Two failures dominate identification. Destruction through untimely delay: slow location of relevant ESI lets it be destroyed inadvertently, when custodians have not been told to stop deleting related material or a routine deletion policy runs on some stores (for example e-mail kept for 90 days). Incomplete or erroneous identification of custodians and sources: this causes delay and cost overrun and, in legal proceedings, consequences where a late production unreasonably hinders a case, with the defensibility, documentation and quality control of identification open to scrutiny in some jurisdictions. Both are managed through a process that coordinates the right people, tools, methods and expertise and follows four principles: organized (a plan from the outset naming the expertise needed, with interview templates and other tools to record what is learned, and a team typically drawn from corporate and outside counsel, ICT, records management, custodians, human resources, business leaders and service providers or consultants); planned (objectives, conditions and resources considered from the start, timely information gathered on custodians and systems, informed people involved, quality-control assessments of progress and completeness, realistic time and cost targets suited to the matter); transparent (steps clearly communicated, evidence of their execution recorded, and changes documented as custodians and sources are added, using tools such as custodian interview templates); documented (the process recorded well enough to show reasonable steps were taken, since litigation can run for years and require a look back).
The graph holds this control, the 0 it maps to, and the evidence behind each claim, over MCP and REST.