Blogs

Here’s the first sneak peek at what you’ll be seeing at AIIM 2013. Enjoy, and follow #AIIM13 and @AIIMcon for all of the latest news and noise about next year’s event.

Digital Hoarding – Leading the Intervention
Amber Simonsen, PMP
Executive Project Manager
Pierce Transit
Thursday, March 21. 2 pm

We live in a world of digital hoarding. People secretly keeping everything that crosses their inbox or save a document on their personal drive in addition to publishing it on SharePoint, if they publish it at all. What begins as an innocent desire to keep relevant information close at hand can turn into an unhealthy obsession that plagues IT departments and Records Managers in organizations everywhere. I’ll be speaking on the topic of Digital Hoarding – Leading the Intervention at AIIM 2013. I’d love to share with you today why digital hoarding is an issue you can’t afford to ignore.

What’s wrong with a few extra versions of that presentation floating around on the network? Isn’t data storage cheap? I’d better keep a personal copy just in case, what if someone messes with version on the network? You and I have spent countless hours answering these questions. Digital hoarding bloats our servers, slows down our networks, and creates unnecessary duplicates that put the organization at risk for retention compliance and e-discovery issues. During my presentation, I’ll show you examples of just how bad digital hoarding can get.

While costs, risks and compliance may be compelling to senior management and get your project funded, our co-workers who use these digital assets every day have an even greater stake in the issue. Digital hoarding takes a toll on the workforce. Have you ever searched for a file that is just not there only to find that it’s on someone’s personal drive? What about looking through version after version to find the final document that went to the Board? What a waste of our most precious resource; time! As the frustration mounts across the organization, so do impacts on the workforce such as loss in job satisfaction, co-worker conflict, and extra work as digital assets have to be recreated. Just as family members may not visit a hoarder of junk, co-workers tend to work around these hoarders instead of engage.

We may never see, “I can’t find what I need to do my job” or “I’m sick of all the e-mail attachments” listed as a reason for leaving an organization. However, these issues can plague organizations the same way bureaucracy, office politics, passivity, and negativity can keep fresh faces away from an organization and contribute to good people leaving. Don’t let digital hoarding infect your organization, it’s time to lead the intervention!

Don’t delay. AIIM 2012 sold out 6 weeks in advance; register today.