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CONFIDENTIAL AND LEGALLY PRIVILEGED
POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION WOMBLE
Steering Group Meeting: 6 December 2017
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1.3
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2.2
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BOND
DICKINSON
BRIEFING PAPER: Electronic Documents Questionnaire
ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS QUESTIONNAIRE
The CMC Order requires Post Office and the Claimants to exchange Electronic Documents
Questionnaires (EDQs) by Wednesday 6 December 2017.
The EDQ is a Court document that asks a series of questions about the scope, extent and most
suitable format for the disclosure of ‘electronic documents’. It is designed to provide the Court
and the Claimants with information about the electronic documents held by Post Office.
‘Electronic documents' is interpreted very broadly and means any document held in electronic
form, including emails, word-processed documents, databases and metadata. It also includes
any such documents held on portable devices such as memory sticks and mobile phones, as well
as documents stored on servers and back-up systems.
Matters covered by the EDQ include: the extent of the search for documents (eg the date range
the search should cover and the individuals whose repositories should be searched), the different
types of relevant documents (eg Word documents, PDFs, emails, etc.), the possible methods of
searching (eg keyword searches) and potential problems with the accessibility of electronic
documents.
The EDQ does not commit Post Office to giving disclosure but provides a factual basis on which
disclosure of documents can be discussed and hopefully agreed, failing which the Court will
make such disclosure Orders as it sees fit.
PREPARING POST OFFICE'S EDQ.
Preparation of the EDQ has been a detailed process involving inputand approval from key
members of Post Office, along with assistance from Fujitsu and Advanced Discovery.
Relevant individuals and teams filled out questionnaires in relation to the matters covered by the
EDQ. We then held calls with those individuals/teams to discuss and work through their
responses, with the responses then cross-checked against the parties' pleadings. This
information was synthesised into the witness statement submitted by Post Office for the CMC.
Since then, we have covered this ground again with the business, holding calls with each
business area, Fujitsu and Post Office IT teams. This has been to double check our
understanding and to make sure we pick up less important locations of documents that were not
needed for the CMC witness statement. This information has been collated intothe EDQ (the
latest draft is attached). At the time of writing, the draft EDQ is with Rodric and Mark for
comment and approval.
This process has enabled us to provide a generous amount of information within the EDQ in
order to assist (and be seen to be assisting) the Court in making further directions as to
disclosure. Given the Claimants’ contention that they hold relatively few relevant documents.
compared to Post Office, it is important that Post Office is seen to be assisting the Courtin
understanding the vast extent of the documents it holds.
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NEXT STEPS ON DISCLOSURE
Following submission of the EDQ we will need to discuss with Freeths which documents should
be extracted from Post Office's IT systems (in addition to those already extracted) and how they
should be filtered and reviewed for relevant material. Before doing this, there is a wider strategic
question about the purpose for which disclosure is being given. We are seeking advice form
Counsel on this point and will submit to Post Office shortly a further proposal on this topic.
The likely outcome of the discussions with Freeths is that the Claimants will request disclosure of
a significant number of documents, informed by the details we have provided in the EDQ. This is
an inevitable consequence of producing the EDQ, but an unavoidable one. Whether the Court
will support the Claimants will depend on us being able to show that the Claimants’ requests will
require disproportionate effort and also being able to provide an attractive alternative for the
Court to consider.
Should the parties not reach agreement on disclosure, there will be a Court hearing to consider
disclosure issues in late January / early February 2018.
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Electronic documents questionnaire
(Civil Procedure Rules Practice Direction 31B)
WARNING: Unless the court makes some other order, the answers given in this document mayonly be
used for the purposes of the proceedings in which the document is produced unless it has been read to
or by the court or referred to at a hearing which has been held in public or the Court gives permission or
the party who has completed this questionnaire agrees.
Please read the notes at the end of this form before completing the questionnaire
Part 1 — Your disclosure
General Comment
The Claims in this litigation are very broad and the generic pleadings produced by the Claimants so far
provide only limited details on those claims. This litigation therefore has the potential to touch on nearly
all aspects of Post Office's business and the volume of disclosable documents may be enormous.
In this Electronic Disclosure Questionnaire, Post Office has sought to provide a holistic view of the
documents and databases under its control and which appear, at this stage, to be relevant to this
litigation. It may be that a further or revised EDQ is required as the issues in dispute are further
particularised and refined.
