leaders should reevaluate their digital storage technologies and how they search through and retrieve information, he said.

"What makes it more challenging for schools is their budgets," Ivanov said. "Budgets are so slim in the first place that it's hard to carve out significant dollars." Still, he added, the money invested in a storage solution likely would be less than the money spent if a school district did not have a solution and had to address a legal issue. "The new FRCP amendments make electronically stored information subject to legal review and require holders of data to produce [those] data when needed," said Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research Inc. "The most important impact of the new FRCP amendments on organizations is that electronically stored information, which will figure more prominently in litigation than ever before, needs to be managed properly."