Further to the above thread – this may be the missing
reference:
“It has been estimated that the average company with a
1.000 employees loses $11million each year as a result of inefficiencies in
Information Management practices” - J. Popkin “10 ways to waste
time on Document Management” Part 1 and Part 2 Gartner Group February 26
1997
Maybe the Records Management Society should take a lead on
this (and the Classification/Taxonomy discussion) in order to enable RM’s
to better promote the profession?
Regards
Information Management Consultants (IMC) Ltd
12
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From:
The UK Records Management mailing list [mailto:
Sent: 27 July 2008 01:21
To:
Subject: Re: How successful has RM
been?
The Unversity of
California research referred to by Chris may have been 'How much information'.
The link is
http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/
If you read nothing
else, the executive summary is fascinating, and kind of 'did you know' treasure
trove. For example:
- A tree can produce
80,500 sheets of paper.
- 786 million trees
to produce the world's annual paper supply
- Ninety-two percent
of new information is stored on magnetic media, primarily hard disks. Film
represents 7% of the total, paper 0.01%, and optical media 0.002%.
- 800 MB of recorded
information is produced per person each year. It would take about 30 feet of
books to store the equivalent of 800 MB of information on paper.
- The vast majority
of original information on paper is produced by individuals in office documents
and postal mail, not in formally published titles such as books, newspapers and
journals.
- Published studies
on media use say that the average American adult uses the telephone 16.17 hours
a month, listens to radio 90 hours a month, and watches TV 131 hours a month.
About 53% of the
In relation to the
egovmonitor article, I also suspect, like Peter Kurilecz, that these are the
equivalent of urban myths, although a quick search through Snopes showed that
it hasn't quite reach that hallowed territory. But if we break down the
quote:
- Four weeks a year
searching for information. If there are 250 working days in a year, and
you take up to 10 minutes a day, throughout the day, to find information, that
is 2,500 minutes, 41 hours, so around one week (depending where you work, of
course). If that statistic was correct, the average worker is spending up
to 40 minutes a day, throughout the day, looking for (presumably work related)
information. Doesn't sound right to me.
- 70% more records
than needed are retained. Possible, particularly the electronic versions
of paper. But who knows if it's 50% or 99%.
- Between 1 and 5%
of all records are misfiled. From my experience with poorly designed
functions based BCS terms, this wouldn't surprise me. Maybe even higher.
- Office workers can
waste up to two hours a day looking for misplaced paperwork. See point
one above. That's an *awful* lot of time trying to find stuff. My
experience suggests it's 5 to 10 minutes max then give up or ring the records
manager….
Andrew Warland
Senior Consultant,
Records and Information Management Solutions
Converga (
P: 02-92682348
M: 0413043934
F: 02-92647455