Post Office does not believe that it would be reasonable or proportionate to disclose all the documents in
all the sources identified below. It proposes, as has been agreed by the Claimants, that following the
exchange of the EDQs the parties discuss the purposes and topics for which further disclosure is sought
and seek to narrow the sources from which disclosure is provided. The parties can then also discuss
further search criteria and keywords that might be applied to those source documents so to filter down to
those that are truly relevant.
Extent of a reasonable search
Date range and custodians
1. What date range do you consider that your searches for Electronic Documents should
cover (‘the date range’)?
In relation to documents which relate to individual Claimants (as per Question 6), disclosure to be
limited to electronic and hard copy documents created between 6 months before the Claimant's
first date of service with Post Office and (a) 6 months after the Claimant's last date of service, or
(b) 6 December 2017 (whichever is earlier).
A number of the Claimants are currently postmasters who continue to generate documents which
are relevant. An end date of 6 December 2017 has been selected so as to ensure further
extractions of Post Office documents after this date are not required. Post Office believe it is
reasonable and proportionate (given the issues with extraction of data explained below) to set an
end date.
Please see Appendix A to this Electronic Disclosure Questionnaire for the date ranges of each
Claimant. [Appendix being finalised by Beth / Joel]
In relation to "generic" documents, disclosure to be limited to electronic and hard copy documents.
created between 1 January 1999 and 31 July 2017.
Attachments to emails which do not fall within the above date ranges should be disdosed where
the parent email falls within the data range.
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2. Identify the custodians or creators of your Electronic Documents whose repositories of
documents you consider should be searched.
Note - Include names of all those who may have or have had custody of disclosable documents,
including secretaries, personal assistants, former employees and/or former participants. It may
be helpful to identify different dates for particular custodians.
Please see Appendix B of this Electronic Disclosure Questionnaire for a list of Key Teams and
Custodians. [Peéte/Amy finalising Appendix B for cstodians]:
As at 1 October 2017, Post Office had 4,965 contracted employees. These work from around
320 different offices and locations, with 461 of Post Office's employees either working from
home or are field-based, meaning that they have no fixed office base. Consequently, Post
Office will have potentially relevant documents spread amongst a significant number of people
and different locations. The list of Key Teams and Custodians at Appendix B is limited to those
teams and individuals who from the generic pleadings appear to be relevant to the issues in
dispute. Post Office considers it reasonable and proportionate to limit its search to the
custodians listed.
Communication
3. Which forms of electronic communication were in use during the date range (so far as is relevant
to these proceedings)?
Note — Column D - State the geographical location (if known). Consider (at least) servers, desktop PCs,
laptops, notebooks, handheld devices, PDA devices, off-site storage, removable storage media (for
example, CD-ROMs, DVDs, USB drives, memory sticks) and databases.
Note — (i) email - Consider all types of e-mail system (for example, Outlook, Lotus Notes, web-based
accounts), whether stored on personal computers, portable devices or in web-based accounts (for example,
Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail).
Note — (ii) Other - For example, instant messaging, voicemail, VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol),
recorded telephone lines, text messaging, audio files, video files.
A B Cc D E
Communication I In use during Are you searching I Where and on what I (a) Are back-ups or
the date range? I for relevant type of software/ archives of this
(Yes/No) documents in this I equipment/ media is I communication
category? this communication available; and
(Yes/No) stored?
(b) if so, are you
searching the
backups or archives?
i) E-mail Yes Yes (a) Until [x], Post [To discuss with POL
Office used Lotus na}
Notes.
(b) From [X]
onwards, Microsoft
Outlook — Post
Office's servers.
Emails are either
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A B c D E
stored ina
custodian’s account
or a shared team
account.
ii) Other (a) Skype (a) No (a) to (c)— No The archiving of
(provide details Instant documents depends
for each type) Messaging (b) No (2) Databases on the databases in
(b) SMS (c) No Question 5. which they are
4) Y ° stored. A response
(c) Voicemait__I (4) Yes to this question is
therefore provided in
(d) Recorded Question 5.
calls
Electronic Documents
4. Apart from attachments to e-mails, which forms of Electronic Documents were created or stored
by you during the date range?
Note — Column D - State the geographical location (if known). Consider (at least) servers, desktops and
laptops.
Note — Electronic images - For example, .pdf, .tif, jpg.
