Is the content -- paper and electronic documents, reports, forms, messages, emails -- still out of control in your agency or government?
You are not alone. Nearly 50 percent of organizations say that managing content is "a challenge" and that the latest communication channels -- instant messages, text messages, blogs and wikis -- are not under control for 75 percent of governments and businesses, according to a recent report published by AIIM, the electronic content industry organization.
"For many organizations, poorly managed and out of control information represents a huge potential source of bottom line savings in this tight economy, if only organizations would take this cost savings seriously," said John Mancini, president of AIIM.
ECM and document management is a huge issue in government. Our Public CIO survey ranked it as the number one technology priority for 2009.
Yet the problem with managing paper and electronic documents and content has bedeviled the public sector since I first started covering government IT back in 1989 (remember Wang?) and has only grown more complex today.
We may think that information is more digital in 2009, but government is still saddled with handling paper, as we found in our 2008 article on document imaging:
"Despite the e-government trend and the move toward enterprisewide information systems, there's still no end of paper in the public sector. Between government's historical archives and the myriad forms used to transact business, paper management is still a major challenge."
Some success stories are out there, however. I'm hearing from some CIOs that their jurisdiction or agency has developed document management platforms that leverage ECM technologies, which reduces implementation cost while shrinking workflow labor costs.
But it's clear, government is barely able to keep up with how it manages all the information it creates and captures.
What's your story? Have a success out there worth sharing? Or an ECM situation that's out of control?
Let us know.