Whats in
your digital
landfill?for more information«
InformationZen.orgWhats in
your digital
landfill?What do you mean by
digital landfill?Word files
PowerPoint files
Excel files
and multiple various versions of
these documents
JPEGs
TIFFs
E-mails
and all their attachments
Business system documents
on the network on PCs on sticks
on phones on PDAs
and so onIn technical termsDIGITAL
STUFFMost of which is stored
haphazardly on a variety of
servers and drivesand getting
worseBy 2011, the digital universe will be
as big as it was in 2006
http://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdfThere are currently
billion exabytes of information in the
digital universe
http://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdfQ. What the hell is
an exabyte?A. A million million
megabytesNo really.A small novel
contains about a
megabyte of
information
http://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdfThe digital
universe equals
12 stacks of
these books
from the earth to
the sun.
http://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdfIsnt most of this just people
taking gazillions of digital
pictures and sending them
around to their friends and
downloading videos from
iTunes?A lot of it is...but about 30% of
the total volume of
information in the digital
universe is created by
businesses and
organizations
http://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdfand most of it is
unmanagedThink about
e-mailOnly
13%
of organizations have
deployed an e-mail
management strategy
across their organization
http://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32054.pdfMost organizations do not
understand the difference
between archiving and
back-up«
59% say e-mail is
archived as part of back-
up or via .pst files
http://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32054.pdf???56%
of organizations have no
policy at all relative to
e-mail retention.
http://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32054.pdfThat amounts to
little more than an
e-mail digital
landfill.Think about other
kinds of electronic
informationmost organizations have
not begun to address the
process of managing
electronic informationyou likely have core
systems to manage the
MONEY
in your organization and the
PEOPLE
in your organization...but what about
INFORMATION?Over
40%
of organizations have no policy
for classifying electronic
information as business
records.
http://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32315.pdfNearly 64% of end users
believe that their organization
understands what PAPER
records are and how they
should be retained²
only 34% have the same
understanding when
considering ELECTRONIC
records.
http://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/31842.pdfThat means most
electronic
information winds
up in the digital
landfill.with names like
johnsfile/stuff.doc
and
johnsfile/stuff2.docThink about legal
exposure«Only
41%
of organizations deliver any
sort of training on how to
handle electronic information.
http://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32315.pdfThat means the CEO is going
to have an awful hard time in
court explaining his/her digital
landfill.Think about
process
inefficiencyOn a scale of 1 (terrible) to 10
(excellent) how would you rate the
effectiveness of your organization in
managing information?
54%
would give themselves a grade of
5 or less.
http://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/34370.pdf52%
of organizations have
little or no confidence
that their electronic information is
accurate, accessible, and
trustworthy.
http://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/34370.pdfand yet over 90% of
organizations view their ability
to manage electronic
information as critical to their
future.That means most
organizations are pretending
the digital landfill does not
exist.A few
questions to
considerBe honest.How many digital landfills are
there in your organization?Is the explosion of digital
information making your
organization more effective or
less effective?Can your employees find the
information they need when
they need it?Can your employees
collaborate on projects no
matter where they are located
in the world?Has your ability to document
what your organization did,
why you did it, who did it, and
when they did it gotten better
or worse in the past 5 years?Can your customers find the
information they need when
they need it?Are your processes running
as smoothly as they should?If you were dragged into
court, would the processes
you use to manage electronic
information stand up to
scrutiny?If the answers
to one or more
of these
questions are
NO
you are not
alone.Get some help.for more information«
InformationZen.org