And basically what the result will be is what people are willing to state,
and a summary will say what's pressing to those willing to respond, but it
likely won't contain sufficient classifying or demographic data to meaqn
anything, just like most of the surveys that have come before.

The recent AIIM survey was an excellent example of this:

http://snipurl.com/ft89x  [www_linkedin_com]

and it seemed ironic to me that AIIM decided to post it in the ARMA LinkedIn
Group =)  But here's what I said about their "findings" and the value of
surveys of this type:

Survey data is ALWAYS interesting, but it's more valuable when you can
review the way the questions were phrased and the choices provided for
responses. This is really the only way to determine if the data is skewed
simply because respondents took the closest possible choice to the real
answer, or if they were given an opportunity to say "I don't know" or "none
of the above".

The other crucial factor is the position and/or responsibilities of the
individual providing the responses, and the scope of the organization for
which they are responding. Are they a common user? Are they a manager? Do
they develop or administer policy or a system? Are they one in a company of
50? Of 500? Of a Multi-National? It's important to be able to accurately
slice-and-dice this information to determine the value of the data collected
and then present it in a manner that gives you the ability to respond to it
with proposals for changed practices, not to simply use it for "shock value"
=)

It's sad about the backup and archive issue, and we have the IT industry,
especially the storage component of it to blame for this. The co-opted the
term "archive" and have been severely misusing it to identify products and
systems, such as the most blatant use being "E-mail Archiving Solution"
which is neither an archive OR a solution. It's a digital haystack that when
properly configured and supported can be used as a tool to help achieve a
potential solution.

The other is "data archiving" which is how the storage industry describes
the moving of less frequently accessed data to near line or off line
appliances and storage systems, in the spirit of lowering costs. The ironic
thing here is for years, these same individuals are the ones who kept
telling users and managers that "storage is cheap, rather then coming up
with policies and practices to eliminate information that is not a record or
serves no business purpose. The problem is it isn't the frequency of access
that determines how information should be managed- it's the retention
requirement!!


-- 
Larry Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972

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