Note - Other - For example, PowerPoint or equivalent, specialist documents (such as CAD Drawings)
A B Cc D es
Document Type I In use during Are you searching I Where and on what I (a) Are back-ups or
the date range? I for relevant type of software/ archives of these
(Yes/No) documents in this I equipment/ media documents available,
category? are these and
(Yes/No) documents?
(b) if so, are you
searching the back-
ups or archives?
Please see Appendix C
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Databases of Electronic Documents
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5. In the following table identify database systems, including document management systems, used
by you during the date range and which may contain disclosable Electronic Documents.
c
D
E
Name
Brief description
Nature of data
held
Are you disclosing
documents held in
this database?
(Yes/No)
Proposals for
provision of relevant
documents to or
access by other
parties to this
litigation
Please see Appendix D for the databases on which Electronic Databases are stored.
For completeness, Appendix E contains information on the storage of hardcopy documents.
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Method of search
Key words
Note - Where Keyword Searches are used in order to identify irrelevant documents which are to
be excluded from disclosure (for example a confidential name of a client or customer), a general
description of the type of search may be given
6. Do you consider that Keyword Searches should be used Yes O1No
as part of the process of determining which Electronic Documents
you should disclose?
If Yes, please provide details of —
(1) the keywords used or to be used (by reference, if applicable, to individual custodians,
creators, repositories, file types and/or date ranges); and
Generic Documents
As addressed in Womble Bond Dickinson's letter of 24 November 2017, Post Office
proposes that following exchange of the EDQs the parties discuss the topics on which
further disclosure is sought and seeks to agree appropriate key words for these topics.
Claimants’ Documents
In relation to documents that specifically refer to a Claimant, Post Office proposes to apply
the following key words to identify documents which are relevant to a Claimant:
(Claimant's First Name or Claimant's Last Name) AND (Branch Name or Branch Code or
Company Name)) or Mediation Case Number.
For example, a document which included the terms "Alan" or "Bates" and "Craig-y-don" or
"461614" would be identified as a document which is relevant to Alan Bates, as would a
document including the term "M137".
This is subject to the assumption that the number of documents deemed to be keyword
responsive is not disproportionate or unreasonable. These keywords will be considered
further after the data has been extracted, keywords applied and discussion with the
Claimants’ legal advisors.
(2) the extent to which the Keyword Searches have been or will be supplemented by a review of
individual documents.
All documents and their family members deemed to be keyword responsive will be
individually reviewed to determine their relevance (and to redact or remove any material
that is legally privileged).
This is subject to the assumption that the number of documents deemed to be keyword
responsive is not disproportionate or unreasonable to be individually reviewed. This will be
determined after the data has been extracted, keywords applied and discussion with the
Claimants’ legal advisors.
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Other types of automated searches
7.
Do you consider that automated searches or automated techniques other & Yes O No
than Keyword Searches (for example, concept searches or clustering)
should be used as part of the process of determining which Electronic
Documents you should disclose?
If Yes, please provide details of —
(1) the process(es) used or to be used (by reference, if applicable, to individual custodians,
creators, repositories, file types and/or date ranges);
This will be reviewed once the potentially responsive material has been collected,
indexed and an overview has been obtained as to whether keywords will be
appropriate. Again, that review will include discussion with the Claimants’ legal
advisors.
(2) the extent to which the processes have been or will be supplemented by a review of individual
documents; and
Documents identified as potentially relevant by any searches will be subject to a
review.
(3) how the methodology of automated searches will be made available for consideration by other
parties.
This is something that will be considered in due course once a view has been reached
as to what searches or techniques are appropriate.
If the answer to Question 6 or 7 is ‘Yes’, state whether (a) attachments to e-mails (b) compressed
files (c) embedded files and (d) imaged text will respond to your Keyword Searches or other
automated search.
Yes, Post Office proposes that documents which would not be responsive are
converted into an OCR document so as to be responsive to keywords.
Documents which cannot be converted to OCR (such as call recordings), will be
subject to manual review. This is subject to the assumption that the number of
documents is not disproportionate or unreasonable to be individually reviewed. This
will be determined after the data has been extracted, keywords applied and discussion
with the Claimants' legal advisors.
Are you using or intending to use computer software for other purposes in Yes O1No
relation to disclosure?
If Yes, please provide details of the software, processes and methods to be used.
Subject to the issue of proportionality it is envisaged that having collected the data it
will be indexed, non-searchable files containing text will be OCR'd and a fully
searchable database of the material will be prepared — with any documents that
cannot be included being identified.
