Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
Sumner Blount of CA has published his GRC Predictions for 2009.
Cornerstone Research released their Cornerstone Press Release: 2008 Activity Is at Its Highest Level Since 2004 (.pdf)
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network 2008 Annual Report (.pdf) has been released.
Outcome Goal 1: Financial systems resistant to abuse by money launderers, terrorists and their financial supporters, and other perpetrators of financial crime
Outcome Goal 2: Detection and deterrence of money laundering, terrorism financing, and other illicit activity.
Outcome Goal 3: Efficient management, safeguarding, and use of BSA information.
Management Goal: FinCEN’s mission is accomplished by high-performing employees and managers operating in a stimulating and responsible work environement.
SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz In the first Congressional hearing since the Madoff scandal broke in December, Mr. Kotz said his agency’s handling of the Madoff case may be a symptom of more widespread problems with how the agency handles its examinations and investigations.
Kotz testified on the subject of “Assessing the Madoff Ponzi Scheme.”
Frankly it sounds like the SEC will spend as much time and energy investigating themselves on the Madoff matter as they will actually investigating the Madoff matter itself.
See also:
I really enjoyed the story by Joe Nocera in the New York Times: Risk Mismanagement. The author focuses on the failures of risk management during the most recent financial crisis.
The author starts with the failure of the VaR (Value at Risk) model used by many companies. He then moves on to the theories of Taleb captured in his book Black Swan (next on my reading list).
Taleb says that Wall Street risk models, no matter how mathematically sophisticated, are bogus; . . . . And the essential reason for this is that the greatest risks are never the ones you can see and measure, but the ones you can’t see and therefore can never measure. . . . Because we don’t know what a black swan might look like or when it might appear and therefore don’t plan for it, it will always get us in the end.
The key for a compliance professional is do handle the current know risks to your company, while at the same time keeping an eye out for unknown risks.
I have update my KM Sites search tool.
The search below is built from a custom Google Search
It searches the following sites:
Some of these sites are not active any more, but still offer a great repository of thoughts on knowledge management.
Originally posted on my KM Space Blog: KM Sites Search.
The Superintendent of Insurance of the State of New York promulgated the Second amendment to Part 136 of Chapter IX of Title 11 of the Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations of the State of New York (Regulation No. 85) (.pdf) in October 0f 2008. The regulation is intended to have the business of the state retirement systems comply with these principles:
The regulation requires investment managers to promptly disclose any conflict of interest that “reasonably be expected to impair the investment manager’s, or consultant or advisor’s ability to render unbiased and objective advice”. [11 NYCRR 136-2.4(c)(1)(i)].
The regulation also requires investment advisers to file an annual statement with the following language:
“ALL INVESTMENT MANAGERS, AND CONSULTANTS OR ADVISORS OWE THE COMPTROLLER A FIDUCIARY DUTY. THIS MEANS THAT INVESTMENT MANAGERS, OR CONSULTANTS OR ADVISORS MUST DISCLOSE TO THE COMPTROLLER INFORMATION ABOUT MATERIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST. FAILURE TO TRUTHFULLY COMPLETE THIS STATEMENT MAY RESULT IN CRIMINAL OR CIVIL LIABILITIES”. [11 NYCRR 136-2.4(c)(1)(ii)]
The regulation also requires an investment manager to disclose the payments made to any placement agent or intermediary that assists the investment manager in obtaining investments by the Fund.[11 NYCRR 136-2.4(d)]
The New York State Comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, also releases monthly reports that disclose in detail investments and transactions, hiring of fund managers, and the involvement of placement agents: Disclosure of Investments & Transactions.
I am user of Twitter.
For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, you can think of it as a combination of blogging and instant messaging. Each post or tweet is limited to 140 characters so you can send tweets by text message. Like most social media, it is cheap (free and currently free of advertising) and very easy to use (there are only a few buttons).
Steve Matthews wrote a great post on an intro to Lawyer Marketing with Twitter. Kevin O’Keefe followed that up with his own perspective and success stories in Lawyer Marketing with Twitter Has Arrived.
Like both Steve and Kevin, I’ve had a few Twitter moments and find it useful to engage people through this communications platform. In this era of new ways to communicate beyond email, Twitter is a great avenue to communicate and share information.
