I will confess to not reading the entire thread, but a couple observations...

I think most enterprises are reducing significantly the volume of paper records being retained as records. The days of hundreds of boxes of greenbar are over. Frankly, if our expense reimbursement group could get a paperless expense submission process figured out, we'd have almost nothing retained in paper form. But I digress...

Those of you who read my blog have likely followed my experiences with my iPad. I'm trying more and more to wean myself from toting a laptop everywhere I go. The tablet form factor is getting there. But... it is still hard to take notes... harder still to mark up a document. What I find is that the stuff I most often do on paper -- marking up a document for revision or taking notes on a presentation, highlighting text in articles or other reading material and just jotting stuff down -- still are not easy for me to do electronically. That said, I think a big part of the barrier isn't the technology, it's me. There are a few small technical issues with connectivity and bandwidth, but if I can manage to teach myself some new ways of doing things -- and I actually go out and buy some enabling applications -- I think I should be able to start eliminating paper more and more.I print stuff, but it is usually for reference or to jot down some talking points.
 When I'm done using the paper, it hits the shred bin.


As John notes, mainstream IT folks aren't always helpful here. There is an opportunity here for records managers to reinvent themselves and for us to create a new vision of how information is managed. The users are going to blaze that trail, we need to be right behind them to make sure they get pulled out of the swamps. Ideally, we need to help them plot a course around the quicksand and swamps, but I suspect they will find them anyway.

I do believe that the office will retain less paper, but printer manufacturers shouldn't worry about looking for new careers quite yet.

 
Patrick Cunningham, CRM, CIP, FAI
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