IGHS23 - Kate Wertime, Jones Day

Jim Merrifield (00:00.414)
Hello and welcome to the InfoGov hot seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Kate Wertime at Jones Day. Welcome Kate.

Kate Wertime (00:08.651)
Thank you, Jim. Thanks for having me.

Jim Merrifield (00:10.858)
Yeah, it's great to have you on the hot seat. Thanks for taking some time out of your busy day, busy schedule to join us. And so we can learn a little more about Kate and your day-to-day at Jones Day and even the information governance career in general. So to kick us off, can you tell us a brief introduction of your career? How long you've been with Jones Day and one fun fact about yourself.

Kate Wertime (00:36.071)
Okay, sure thing. So my background is as a systems analyst and a librarian. Out of college, I did software development for a large consulting firm and then I got my master's in library science. Then I went into records management at a large international architecture firm for 10 years. And then I moved into legal. So I've been in legal about 11 years now and the last year of which has been with Jones Day.

as associated.

Jim Merrifield (01:06.478)
That's awesome. Wow, wow, so you got quite a career there. So what's one fun fact about yourself? I can't let you forget that fun fact.

Kate Wertime (01:15.159)
True, true. So my fun fact is I've lived in three countries. Of course, the US. I've also lived in Moscow, in Russia, and I've lived in just outside of London and England. And my goal is to someday soon live part time in the EU.

Jim Merrifield (01:27.601)
Oh wow.

Jim Merrifield (01:34.614)
Oh, hey, that's a goal. And now you're in Chicago, right? So, yeah, that's awesome. Well, good, thank you for sharing that. So here's another question. Could you explain the concept, here's a deeper one, right, than a fun fact. It's can you explain the concept of information governance for our listeners who may not be familiar with it? Why is it critical for today's data-driven world?

Kate Wertime (01:36.103)
Yeah. I am cool. Yeah.

Kate Wertime (01:47.461)
Okay.

Kate Wertime (01:58.263)
Sure. So information governance in broad strokes, I would say, manages an organization's information through its lifecycle. But we're also very concerned with access controls at the various entry points to that data. So we're looking at honoring confidentiality, honoring legal holds, compliance with regulatory requirements, facilitating knowledge sharing within the organization. We're also monitoring and measuring employee

compliance in upholding the standards set by the organization.

Jim Merrifield (02:30.798)
No, that's great. And I love that you have more of a technical background too because it's not like your average information governance professional. So that's great. We're going to get a nice slant on information governance from an IT system analyst perspective. That's great. So let's talk about some common misconceptions. What are some common misconceptions about IG that you've encountered in your career?

Kate Wertime (02:57.811)
Well, it's funny, right? And you'll relate to some of these as well, I think. The first is that information governance is simply records management rebranded. And so there are those people who think the only work we're doing is still with boxes of paper, which is sort of very much in the rearview mirror on its way out. Recruiters tend to think we're data governance individuals, which, of course, is certainly a part of the work. But it's a f-----.

portion of the work and maybe it's a tangential piece, but it's not the primary, right? I've even seen it where people feel that we're applications governance, which of course, I'm always happy to weigh in on. What are some good retention periods for logs or what kind of approval process do we want to put in place? But it's not the main focus. But what I like to say is it might depend on a person's experience with information governance.

why they have those misconceptions. So if you've only ever known this historical world where we were dealing with paper, that might be your bias. However, if you've worked with an organization like yours or mine, where you're in a much higher level of maturity, you're going to understand how we have a place working with mitigating insider threat, for example. So.

Jim Merrifield (04:19.106)
Yeah, for sure. From like a privacy, cybersecurity perspective as well. Yeah, it's definitely not, IG is definitely not traditional records management. Sometimes I'm sure I'm like you. I don't know if you've ever felt this way, like our jobs are so complicated. Maybe we should just should have stayed managing boxes. It would have been a heck of a lot easier, right? But I mean, we still have some boxes, right? That we probably have to manage and even dispose of, but it would have made things.

Kate Wertime (04:37.628)
I'm sorry.

Jim Merrifield (04:49.795)
Not quite as fun, but much easier for sure.

Kate Wertime (04:55.327)
Well, and it's really interesting just seeing how our work along with vendors and seeing how their world is changing, right? And so they're trying to get into new lines of business and they're talking to us like, what can we do for you? You know, can we manage something electronically for you or something along those lines? So it's interesting to watch their business change alongside ours.

Jim Merrifield (05:14.71)
Yeah, 100%.

Jim Merrifield (05:18.218)
Yeah, and we learn a lot from our business partners for sure and from each other. So here's the next question. Can you discuss a case study where effective IG made a significant difference in a company's ops or risk management?

Kate Wertime (05:34.699)
Certainly. So I think the risk management aspect is actually huge. So I'll talk about a time where I saw the in-tap products I'm sure you work with. And one of the Intapp products that I like is called Activity Tracker. And what Activity Tracker can do is actually see the movement of data from one place to another. And so I was working on an implementation.

And at that time, the implementation was really focused on some work a bank wanted us to do, where they said, okay, we want to make sure you're really scrutinizing the movement of our data in particular. And so we set that up. And it was just in a test environment. And it was in the beginning. So this was years and years ago. And then, you know, just because we were learning the software, we threw a few other things in there. So we said, okay, let's just see, you know, how many documents are moving within an hour.

