As the volume of electronic information surrounding us grows exponentially, how will we deal with it? Do you know what is in your digital landfill?

1. What’s in your
digital landfill?

2. for more information…
InformationZen.org

3. What’s in your
digital landfill?

4. What do you mean by
“digital landfill?”

5. 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

6. In technical terms…

7. DIGITAL
STUFF

8. Most of which is stored
haphazardly on a variety of
servers and drives…

9. …and getting
worse

10. By 2011, the digital universe will be
10X
as big as it was in 2006
hquot;p://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdf

11. There are currently
281
billion exabytes of information in the
digital universe
hquot;p://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdf

12. Q. What the hell is
an exabyte?

13. A. A million million
megabytes

14. No really.

15. A small novel
contains about a
megabyte of
information
hquot;p://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdf

16. The digital
universe equals
12 stacks of these
books from the
earth to the sun.
hquot;p://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdf

17. Isn’t most of this just people taking
gazillions of digital pictures and
sending them around to their
friends and downloading videos
from iTunes?

18. A lot of it is...

19. 30%
… but about of the
total volume of information
in the digital universe is
created by businesses and
organizations…
hquot;p://www.emc.com/digital_universe.pdf

20. …and most of it is
unmanaged.

21. Think about
e-mail…

22. Only
13%
of organizations have
deployed an e-mail
management strategy across
their organization.
hquot;p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32054.pdf

23. Most organizations do not
understand the difference
between archiving and back-
up…
hquot;p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32054.pdf

24. 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
hquot;p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32054.pdf

25. ???
25

26. 56%
of organizations have no
policy at all relative to
e-mail retention.
hquot;p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32054.pdf

27. That amounts to
little more than an
e-mail digital
landfill.

28. Think about other
kinds of electronic
information…

29. …most organizations have not
begun to address the core
process of managing electronic
information...

30. …you likely have core systems
to manage the
MONEY
in your organization and the
PEOPLE
in your organization...

31. …but what about
INFORMATION?

32. Over
40%
of organizations have no policy
for classifying electronic
information as business records.
hquot;p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32315.pdf

33. Nearly 64% of end users believe
that their organization
understands what PAPER records
are and how they should be
retained —
hquot;p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/31842.pdf

34. 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.
hquot;p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/31842.pdf

35. That means most
electronic
information winds
up in the digital
landfill.

36. …with names like
johnsfile/stuff.doc
and
johnsfile/stuff2.doc

37. Think about legal
exposure…

38. Only
41%
of organizations deliver any sort
of training on how to handle
electronic information.
hquot;p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/32315.pdf

39. That means the CEO is going to
have an awful hard time in
court explaining his/her digital
landfill.

40. Think about process
inefficiency…

41. On a scale of 1 (terrible) to 10 (excellent)
how would you rate the effectiveness of
your organization in managing
information?
hquot;p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/34370.pdf

42. 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.
hquot;p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/34370.pdf

43. 52%
of organizations have
“little or no confidence”
that their electronic information is
“accurate, accessible, and
trustworthy.”
hquot;p://www.aiim.org/tempfiles/34370.pdf

44. …and yet over 90% of
organizations view their ability
to manage electronic
information as critical to their
future.

45. That means most organizations
are pretending the digital
landfill does not exist.

46. A few questions
to consider…

47. Be honest.

48. How many digital landfills are
there in your organization?

49. Is the explosion of digital
information making your
organization more effective or
less effective?

50. Can your employees find the
information they need when
they need it?

51. Can your employees collaborate
on projects no matter where
they are located in the world?

52. 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?

53. Can your customers find the
information they need when
they need it?

54. Are your processes running as
smoothly as they should?

55. If you were dragged into court,
would the process you use to
manage electronic information
stand up to scrutiny?

56. If the answers
to one or more
of these
questions are
NO
you are not
alone.

57. Get some help.

58. for more information…
InformationZen.org