Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II, and data mining opportunities in compliance systems

New legislative and industry governance directives have sparked development of systems to tackle Information Lifecycle Management, and related compliance automation for regulations including Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II and ISO 15489 records management. Many of these systems use a “store now, sort later” philosophy, whereas others capture related information in the context of business processes. Unusual avenues emerge from these systems for data mining and knowledge discovery in the hybrid database of structured and unstructured information that form the supporting compliance systems. This paper will explore the data mining possibilities inherent in compliance systems using classification systems not designed with such mining opportunities in mind. Examples include identifying customers likely to be early adopters of new software based on product and customer support systems; and opportunities for knowledge discovery and mapping, and identifying subject matter experts within taxonomies designed to support financial business functions.