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Carlam@Conceptsearching.com

http://www.conceptsearching.com/wp/13998/

I am doing some research on auto-classification and would sincerely appreciate your input, thoughts, and insight. This is the third in a series on auto-classification. The other two postings are Auto-classification – Has it time come? Too bad no one knows what it does! The second blog is Auto-classification, the only way out.

Auto-classifiers certainly help in organizing and managing content with an automated approach. Pretty basic. I think the key to accurate classification is the associated metadata. The types of classification metadata include intrinsic, administrative/management, descriptive, and semantic. All are useful, however, the more descriptive the metadata, the better the auto-classification will be.

Why is metadata so important? Here are some reasons:

The Challenges of Content Overload

• 80% of enterprise data is unstructured
• 60% of documents are obsolete
• 50% of documents are duplicates

The benefits of automatic semantic metadata generation

• Elimination of costs and errors associated with end user tagging
• Identification and protection of secure content assets from unauthorized access and portability in accordance with compliance procedures
• Automatic identification and tagging of documents of record
• Normalization of content across functional and geographic boundaries
• Integration with search
• Ability to apply policy consistently across diverse repositories and
  environments

Given the fact that metadata is the missing link in auto-classification, my question is why more organizations aren’t jumping on the bandwagon? In fact, in a recent AIIM survey, Automating Information Governance, that we co-sponsored, it appears that the term is understood, but not how to get there. What do you think?