On Thu, 2005-08-25 at 16:56 +1200, John Veitch wrote: > In the USA > for some firms, the intention is to make full data archiving > compulsory. > (Attempt to stop corporate fraud.)
Or something to sell to google! I'm aware some govt depts are moving towards having records scanned. At present if you write to some govt depts your 5 page letter is put into the computer (probably as a 5 line summary) and the real letter is placed in some archive somewhere. If you ring them to ask about where your reply has got to, they never hunt out the paper copy, they look at the 5 line summary on the computer. In future they will be able to bring up the scanned copy (providing the input operator has linked it to the right place in the database.) Unfortunately of course scanning stuff leads to a lack of ability to do decent searches, unless you enter a while lotta metadata. LINZ has moved to electronic titles for your real estate. It is still prone to error. I had a client selling a house. His title showed three mortgages to people who had loaned money to the previous owner, and of course the mortgages had been discharged when my client bought it. In the process of turning it into an electronic record someone had entered the old mortgages in as being still "live". It's very unsatisfactory. -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
