I was just writing an article on Computer Forensics for the Federal Lawyer magazine.  In the days when I was a federal government lawyer, ediscovery and forensics were not issues.  In 1982 I bought a Radio Shack Model 100 portable computer and communicated with our office minicomputer by dialing in with a 300 baud modem.  In 1984 when I was leading a team writing regulations under the Comprehensive Environmental Reform Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), we had an IBM XT  for the entire team.  It had a 5 MB hard drive and was maybe one of five personal computers in the entire department.  What we know of today as ediscovery and forensics could actually be applied to the old mini computers we had, but at that point the volume of material was small.  If anything had to be produced we printed it.

Federal agencies get a certain degree of protection because many cases are "on the administrative record".  However, there are still many times when government lawyers have to do broader discovery.  There are also criminal cases, civil service cases, civil rights cases and many other kinds of cases where the government must provide discovery.  Ediscovery rules apply to the federal government the same as everyone else.  Life as a government lawyer presents an entirely new set of challenges.  So many government records are computerized that some government lawyers must be experiencing ediscovery as quite a nightmare.