Rather than duplicating what Steve and Kevin said about Twitter (you should go read both stories), I have two additional features that I like about Twitter.
First, it is very compatible with other platforms. The flow of tweets is available through RSS. For example, Twitter ties into Facebook and updates my Facebook status. I have a Twitter widget on this blog showing my most recent tweets. I also have a Twitter widget running on my intranet page.
Second, tweets are indexed and returned by internet searches. All of that good stuff in my tweets, gets returned in a Google search, just like posts on this blog. You are sharing beyond the Twitter universe.
To learn more about Twitter there is a great video from Common Craft, Twitter Explained. Once you join Twitter, feel free to follow me on Twitter: @dougcornelius.
Originally posted at KM Space.
I spent a fair amount of time at a prior job looking at document management systems and enterprise search. As part of the knowledge management effort, it was key to figure out how people found the information or documents they needed. In reviewing user behavior, I have identified four different types of searches for documents:
Below is more information on each type of search and user expectations for search results. I will also discuss how well a document management system (DMS) or enterprise search tool will handle the different types of searches.
A “fetch” search is when the user has a document ID (with a Document Management System) or a file name (with a file server system).
The user would expect the single document to be returned. There should be no need for relevancy rankings.
The “fetch” search is the most basic of the four types of searches. It is such a basic part of a DMS and works so well in a DMS that most users do not even think of it as a search. Nonetheless, it is the most common search and the most important. A user expects to be able to get a specific document back instantly for editing or reuse, without having to interpret search results.
A “fetch” is core functionality of a DMS. An enterprise search tool would fall short in this type of search. The DMS is keyed to find specific metadata from the document profile. The enterprise search tool typically uses the metadata to influence the relevancy rankings of a particular document.
A “recall” search is when the user knows the document exists and has some specific information about the document that the user can distinguish it from other documents.
Examples are: documents edited in the last five days, all the documents for a particular matter, all of the purchase agreement for a client.
The user will expect a a list of documents that will be over-inclusive, but the list will have information to distinguish the particular document the user is looking for from the rest of the documents.
A DMS excels at this type of search and is core functionality for a DMS. The enterprise search will generally not perform well at this type of search. For the DMS search to be successful, user input is required to make sure the metadata/profile of the document is accurate.
A “research” search is when the user is looking for documents on a topic. The user may not know if any documents on the topic even exist. The search is typically for keywords in the document.
An example is: information on “arms-dealing”.
A user will expect a list of documents displayed by relevancy.
An enterprise search tool excels at this type of search. The user is looking for terms in the document. The enterprise search tool can use its algorithm to identify which documents have the most treatment of the search terms.
A typical DMS will fall short on a “research” search. A typical DMS does not rank searches based on relevancy. If a search yielded dozens or more results, the user would have no reference as to where to start a review of search results. A typical DMS also has an inferior text search engine.
It is the frustration when running a “research” search that users cry out for an enterprise search tool.
A “precedent” search is a search for a model document.
Generally, the key to finding a good precedent is knowing the context in which a document was previously used, rather than text in the document itself.
An example is: ” a purchase and sale agreement for a retail shopping center in Florida”. “Purchase and Sale Agreement” will be in the text of the document and the name of the document. But “Florida” and “retail shopping center” may not appear in the text of the document. If they do appear, they would appear infrequently.
They key to making a precedent search working is leveraging the document metadata against other systems. For instance, we require users to assign a document to a particular matter. We plan to use that matter identification to pull information from other sources and impute that information on the document.
The other key to a precedent search is using a faceted search to narrow the search results using the additional metadata.
A version of this post appeared in my old blog KM Space: 4 Types of Search.
TRUSTe presented a webinar on Managing Customer Data From The EU: Are You Compliant? The panelists were:
Maureen Cooney, CPO and VP of Public Policy, TRUSTe
Damon Greer, Director, US-EU Safe Harbor Framework, US Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration
Heather Shaw, Vice President, ICT Policy, US Council for International Business
Dean Forbes, CIPP, Sr. Director, Global Privacy Office, Global Compliance & Business Practices, Schering Plough
In the EU, the consumer owns the data about them. In the US the collector owns the data.
There is a safe harbor available, but you must be under the jurisdiction of the FTC and the DOT. Financial services sector, insurance, telecommunications and non-profits are not eligibile.