As I mentioned in my last post, I am in the midst of writing a complex post on the use of eDiscovery technology in investigations, which is highly pertinent to SA, but I keep breaking off as other matters cross my desktop that make my brain work! It is a wonderful consequence and disruption caused by being part of a global eDiscovery community. This time, I was alerted to a blog by my buddy in the USA, Doug Austin whilst writing with Ipro (another of my favourite contact companies in the US) looking at eDiscovery in the Asia Pacific region Doug begins by saying that obviously in the US and in many other places eDiscovery practices and requirements are US centric. However, there is a bigger picture especially when one considers the effects of globalisation where corporations have offices, manufacturing, research and development centres etc. in other parts of the world. Clearly, as I have alluded to in the past, this means that you must consider the rules and practices in other jurisdictions. Doug and Ipro concentrate their blog on the APAC region when considering various countries and where they are in terms of eDiscovery either by rules, practice or guidance. They point to Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore as being common law jurisdictions which have incorporated eDiscovery into their rules of civil procedure. Beyond these, they refer to the situation in five other countries:- Mainland China – no specific rules on evidence collection, preservation and processing and largely left to the judiciary. Japan – basically as with mainland China Korea – whilst there are no rules of discovery, civil proceedings are governed by statute and again the judiciary and courts deal with evidence. Malaysia – another common law system largely based around UK civil procedure rules which obviously provide for discovery and exchange although there are no specific rules for eDiscovery. India – part common law and has its IT Act which covers rules regarding the collection of electronic evidence. All of these jurisdictions, like South Africa, are experiencing cases involving growing volumes of electronic evidence and in recent years we have seen significant growth in terms of service providers covering these regions, whilst Australia and New Zealand have long standing rules and providers. So what about SA? Very similar to Malaysia, a common law jurisdiction with civil procedure rules based largely around those in the UK but some wholly inadequate and unsuccessful attempts to deal with electronic data through separate legislation, viz. Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECTA). We have precious few service providers especially with good experienced and skilful technical people and know how. It is clear that SA and the wider Africa is lagging behind, not just jurisdictions such as the UK and USA but also the APAC region. I hear excuses in relation to First World and “more sophisticated” jurisdictions but really? What more can we do here to have SA in the 21st century as far as eDiscovery is concerned? We are being overtaken so heavily and sometimes I wonder if anyone but me really cares.