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 filesPowerPoint files

Excel files…and multiple various versions of

these documentsJPEGsTIFFs

E-mails…and all their attachmentsBusiness 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

10Xas big as it was in 2006

h"p://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdf

There are currently

281billion exabytes of information in the

digital universeh"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...

… but about 30% 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/tempfiles/32054.pdf

Most organizations do not understand the difference

between archiving and back-up…

h"p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32054.pdf

Most 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

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/tempfiles/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

MONEYin your organization and the

PEOPLEin 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/tempfiles/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/tempfiles/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/tempfiles/31842.pdf

That means most electronic

information winds up in the digital

landfill.

…with names likejohnsfile/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/tempfiles/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/tempfiles/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/tempfiles/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

NOyou are not

alone.

Get some help.

for more information…

InformationZen.org