Digital Landfill

Imperative Number 4 of 6 Facing Information Professionals

Use automation to ensure information governance: Acknowledge that the paper-based records paradigm no longer works in the digital workplace – if it ever did -- and use automation to ensure governance and disposition.

The shift to Systems of Engagement dramatically increases the complexity and volume of data and information that must be managed within an organization.

• Clearly not everything can or should be saved forever. However, the scale of the problem facing organizations is now making it clear that manual information retention and disposition processes simply extended from the world of Systems of Record will no longer suffice.
• Aside from the sheer enormity of the task, a lack of clarity about what content is valuable is the main obstacle, along with the fear of getting it wrong and a sense that there is no immediate ROI from getting rid of outdated information. 

Data points:

• The biggest obstacle faced regarding content decommissioning is, “not clear which content is valuable and which is not.” There is also considerable “Fear of the compliance and regulatory impact of deleting information. [AIIM -- Content Analytics: Research Tools for Unstructured Content and Rich Media]
• Only 15% have an automatic way of finding and deleting duplicates in their content stores, with just 8% able to analyze them automatically for relevancy and to delete irrelevant content. [AIIM -- Content Analytics: Research Tools for Unstructured Content and Rich Media]
• 72% of larger organizations have 3 or more ECM/DM/RM systems. 25% have 5 or more. [AIIM – State of the ECM Industry]
• Governance is still sadly lacking in most organizations, with less than half keeping their own history record or searchable archive of content that has appeared both on internal social sites and, more worryingly, public sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. [AIIM – Social Business Systems, Success Factors for Enterprise 2.0 Applications]
• If the amount of information in the Digital Universe is growing at 50% a year or so, the subset of information that needs to be secured is growing almost twice as fast.  The amount of UNPROTECTED yet sensitive data is growing even faster. [EMC and IDC, Digital Universe]
• Although the amount of information in the Digital Universe will grow by a factor of 44, and the number of containers or files will grow by a factor of 67 from 2009 to 2020, the number of IT professionals in the world will grow only by a factor of 1.4. [EMC and IDC, Digital Universe]

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Just FYI, we're doing a webinar on this topic at 2 pm Eastern on Wednesday the 15th. Click HERE for details.

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The First 4 of 6 Imperatives...

1. Make everything mobile: Redefine content delivery and process automation to take advantage of mobile devices and mobile workforces. 
2. Digitize processes: Drive paper bottlenecks out of processes and automate process flows.
3. Make the business social: Integrate social technologies into processes rather than create stand-alone social networks. Connect internal and external stakeholders to tap into unexpected sources of knowledge.
4. Use automation to ensure information governance: Acknowledge that the paper-based records paradigm no longer works in the digital workplace – if it ever did -- and use automation to ensure governance and disposition.

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 AIIM's Certified Information Professional designation was developed by a team of subject matter experts in conjunction with AIIM, in accordance with ISO 17024 methodologies. The purpose of the certification is to establish a core body of knowledge relevant to the needs of content and information professionals. The certification exams are independently administered by the global Prometric testing centers. Free certification prep kits and sample exam questions are available now from AIIM.

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