IS A PAPERLESS SOCIETY REALISTIC?

By M.S.Welles

Remember the hype several years back when the IT industry was pushing a "paperless society" and advocating e-signatures, online storage, and online submissions of legal documents?

The idea was that without all the paper files there would be a huge amount of space free up in offices. Added to that was the concept that while paper files disintegrate over a period of time, digital archives could be maintained indefinitely, with other digital copies being maintained at additional locations.

Yet another positive feature of online files and archives is the ability to follow medical, financial and tax records easily online without the necessity of having to hand carry a physical paper or digital file.

Simply put, it hasn't happened yet. The paperless office and the paperless world is still a dream consisting of a lot of wishful thinking and very little actual action.

Despite an increasing rise in the number of sales of scanners and electronic document management systems (EDMS), these devices and software are being used in addition to the previously constructed and maintained paper files.

AIIM, the Association for Information and Image Management, an industry association representing vendors of scanners and EDMS, finds that 62% of important documents are still maintained in paper form.

Even when scanning and archiving takes place, 25% are photocopied on paper "just to be safe in case anything goes wrong online".

Initially, there were federal and state restrictions requiring that paper be maintained for a certain number of years in case records were needed for legal purposes. However, as technology has advanced, laws have been modified and new ones passed to allow the legality of electronic documents and archives as admissible in a court of law, when needed.

These laws regarding admissibility have been in effect for nearly two decades and is in effect in standards and legislation around the world.

Despite all of this, users still feel insecure and fear that they will be asked to produce the original paper copies at some point. In fact, AIIM found that documents frequently start in digital form, are then printed out on paper and signed and then scanned into digital form again, with the paper copies being kept indefinitely.

Office workers don't want to fgive up their paper files.