From the general comments I am hearing, the Mark Twain quote, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” and since it is Oscar weekend, the line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where it is said [loosely quoted] “I’m not quite dead yet…feeling much better” come to mind. Let me first clear up, the Standards Program is still alive and working. It is not at AIIM any longer but is at the 3D PDF Consortium.
When we first started to talk about moving the program, I was under the misguided notion that it would be easy! I thought it was a matter of moving a few files, getting them stored on the new server, setting up committees and then let the subject experts know where to look for the materials. You know, ‘Build it and they will come’ [Loosely quoted from Field of Dreams]. I learned very quickly, that is not the case! I could and should probably draft a case study that discusses moving the program and the lessons learned along the way. While the program is on a small scale, I’m sure it is not much different from when a company merges with another company. There are legal transfer agreements that must be executed in both cases.
The standards program is not dead! The ECM Industry Standards effort is being championed by Robert Blatt, a long-time standards proponent. Robert has several committees that need your expertise, if you are so inclined. The Trustworthy Storage Technologies and Practices working group will be developing materials related to the planning, design and implementation of trustworthy storage technologies supporting reliability, authenticity, and integrity of information stored electronically.
The Trustworthy Document Management working group will be developing materials that will help organizations assess the compliance of their electronically stored information and the way they manage that information to ensure the trustworthiness and integrity of the information.
We will be kickstarting an effort to develop materials that will help organizations with the conversion and migration of hardcopy information into electronic format, conversion of existing digital content and identifying considerations for long-term storage of information.
The StratML working group continues to confirm the standard they developed by converting strategic plans from government agencies, non-profit organizations and corporations.
In addition to this work, the 3D PDF Consortium remains the administrator for the US committee representing the United States ECM market industry at the international level which also includes PDF and other file formats. In short, the PDF work continues with a new version of PDF/A which will allow engineering or dynamic content to be included in a PDF/A file and considered archival. We are working on a new version of PDF/UA which will include features that the industry is requesting now that the original version was published and is being used. At the upcoming International meetings, a revision of PDF 2.0 will be discussed so that we can add some much-needed functionality to your PDF file and fix a few very minor things.
Very shortly, we will be having a Special Interest Group (SIG), administered by Robert Blatt, on the AIIM Community where you will be able to ask questions of the various standards experts. Watch for notices of the group and join it!
So, as you can see the Standards Program is not dead! It is quite alive! There is just a lot that is required to transfer a program. If you are interested in participating in the program, please feel free to contact me at betsy.fanning@3dpdfconsortium.org for details or via the AIIM Community. We will give you a warm welcome to the working groups and the SIG.