In addition, it is proposed that a litigation review database (kCura Relativity) will be
used to maximise the efficiency of the review exercise
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Potential problems with the extent of search and accessibility of Electronic Documents
Note - See Practice Direction 31B, which refers to the following matters which may be relevant: (a) the
number of documents involved; (b) the nature and complexity of the proceedings; (c) the ease and expense
of retrieval of any particular document; (d) the availability of documents or contents of documents from other
sources; and (e) the significance of any document which is likely to be located during the search.
10. Do any of the sources and/or documents identified in this Electronic Yes O1No
Documents Questionnaire raise questions about the reasonableness of
the search which ought to be taken into account?
If Yes, please give details.
(a) Sharepoint
Post Office has already engaged a third party e-disclosure provider to forensically extract
and preserve potentially relevant documents from SharePoint. This was a considerable
project requiring input from ComputaCenter (Post Office's IT supplier that manages access to
SharePoint), as well as internal input from Post Office's data and information security teams,
IT team and owners of the SharePoint sites. During this extraction a number of issues were
encountered and these may re-occur during future extractions.
. Due to the security permissions being setting up in a granular manner (enabling
access to one area of SharePoint does not enable access to other areas) there were
and may be further issues creating a user account for the third party e-disclosure
provider which enables an appropriate level of access for documents to be
forensically extracted.
. Once access to SharePoint was obtained, Nuix (the collection tool) was unable to
communicate with SharePoint.
. The above matters have now been resolved but similar difficulties may be faced with
further extractions from SharePoint.
(b) Transaction and event data:
As addressed in Womble Bond Dickinson's letter of 22 November 2017 (a copy of which is
enclosed at Appendix F), Post Office has been informed by Fujitsu that there are a vast
number of fields available in the database which hosts the transaction and event data and
that over time these fields have changed. Post Office therefore proposes it would be
reasonable and proportionate that the data is filtered so that it only includes those fields
which relate to transactions and events which would affect a branch's accounts.
To disclose the unfiltered Data would require it to be extracted in a .txt format (rather than in
-xlsx which can be read by Excel) and converted into a readable format. Further, the
unfiltered data would be between 10GB and 1000B of data per branch per month depending
on the size of the branch and the activity in that branch during the month. This compares to
the 1 MB of data per month in the filtered format. The hosting of 400 months of unfiltered
data by Post Office's third party e-discovery partner would cost between £100,000 and £1
million per a month.
The Claimants have not yet responded on this proposal andit will therefore be discussed
between the parties following exchange of the EDQs.
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(c) Proprietary databases:
A number of the databases used by Post Office are proprietary databases which require
proprietary software to review the data in an intelligible format. These databases are not set
up for mass extraction of data and where it is not possible to extract documents in their native
format, then it is proposed that the documents are (where possible) exported to commonly
used software such as Excel. Further, responsibility for these proprietary databases during
the relevant period has been passed between companies and Post Office is reliant on the third
parties for the transfer of this data between systems and the assistance of third parties to
access this data.
(d) Other:
It is not anticipated that there will be other problems but until the extraction of documents
begins it is impossible to guarantee this.
11. Are any documents which may be disclosable encrypted, password Yes O1No
protected or for other reasons difficult to access, or do you have any
reason to believe that they may be?
If Yes, please state which of the categories identified at Questions 3, 4 and 5 above are affected,
and your proposals for making them accessible.
Note - For example, back-ups, archives, off-site or outsourced document storage, documents created by
former employees, documents stored in other jurisdictions, documents in foreign languages.
Please see Appendix C. A number of the documents contain coding information that, while
often intelligible from the text, would need to be viewed in its native program to see the
intended format.
12, Are you aware of any other points in relation to disclosure of your Yes O1No
Electronic Documents which require discussion between the parties?
If Yes, please give details.
As addressed above, there is a need to agree search terms, filtering of transaction andevent
data, process for exchanging documents and the extent of disclosure which is to be provided
in relation to "generic documents". These matters shall be discussed between the parties
following exchange of EDQs.
Preservation of Electronic Documents
13. Do you have a document retention policy? Yes ONo
If Yes, please give details
The majority of the Post Office's documents are retained for a period of 7 years, however the
specific document retention policies depend on the type of document and team. Please see
Question 5 for further information.
When an employee ceases to be mployee of Post Office, their laptops are re-distributed
within the business [are emails and OneDrives kept?)
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14, Have you given an instruction to preserve Electronic Documents? Yes O.No
If Yes, when did you do so?
