We have been engaged in a number of international retention research projects and have worked with our clients to develop approaches that are practical and fit for the business need. Without a good strategy, international retention research can be resource intensive – time, people, and money – and there is no “one stop shopping”. We are finding that the best solution is to develop a tailored approach that will achieve business objectives while not expending the entire RIM budget on a single initiative.

There is no single approach for international regulatory research. Instead, we devise country-specific research strategies. Key to this is up front analysis to understand the structure of the government, sources of law, and law making bodies. For example –

• Will the research be at a federal level only or will provinces/states/territories be in scope? And if the country includes federal and provinces/states/territories, do these lower level bodies have law making authority?
• Is the nation a member of a multi-country community, such as the European Union, or has the country ratified an international convention, such as the International Maritime Organization Conventions? If so, what are the regulatory impacts?
• Are the laws for the country collected in a single source or site or are they instead spread across multiple sources and sites? Our experience indicates laws are likely in multiple sources.
• Will translation skills or services be required to navigate the websites and translate laws?

Given this, we recommend (and pursue ourselves when we are engaged to conduct the research) -

• Consulting both commercial sources of law for targeted, key word searching and publicly available sources to browse and build an understanding of the structure of law. Key word searching only may not provide the full context needed to understand and accurately apply a given law
• Consulting legal research guides as well as other tools available for a specific country or jurisdiction that supplement other research sources. ARRM, the Australian Record Retention Manual, available through Information Enterprises Australia Pty Ltd (http://www.iea.com.au/web/Publications) is a good example of this. Legal research guides help build understanding of the sources of regulatory research and agencies regulating specific activities or industries
• Analyzing the types of operations within a jurisdiction to see if the scope and extent of the research can be pared down

Keep in mind, sources of law, whether through commercial or publicly available sources, may be limited or dated. You will face additional challenges with translations and format and media of law postings. Understand, too, that contractual obligations may affect retention periods, adding another layer of complexity to the research effort.