I am looking for campaign material for a "born digital, live digital" promotion.

One of the most moribund and depressing processes I see is the insistence on born digital material being printed out and then scanned back into systems.  So much embedded metadata is lost from this process it should be called "Turning living information into the Walking Dead".  Zombification of Information.

Sadly, this habit appears endemic amongst record keepers because "scan, register/classify, workflow" is the default work pattern.  So faxes, emails, internal documents are printed and placed into the industrial RM production line.

If it is born digital (created internally, or received externally in a digital format) how do I get the staff in the organisation to change their practice to leave the information in its native format for the entire information lifecycle?  How do I convert my record keeping staff to this?

My Australian colleagues on the RIMPA list have suggested appealing to a "save trees" mindset but I think this misses the point.  It is about the reduction of administrative effort, the improve of workflow speeds and the future governance of information resources that are far more compelling than a few trees (as much as I love trees).

So my question is has anyone actually created digital information lifecycle campaigns to their business to explain WHY keeping digitally born information digital in its entire lifecycle is of benefit to the business and also HOW to do so?  If so, please share your campaign's success or failure.

Cheers

Andy

Andy Carnahan