Digital Landfill

I got a note from that might be of interest to solution providers doing business (or wanted to do so) in California.

Recognizing that the current Imaging, Workflow and Document Management Master Service Agreement will be expiring November 2008, the State of California has announced a new Enterprise Content Management (ECM) related Request for Proposal (RFP).   This RFP is soliciting qualified suppliers to provide products and services for document imaging, document  services/management, and workflow technology in any location in the State of California.  The title of the new RFP is “Document and Content Management” (formerly Imaging, Workflow and Document Management) and is advertised in the California State Contracts Register (CSCR) under Category 7, IT, Computer Programming/Systems Analysis/Software Maintenance.

For details on the RFP, go to THIS LINK (http://aiim.typepad.com/rfpannounce.pdf).  It will contain directions on how to access the RFP (you will first need to register and login).

AIIM is pleased to announce the availability of the following "toolkits" containing background information on key components of a document, records, content or business process management strategy.

The toolkits are $99 each.  A much better deal is an annual professional membership subscription ($125), which includes access to ALL the toolkits.

Email Management- NEW 2008 Version
Learn how to implement policies designed to ensure that the technology is used properly and that digital information is properly retained.

Search/Information Organization and Access- NEW
Learn how to implement policies and strategies designed to ensure that the right information is available when needed.

e-Discovery
Litigation concerns for your records and electronic records policies and procedures are explored.

Collaboration
Learn how collaborative software can help your teams work better together.

Web Content Management
Learn how to manage and publish your organizations content to your website.

Business Process Management
Learn how to improve your business processes with the tips and resources in this toolkit.

Compliance
Receive guidance on the important decisions concerning the necessary resources for a compliance-ready business.

Records Management
Learn the latest about records, retention efforts, and what mistakes you should try to avoid.

Back-file Conversion
Learn about converting the reams and cabinets of paper to current media storage.

ECM Primer
Understand the core ECM technologies and how they affect your organization's processes.

Industry Benchmarking Kit
Compare your organization's experiences with those of other leading end-users.

Regulatory Roadmap
Help your organization stay out of trouble by staying up-to-date on the latest government regulations and requirements.

Records Management for IT Professionals
Apply sound records management practices and policies to your systems requirements.

Taking the First Step
Make informed purchase decisions based on your specific business needs, project goals and technical requirements.

I'd like to invite blog readers to a new business networking site that we are launching -- INFORMATION ZEN.

The direct URL is http://www.informationzen.org.

The purpose of the site is information sharing for those interested in documents, records, content, and business process management.  There is no charge to participate -- just a call for a little patience as we build critical mass (you know how it is until the site gets to the point where there are enough people to engage in meaningful networking).

So connect up.  Sign on.  Find peace with your information management challenges.

http://www.informationzen.org

Check them out... Feel free to share ... http://www.sildeshare.net/jmancini77

Attached is a presentation I did for our AIIM chapters in Milwaukee and Chicago of emerging trends in the Document Management industry.  There are a few gaps without the actual words since I tend toward minimalist slides, but a number of folks requested copies so I thought I would post.

Here's the direct URL --

Embedded file follows.

Feel free to post a comment, either on the slideshare site or here.

I was in Moscow for the Docflow 2008 event (a great event by the way) and was struck by how far people were pushing their mobile phones.

3, 4, and 5 mp camera phones with good lenses were bring used for full page text capture and PDF conversion. Others were using built in OCR for business card capture, taking the contact information and synching back to the host contact database.

And most related to my adventures today, using the navigation feature with voice announcements for both driving navigation and with special functionality if you were walking. Meanwhile, while in Chicago today, the google maps functionality on my iPhone triangulated me to about a tenth of a mile of where I actually was.

Much as I love my iPhone, when is this all going to get better in the US?

I recently had the opportunity to be the keynote speaker at the DOCFLOW event  (http://www.docflow.ru/english.asp) in Moscow.   This event has been organized for a number of years by ABBYY and attracts 3,000 visitors over a two day period (this year was the first year for two days).

I will confess that before going, my preconception was kind of a pre-Soviet Union dissolution, “Back in the USSR” expectation. 