And I started getting these alerts pinging. And I was like, okay, I'm in test. What's going on here? And it was looking at production, of course. And what we saw was, and I feel like this is something that's really unique to what we do. I saw the number of documents that were moving. And in some cases, that's perfectly normal, right? Like, let's say you have a real estate transaction closing at the end of a month. And these are large, you know, you and I work in law, so.

These are large transactions. So you're going to have hundreds of documents because maybe they're closing in multiple cities, right, depending on the company that they're, the client that they're servicing. So that might be a completely normal movement of documents. But what I was seeing was the movement of a different practice area that shouldn't have that level of movement. And so I brought that up to someone and I said, I'm wondering what's going on here with these movements of documents.

And they said, you need to be very careful about what you're talking about, because you're talking about partners in the firm and how they're moving documents. And so I said, absolutely. So one of the things I learned in that process was we are not cops in the data protection world. We're observers. And so, you know, I can present to you some evidence and say, this doesn't look exactly like what I would have thought.

Kate Wertime (07:58.675)
been going on? Let's talk to the head of that practice and have them take a look. So it was a really good introduction into the right way to present a risk, to say, it looks like something is happening, but why don't you confirm whether or not you believe that to be true? And here's all my backup evidence to present that case to you. And then you take it from there.

So I feel like we're really uniquely positioned because we work so much with the transfer of client data that we understand these different areas of law and what it looks like to work within that area and how documents move.

Jim Merrifield (08:37.59)
Yeah, I think that's a really awesome use case that you're able to share there, Kate. That's awesome. I love it. And I can definitely sympathize with that. We definitely are in a unique position within our firms for sure. So let's look into the future a bit. What is the aspect of technologies like AI and machine learning that practitioners in the field of IG should be focusing on today? Now that's a loaded question, but.

Kate Wertime (08:52.001)
Yeah.

Kate Wertime (09:05.175)
So yeah, it's definitely a loaded question because I mean, there are many different ways you can approach it. The area that's of interest to me, as someone who's working with data repositories every day, I see a lot of people getting very concerned, particularly clients in their outside council guidelines, just wanting to make sure that you know where their data is and absolutely right, that's true. What I think is interesting is that

The issue isn't so much the machine learning as it is where the data is sitting that you're doing the learning on. So we've had tools for years. I mean, even if you look at like Grammarly or Google Translate where law firms have been cautioning the people that work there, hey, you shouldn't be sending this data out to this external repository. That is our data. It doesn't belong there, right?

And so that's the same concern you have with these AI softwares, where people are concerned, well, it's going somewhere. When I was in library school, one of the things they teach you is information wants to be free. And so that is what our clients are afraid of. They don't want their information to be free. And so I had a great conversation on LinkedIn. I think Jennifer Tsuie was her name, and she's at Litera working on the Kira product. And she's

out there dispelling some of the myths of what's actually happening, you know, with their AI product and other AI products, where it's not that the AI is going to go in and uncover something and take it someplace else. It works where you tell it to work. So that's what we should really be focusing on defining. Where is the repository of the data? Where are we telling that AI to work? Are we comfortable with that? And letting our clients opt in or opt out of that.

right, but giving them the security to say, we've got this, we figured it out, we're not sending it someplace external, we're good.

Jim Merrifield (11:08.286)
Yeah, no, I think that's an excellent point. And AI, I don't know if you feel the same way. When you were talking, thinking about what information are we putting in, what information are we taking out, it almost sounds a lot like 10 plus years ago when file sharing softwares came out, right? When we heard of Box and Dropbox and Google Drive, and we saw all these client requirements like on file sharing and how.

their data was going to be sent to us and how we were going to send data to them. So it's almost like we're rehashing the same, it's a different technology, but it's kind of the same concept. Would you agree?

Kate Wertime (11:45.631)
I would agree. And I think the other thing that we're seeing that's very similar are these business to business connections within sites like Teams, HiQ and others, where, and like you said, Box and others, where we're now working collaboratively. And, you know, our clients are saying, come work in our environment, or we're saying, come work in our law firm environment. Well, who owns that data, right? Who's making the final decision on it? If I say I'm disposing of it, how...

How can I dispose of it in your area? We have to come to an agreement on how to do that. And I think those conversations are still happening.

Jim Merrifield (12:24.106)
Yeah, for sure. And they will continue to happen, right? Right on through 2024 and beyond. So it was so great to sit down with you, Kate, and ask you a few questions. I guess I should ask you one final question. Is there anything that you'd like to share as a final thought with our listeners today?

Kate Wertime (12:26.828)
Yeah.

Kate Wertime (12:44.212)
Um, no.

Jim Merrifield (12:46.794)
That's fine you shared so much So I love that honest answer again. Thank you so much for Taking the time out to being a guest on the hot seat and thank you everyone for joining today's episode and listening to Kate's Expertise and her experiences and please visit our website info gov hot seat infogovhotseat.com To view our latest episodes if you'd like to be a guest on the info gov hot seat like Kate here

Kate Wertime (12:49.303)
I'm sorry.

Jim Merrifield (13:15.314)
Please submit your information through our website. And again, thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Kate Wertime (13:22.251)
Thanks, Jim. Thanks so much for having me.

Jim Merrifield (13:24.138)
Absolutely, we'll have to do it again.