What’s in your digital landfill?
for more information‌
InformationZen.org
What’s 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 on
In technical terms‌
DIGITAL STUFF
Most of which is stored haphazardly on a variety of servers and drives‌
…and getting worse
By 2011, the digital universe will be
10X as big as it was in 2006 h"p://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdf
There are currently
281 billion exabytes of information in the digital universe h"p://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdf
Q. What the hell is an exabyte?
A. A million million megabytes
No really.
A small novel contains about a megabyte of information
h"p://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdf
The digital universe equals 12 stacks of these books from the earth to the sun.
h"p://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdf
Isn’t 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...
30%
‌ but about of the total volume of information in the digital universe is created by businesses and organizations‌ h"p://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdf
…and most of it is unmanaged.
Think about e-mail‌
Only
13% of organizations have deployed an e-mail management strategy across their organization. h"p://www.aiim.org/tempďŹ les/32054.pdf
Most organizations do not understand the difference between archiving and backup‌
h"p://www.aiim.org/tempďŹ les/32054.pdf
Most organizations do not understand the difference between archiving and backup… 59% say e-mail is “archived” as part of backup or via .pst files h"p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32054.pdf
??? 25
56% of organizations have no policy at all relative to e-mail retention.
h"p://www.aiim.org/tempďŹ les/32054.pdf
That amounts to little more than an e-mail digital landfill.
Think about other kinds of electronic information‌
‌most organizations have not begun to address the core process of managing electronic information...
‌you 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. h"p://www.aiim.org/tempďŹ les/32315.pdf
Nearly 64% of end users believe that their organization understands what PAPER records are and how they should be retained —
h"p://www.aiim.org/tempďŹ les/31842.pdf
Nearly 64% of end users believe that their organization understands what PAPER records are and how they should be retained — only 34% have the same understanding when considering ELECTRONIC records. h"p://www.aiim.org/tempďŹ les/31842.pdf
That means most electronic information winds up in the digital landfill.
…with names like johnsfile/stuff.doc and johnsfile/stuff2.doc
Think about legal exposure‌
Only
41% of organizations deliver any sort of training on how to handle electronic information. h"p://www.aiim.org/tempďŹ les/32315.pdf
That means the CEO is going to have an awful hard time in court explaining his/her digital landfill.
Think about process inefficiency‌
On a scale of 1 (terrible) to 10 (excellent) how would you rate the effectiveness of your organization in managing information?
h"p://www.aiim.org/tempďŹ les/34370.pdf
On 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.
h"p://www.aiim.org/tempďŹ les/34370.pdf
52% of organizations have “little or no confidence” that their electronic information is “accurate, accessible, and trustworthy.” h"p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/34370.pdf
…and 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 consider‌
Be 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 process 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