Electronic signatures is a buzzword. It promises a secure exchange of documents, and I know the issue being addressed in many countries. But getting those last of the paper documents in digital version isn't going to solve the long-term archiving problem; longevity of the medium and formats.
Of course they wish to go from paper to digital, but how do they keep the really old stuff that are unlikely to be asked for? It's a three-stage trade-off. Digital has good searcability and fast retrieval, small space demand, and short time-horizon. Paper has poor searchability and retrieval, demand a lot of space and a medium time horizon. Microfilm has even poorer searchability and retrieval, but small space demand and long time-horizon. They want digital instead of paper for obvious logistic reasons, but end up using _film_ at the end of the day. I expect the same thing holds for other knowledge-based businesses. Jostein ----- Original Message ----- From: "Juey Chong Ong" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 2:41 PM Subject: Re: OT: Domesday > > On Monday, December 2, 2002, at 03:33 PM, Jostein wrote: > > > \Another example comes from the pharmaceutical industry. They are > > required by law to keep all information about a drug for 100 years, or > > as long as the drug is on sale plus another 50 years or so. Since the > > information associated with any drug is _very_ voluminous, they have > > dug rather deep into information logistics (if that's the right thing > > to call it). > > > > Their main trade-off is between availability of the info on one hand, > > and archive space and longevity on the other. And to make a long story > > short, all the info starts off as _digital_ files and end up as micro- > > _film_ (paper is redundant because of space requirement). > > Some of my work deals with the pharmaceutical industry and there is > another good reason for paper records. In the US, most digital records > related to FDA regulatory requirements must have some form of > electronic signature control. Implementing this requirement has led > some people to call it the Y2K problem for the pharmaceutical industry. > Rather than spend massive amounts of money on implementing signature > controls, it's less regulatory hassle for many companies to just sign > and keep the paper copies. I even know one multinational company that > FedExes documents all over the world just to get signatures and then > have them sent back to the US for archiving. I'm sure they're not the > only one. > > --jc > >
