Digital Landfill

I wanted to congratulate Abad Khushrooshahi, who I met at AIIM's Toronto ECM Seminar, and who may very well be the most knowledgeable end user in North America. Abad works for Aegon Canada and recently completed our IOA (Information Organization and Access) course. What is notable about Abad is that I believe he is the first to complete ALL FOUR of our training specializations (ERM, ECM, BPM, IOA).

Here's Abad's take on the courses...

"The structure and presentation of all four courses were excellent, and the content was comprehensive and applicable to 'real world' scenarios. These courses have given me a sound knowledge and foundation in the disciplines of ECM, ERM BPM, and IOA and would recommend these courses to anyone who has an interest in these subjects. "

Thanks, Abad, for your trust in our courses! For general information on AIIM's training programs CLICK HERE.

For a master schedule of AIIM's ECM Courses, CLICK HERE.
For a master schedule of AIIM's ERM Courses, CLICK HERE.
For a master schedule of AIIM's BPM Courses, CLICK HERE.
For a master schedule of AIIM's IOA/Search Courses, CLICK HERE.

With the release of our Market IQ on Content Security ...

...CLICK HERE to download a free copy...
CLICK HERE to see the press release for the survey...

...I am perhaps more sensitive than usual about how organizations treat confidential information.

There is a practice out there that I have encountered a number of times over the past 2 months that I wish someone would explain to me.

A bit of background....My father-in-law passed away in August, and my wife and I have been trying to help my mother-in-law (88 years old) deal with all of the various processing and notifications that this has created. It has really been eye opening to discover how impossible most "customer" systems are for older people. There is simply no way that anyone beyond a certain age can navigate the various systems that are supposedly designed to "serve" their needs. ("Please listen to the following seven options and select the one that best describes your current situation....") I shudder to think where my mother-in-law would be without someone acting on her behalf to navigate these systems supposedly designed to assist her. But that's the subject for another post.

My content security issue is this: On countless occasions (Social Security, IRS, insurance companies), when acting on her behalf, we have been asked to "put my mother-in-law on the phone quickly" to get her verbal authorization for them to talk to us.

My question -- why do organizations do this? Does it represent an obstacle for anyone other than honest people? I can't help but wonder what sort of "content security" this represents. Certainly if some person intent on fraud had already gathered Social Security numbers, policy numbers, birth-dates, addresses and other personal information, going one step further to get someone to simply say "Yes" on the phone to a stranger would not be a big deal.

Somewhere down the road I suppose we will do a better job of this question of how we manage and control identities and the content associated with them. But for the time being, it would make me feel a little better to understand why we go through the charade of "voice authorization." Can anyone help me out?

For those who like oxymorons – hey, who doesn’t? – here are the first 6 (“the alpha”) in a list of thousands on the web (for the complete list, try out www.oxymoronlist.com):

1. a fine mess
2. a just war
3. a little big
4. a little pregnant
5. a new classic
6. absolutely unsure

I do find that there is one oxymoron missing from the list – one that I have come to appreciate over the past 11 years at AIIM watching end users struggle with the explosion of electronic information within their organizations. Information Management.

I suppose it should come as no great surprise that effective information management is so challenging to organizations. We sometimes forget how recent this phenomenon of exponentially increasing electronic information is. We also forget that as bad as things may seem, we are really only in the very early stages of this revolution.

I tend to love those studies that calculate the total amount of information in the universe. The first ones that caught my eye were the ones that were done by University of California at Berkeley. Their most recent “How Much Information?” study was conducted in 2003 and concluded that print, film, magnetic and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002 to add to all the existing information in the world.

Now that’s a lot of information! To put the amount in persepctive, consider this handy chart from the folks at Berkeley:
1 kilobyte (KB) = 1/2 typewritten page
1 megabyte (MB) = small novel
1 gigabyte (GB) = pickup truck filled with books
1 terabyte (TB) = 50,000 trees made into paper and printed
1 petabyte (PB) = 1/2 information in all the US academic research libraries
1 exabyte (EB) = 20% of all the words every spoken by human beings

Not to be outdone, IDC recently studied thus question again, broadening the definitions (not just original information, but all the copies), and concluded that there was 161 exabytes of information in the world, growing at a CAGR of 57%, and on target to reach 988 exabytes by 2010. What’s creating all this information? In part, the 400 million digital cameras, 600 million camera phones, 900 million PCs, and 1.6 billion mobile subscribers in the world.