Yes, 20 April 2016 and 12 May 2017.
Inspection
15. Subject to re-consideration after receiving the responses of other parties to this Electronic
Documents Questionnaire, (a) in what format and (b) on what media do you intend to provide to
other parties copies of disclosed documents which are or will be available in electronic form?
Please see Appendix G which sets out the Post Office's proposals made to the Claimants on
14 November 2017. This matter will be discussed between the parties following the exchange
of EDQs.
16. Subject to re-consideration after receiving the responses of other parties to this Electronic
Documents Questionnaire, do you intend to provide other parties with Disclosure Data
electronically?
If Yes, in what format and on what media?
See 15, above. The format and media / method of delivery will be agreed with the other party
and could involve USB stick or hard drive or sftp transfer - depending on volumes and what is
agreed.
17. Insofar as you have available or will have available searchable OCR Yes ONo
versions of Electronic Documents, do you intend to provide the
searchable OCR version to other parties?
Note - There is no requirement that you should obtain OCR versions of documents, and this question is
directed only to OCR versions which you have available or expect to have available to you. If you do provide
OCR versions to another party, they will be provided by you on an ‘as is’ basis, with no assurance to the
other party that the OCR versions are complete or accurate. You may wish to exclude provision of OCR
versions of documents which have been redacted.
If No, why not?
NIA
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Part 2 - The disclosure of other parties
The extent and content of their search
18. Do you at this stage have any proposals about the date ranges which Yes O1No
should be searched by other parties to the proceedings?
If Yes, please provide details.
Same as Question 1.
19. Do you at this stage have any proposals about the custodians or creators Yes ONo
whose repositories of documents should be searched for disclosable
documents by other parties to the proceedings?
If Yes, please provide details.
Note - Include names of all those who may have or have had custody of disclosable documents, including
secretaries, personal assistants, former employees and/or former participants. It may be helpful to identify
different dates for particular custodians.
As raised with the Claimants on 30 May 2017, Post Office proposes that the following
custodians should be within scope for searching:
(a) Claimants;
(b) Claimant's accountants / financial advisors;
(c) Claimant's previous lawyers;
(d) Claimant's insolvency practitioners (where applicable);
(e) Claimant's estate agents (where Claimant is seeking to claim loss of investment)
(f) HMRC / Claimant's tax advisors;
(g) Claimant's medical advisors (where Claimant is seeking to claim personal injury);
(h) other business advisors;
(i) Claimant's branch managers or assistants;
(j) Claimant's family member (where Claimant is seeking to claim for losses caused to
them).
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20. Do you consider that the other party(ies) should disclose all available Yes O1No
Metadata attaching to any documents?
If Yes, please provide details of the documents or categories of documents.
Note - ‘Metadata’ is information about the document or file which is recorded in the computer, such as the
date and time of creation or modification of a word-processing file, or the author and the date and time of
sending of an e-mail. The question is directed to the more extensive Metadata which may be relevant where
for example authenticity is disputed.
Disclosure is sought of all available files in their native format together with a load file indexing
that material and holding the key metadata fields — in the same way as is contemplated for
disclosure by Post Office as outlined in our response to Question 15 above.
Proposals for the method to be adopted for their searches
21. Do you at this stage have any proposals about the Keyword Searches, or Yes O1No
other automated searches, which should be applied by other parties to
their document sets?
If Yes, please provide details.
As stated at Question 12 above, this is something that will need to be discussed and agreed in
due course.
Inspection
22. Subject to re-consideration after receiving the responses of other parties to this Electronic
Documents Questionnaire, (a) in what format and (b) on what media do you wish to receive
copies of disclosed documents which are or will be available in electronic form?
(a) The format in which the documents were created.
(b) The media / method of delivery will be agreed with the other party and could involve USB
stick or hard drive or sftp transfer - depending on volumes and what is agreed.
23. Subject to re-consideration after receiving the responses of other parties Yes ONo
to this Electronic Documents Questionnaire, do you wish to receive
Disclosure Data electronically?
If Yes, in what format and on what media?
See response to Question 22 above.
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STATEMENT OF TRUTH
*[I believe] [The [claimant] [defendant] believes] that the facts stated in the answers to this
Electronic Documents Questionnaire are true.
*lam duly authorised by the [claimant] [defendant] to sign this statement.
Full name
Name of legal representative's firm
Signed
Position or office held
(if signing on behalf of firm or company)
Date
*delete as appropriate
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