Steve Whitaker wrote:
>Reduce your carbon
footprint; create and retain your records electronic.

Steve, I actually agree with your position on having paper-less life
cycle management as a goal, primarily for business process reasons.
However, I have yet to see a true impact analysis that electronic
records keeping is more sustainable than paper. Both have impacts on the
environment. In addition, its relatively easy to recycle paper. It
appears next to impossible to truly recycle obsolete technology.
Shipping that technology to third world countries rarely means it is
truly being recycled - its just shipping the pollution somewhere else.

An interesting occurrence recently: our division is attempting to
establish more sustainable records keeping practices by reducing paper
usage (something I support in most cases). In addition, we are
attempting to replace and consolidate some of our printers, fax
machines, copiers to reduce costs. In the course of this, one of the
managers was happy to see my office take on some of the older technology
another was using as she did not want to see it "end up in a land fill".
Yet it is far more likely that this technology will "end up in a land
fill" after we are done with it, than it is the paper which we are
replacing, which will almost certainly end up being recycled. Regarding
power usage for storage (another item I often hear cited), there was an
interesting article in Harpers recently about the enormous power usage
of Google's server farms located in The Dalles, OR, exceeding
exponentially the power usage in a records center storage facility, for
example.

I think the sustainability of electronic records keeping comes from its
improvement in efficiency, lessening the amount of fuel, for example,
needed to move paper from one location to another. This is also why one
would want to "go electronic" - to improve business process efficiency.
However, I think it is yet to be proven that the sustainability of
electronic records keeping has to do with the actual media or "hard
technology" used, in spite of the fact that discussions of this subject
almost totally focus on that aspect. That's not to say that I prefer
paper, but I think that decisions to go paper-less based on
sustainability arguments are highly questionable, yet represent one of
the principle arguments given to do so. This places the emphasis on
"records as media" instead of on "records as evidence/work
products/etc..." and reinforces the notion that we can solve our records
problems by "going paperless" without thinking of the implications of
how to manage those records in an electronic environment. If you do not
think of those implications, my experience is that "going paperless"
will ultimately fail - as a sustainability strategy and as a process
improvement strategy.

Dwight Wallis, CRM
Records Administrator
Multnomah County Fleet, Records, Electronics, Distribution and Stores
(FREDS)
1620 S.E. 190th Avenue
Portland, OR 97233
Phone: (503)988-3741
Fax: (503)988-3754
[log in to unmask]

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message.
mailto:[log in to unmask]