When you get beyond the “wow” aspect of the sheer volume of information creation, you come to the real business challenge. Organizations want help in sorting through this volume to determine: 1) how to effectively document themselves (the “risk-driven” sale); and 2) how to optimize their document-intensive processes (the “efficiency” driven sale).

In real estate, we’ve heard the old adage that the three keys are location, location, location. In the document business, the key for both users and solution providers is training, training, training. Check out www.aiim.org/training.

For those of you who have lasted until the end of this post, your reward is the last six (“the omega”) of the oxymorons listed on www.oxymoronlist.com. Enjoy the list.

n-5. working lunch
n-4. working vacation
n-3. xenophobic foreign secretary
n-2. young adult
n-1. young sixty
n. zero deficit

There's a useful post on the Illinois Business Law Journal blog relative to instant message retention (see the Illinois blog for the full post). Kudos to the Information Governance Engagement Area for highlighting the article. Worthwhile reading.

"Instant Messages (IMs) have become an increasingly popular method of communication, both in the personal and business world. [1] They have the benefit of being an efficient, rapid and oftentimes free means of communication. [2] IMs are often candid and free-form, and when users close their IM dialogue box when the conversation ends, the chat session generally disappears and is not recorded. [3] However, with the advent of the e-discovery amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), many electronically stored documents have become subject to discovery in litigation. [4] While Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and e-mails are accepted as discoverable documents for litigation purposes, it is unclear whether IMs can and should be requested during the discovery process. [5] This article will explore issues related to the discoverability of instant messages and will ultimately suggest that businesses employ techniques to closely monitor employee use of instant messages to prevent a “smoking gun” IM from costing employers millions of dollars in court."

...then a couple of new AIIM programs might be just the ticket.

We've announced the training schedule for the last quarter of 2007 and the first six months of 2008. For details, go this THIS LINK. Keep in mind that you can also access all of these courses on line as well.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) - Learn how to take control of your information assets.
Electronic Records Management (ERM) - Learn how to take control of your electronic records.
Business Process Management (BPM) - Learn how to improve your business processes.
Information Organization & Access (IOA) - Learn how optimize findability and enterprise search.

AIIM has just introduced its new job center and highlights include:

Job Seekers:

free to post resumes - they display anonymously
free to search and apply for jobs online
set up job alerts
have access to career counseling and career library services

Employers:

access to full anonymous resume database
connect with interested parties (pay small fee per confirmed connection)
benefit from AIIM's marketing efforts in finding qualified candidates

CLICK HERE for details.

I just returned from our annual Document Management Service Providers Executive Forum, also known as DMSPEF (perhaps a classic study of the need to make sure you pronounce your acronyms before you create them)). For details, go to http://www.aiim.org/dmspf/dmspef_07.asp?ID=24391. A couple of observations from the program...

First observation -- and I say this with admittedly a bias as the President of AIIM -- I simply do not know of a better event for the Document Channel. The quality of the discussions and presentations -- and more importantly, the interactions -- are unlike any other event in which I participate. VARs and Service Companies seem to be starting to realize what a gem this program is -- about 40 have signed up a year in advance for the 2008 program (in November in Austin, TX). It's the only program out there that is created by the channel for the channel. Kudos to the team that built the agenda.

Second observation -- there was more "new blood" -- both executives new to the event as well as new to the document business -- than at any time in the past decade. Good news in terms of the future of the channel.

Third observation -- observation #2 is reinforced by the results of our new Document Management Service Providers "State of the Industry" survey. The formal results won't be released for a couple of weeks, but I summarized them in my presentation. You can get a little preview in the somewhat unconventioanlly formatted speaking notes below. (Actual results will be available only to Channel members of AIIM.)

Download dmspefpresentation.pdf (45.3K)

Fourth observation -- the Service Companies in attendance were not what some might expect. For those in who have been in the industry since back in the days of film, listening to a microfilm scanning provider talking about a sophisticated Google ad words campaign that drove hundreds of thousands of dollars in business to the company was a microcosm of the changes going on in the industry.

All told, an energizing experience, and one I would personally recommend to any company in the document channel. Contact Amy Knight at for details on how to get involved in the year-round activities of this group.