There are still signs of the legacy of the Soviets.  The airport is not exactly modern (although it appears a new one is under construction).  Many buildings on the way into town have that “soviet” look.  Traffic is terrible.  It took about 2.5 hours on Sunday to go from the airport to downtown (probably 20 miles).  During a long stretch of the trip, many people drove “off-road” on the left side of the highway, kicking up a thick dirt storm that made it impossible to even see at times.  We must have gone past 25 fender benders and overheated cars, all blocking the road.  Major articles in the Moscow Times (very good English newspaper) talked about rolling “hot water outs” for parts of Moscow over this summer.  These are times in which residents of a particular are without hot water for 2-4 weeks while the pipes are repaired.  There were also a series of articles on the need for a greater “rule of law’”(i.e., reducing differences between the official and actual ways of getting things done).

That said, the Russians and all of the parts of the former Soviet Union are making massive infrastructure investments, largely paid for by resource revenues.  There is a great deal of money in play, many very interesting ECM projects are being implemented, and some significant very impressive local players have emerged.  Moscow (#1), St. Petersburg (#12), Kiev (#28) and Almaty/Kazakhstan (#30) [Borat notwithstanding] are among the most expensive cities in the world. There is a hunger among the ECM supplier community for external validation of the opportunity that they think is there, and greater access to the external document, records and content community.  There are lots of very bright, young people involved in our industry and some interesting entrepreneurs.  I haven’t seen as many styled out people this side of Paris.  There is more excitement related to our industry than I've seen in many other markets.

A couple of interesting notes from Harvey Spencer’s presentation (his was the other keynote)...

• Harvey’s theme = speed of business processes increases exponentially with the internet and the speed of document and documentation processing is not keeping pace.
• Document preparation cost/1,000 documents in US averages 20 cents and keying/operator/indexing costs average $2 per 1,000 documents.  Putting these together means $20B is being spent each year in US just to capture paper.
• Harvey is starting to talk much more about extension of “recognition” from OCR/ICR into voice annotations and recognition, using mobile phones for remote capture and for conducting OCR on the fly, video recognition, etc. 
• An example of opportunity he sees in this convergence is the $15B that is spent in the US each year on keying medical transcripts.  If voice recognition can perform at a 60% level of recognition, that is enough to generate significant savings relative to this $15B; he sees voice recognition at the same point that OCR was 10 years ago.

All told, a market with enormous opportunities for this industry, and with some extremely interesting companies and people pursuing them.

On Friday, May 16 David Berlind had a post on one of the Information Week (that's right, Information Week!) blogs that highlights how much education needs to be done relative to what responsible information management and retention is all about.

Among his contentions was that "stodgy old AIIM" (see link here) was leading customers down the path to more and more software purchases for in-house email systems, and that the solution to the email management and retention issues facing organizations lies in "the cloud" -- i.e., saving everything through services like gmail and then being able to find anything through search. 

I guess I can take some comfort in that at least he didn't characterize ME as "old and stodgy."  Thank goodness he didn't talk with my kids.

His assumption that all would be well if we just saved everything in the cloud would strike terror into the hearts of most CIOs and legal counsels that I know.

There are many aspects of his post that are indeed compelling.  As someone essentially running a small business (albeit one representing an industry), we are constantly looking for ways to move toward SaaS and open source and ASP solutions that will be more cost effective in managing our critical business processes.  But seeking to save everything and then find it with search is simply missing the point of what retention and effective and responsible records and information management is all about.

Organizations should seek to retain emails (or any other form of electronic information for that matter) only to meet two criteria:  1) legal and regulatory requirements; and 2) to run and sustain the business.

Effective retention management and records management in an electronic era is about many things, but it is not about indefinitely saving each and every piece of electronic flotsam and jetsam created or sent, no matter how expensive or inexpensive it is to do so.  It is about having systems that can intelligently differentiate between the email that says, "We will have birthday cake for everyone in the conference room at 3 p.m." and the one that says, "Yes I agree to ship 1,000 widgets at $25 each to you to arrive by Tuesday the 20th." 

Retention management is just as much about what you get rid of and how you do so as it is about what you save.  One has only to think about the incredible costs that so many of us pay for off-line paper records storage (with unknown discovery risk) because we failed to differentiate on the front end what was important to keep and what was not. (I am sure although cannot prove it that there are some badge lanyards in offsite storage from the 1993 AIIM Show!)

I cannot think of a single general counsel in our membership who would think it would be a good idea to indefinitely save each and every e-mail that everyone in the organization sent or received.  This would be an e-discovery nightmare waiting to happen.

What do you think?  Comment here, or go to David's original post (although the commenting capability seems to come and go a bit on his blog)....

Click here for David's original post...