What Is Holding Back the Paperless Office?

Drethon writes "CNN has an article (are we up to the millionth article on this topic?) asking if the paperless office has arrived. This got me wondering, what are the main things holding back the paperless office? Just off the top of my head, the main thing keeping me printing out documents is the ability to spread a dozen pages of a document under review out on my table and marking it up by hand. PDF and Word markups are not too bad but they still lack the ability to spread many pages out to look over at the same time and could be improved to make markup a bit less restrictive. I do find myself printing out less with the use of dual monitors to have source documents and work under progress up at the same time, perhaps something like Microsoft's tabletop computer used as a desk will let me have at least a paperless desk. I know there are other reasons why offices are not becoming paperless. What are your reasons?"

Comments

Basically?

[Corporate Troll]

Humans... We like to have a piece of paper in our hands, we can easily hand it to a coworker, we can scribble on it to take notes. I know it sounds oldskool, but for many tasks, a piece of paper is just superior. Sure, most of it is for temporary use, but paper isn't going anywhere. For many people reading from screen just isn't anywhere as comfortable as reading from paper. (That's why we still buy real books!)

People who bought the "paperless office" fad years ago were living in a dreamland.

Also, one thing to keep in mind. I have worked on large scale "scan documents from archives and the commit to big-ass proprietary content management systems". The conversion was extremely expensive, and the maintenance even more so. After all, you now needed expensive content manager Consultants, and competent DBAs (who have to be on call). For the paper version, you just needed one or two archivars. Just having tons and tons of paper sitting in a warehouse was was much cheaper, I heard later. These were Police documents, and they scanned in B&W... Photos were as such became unusable... I sure hope they'll keep the originals. I wonder who ever in his right mind approved that project.

Re:Basically?

[zuzulo]

Only one thing, really. Contracts and other signed documents. As far as i know there is no way to electronically sign formal contracts in a generally accepted fashion. If that capability was available i would never use faxes/scanners or paper again except in very rare circumstances ...

Anyone have a good approach to the legal signature problem?

Re:Basically?

[ScrewMaster]

Just having tons and tons of paper sitting in a warehouse was was much cheaper, I heard later.

I basically agree with your points, but there is a difference between a well managed document control system, and one implemented by bunglers. Plus electronic documents have the advantage that they can be backed up offsite somewhere: that warehouse full of paper may indeed be cheaper but it's not necessarily safer.

I've been involved in document control projects (primarily used for pulling manufacturing production prints) and you're right: paper is damned useful, for all the reasons you outlined. Consequently, I never made any attempt to develop or promote a paperless system because it a. wouldn't have served the purpose and b. would never have been accepted anyway.

All the software did was provide a convenient, searchable interface to servers full of untold thousands of engineering drawings (both Autocad DWGs and scans of paper drawings) so that they could be viewed on-screen and printed if desired. That offered the best of both worlds: quick and easy viewability for those that don't need a hardcopy, with a printout only a mouse-click away. No expensive content manager (the software didn't require any proprietary server-side component of any kind, and rendered all drawings locally), and no DBAs competent or otherwise.

The first version of that app was DOS-based and ran over dial-up, with about a dozen plants around the world using it, pulling files from a big Solaris server. That was back in the late eighties, and it ran for years without much need for maintenance (other than the occasional hardware upgrade or repair.) I eventually wrote a Windows version of the application, and they're still running it. They've gone through several major server and connectivity upgrades over the years, I've heard, but I didn't even have to be involved in that. They also have a disaster recovery plan in place, so even if the server room burns through the floor they won't lose their drawings. That's something you can't easily do with tons of paper.

Sometimes you have to think things through and realize what it is you don't need. Big-ass proprietary software vendors have a vested interest in locking you into hypercomplex, overbuilt systems that may or may not do what you want, but are virtually guaranteed to cost more than they're worth.

Re:Basically?

[Jhon]

The "Paperless" office is less about "no paper" and far more about LESS paper.

Trust me -- in our office, there is a HELL of a lot less paper than there was even 10 years ago.

Re:Basically?

[Jazz-Masta]

There are a number of newer signature pads that record forensic data such as stroke length, pressure, lift points, etc as well as it has certain security to help identify genuine signatures or tampering. Most have plugins for PDFs.

I've used signature pads for banking, renting cars, and accepting packages.

What makes it difficult to implement is the APIs for some of these are not free/cheap, so implementing into, say, a car dealership's management system may not be economical at the moment.

Re:Basically?

[Again]

Personally, I don't really like how paper feels because when I'm handling a lot of it, it tends to dry out my hands -- particularly if it is still hot from the printer or copier.

Well, I love printing stuff out because of how the warm paper feels. I love walking back from the printer with the freshly printed, warmed paper pressed against my face. And yes, I know I look weird when I do that.

Re:Basically?

[pacergh]

There is nothing magical about a signature. It is just one possible form of evidence that an agreement has been reached. Very few contracts require signatures, and all of those that do provide non-mechanical means of meeting that signature.

Even so, it's nice to have a signature than to have to provide other evidence. And it's a lot cheaper, typically.

Re:Basically?

[painandgreed]

People who bought the "paperless office" fad years ago were living in a dreamland.

Let me tell you, it's nice to work in a dreamland. I work in Radiology Healthcare and despite people telling us that we couldn't go filmless, we did it, so we have ignored the people that are telling us we can't go paperless and doing well. Our reqs get faxed to our fax server. The schedulers bring them up on their computer and schedule the exams from the digital req which is now associated with that exam. From there it goes directly to the queue of a doctor, sometimes in another building, to protocol. Once protocoled, it goes to the radtech's queue to have the exam preformed. This all regularly happens in a time quicker that it would have taken the scheduler to walk over to the fax machine and get the paper requisition to begin with. The req doesn't get lost and is available to anybody at anytime in the process with the click of a button.

Radiology has some pretty nice systems built to do all this, and we had to give a good number of people dual monitors (but monitors are cheap and even the cheapo computers we buy are ready for dual monitor support these days). However, the number of printers we have is half what it was several years ago and they break down less often because they get used less. That's less support I have to do. We also got rid of sticker printers. Those were even worse. We still have to print for this or that but our main workflow is paperless. I suspect that the main reasons that offices can't go paperless is inertia of the people who don't want to, poor workflow, and insufficent tools to do so rather than any actual cost or usefullness of paper.

Re:Basically?

[EEPROMS]

I think another reason is because things like paper-clips and scribbled notes haven't (or cant easily) been simulated on the desktop. I would love to be able to scribble notes on a virtual document and virtually paper-clip different document formats (this is another major issue ie no single reader) together. I still find searching for files in some ways more efficient on a computer but getting all the related documents and sales notes easily together on the fly seems to be an a bridge to far.

Basic tools

[quantumpineal]

You still have allot more freedom with a paper document. Our brains are just geared to use tools in the actual world rather than virtual objects. There's no real program that emulates all the freedoms you get form handling a physical tool. we are from the apes remember :P

Drawing

[Lord Lode]

Sometimes when working on some algorithmical or mathematical problem, I draw stuff on paper to visualize the problem better and find the solution. Drawing on a computer screen will never replace drawing with a pen on paper for that purpose for me.

Re:Drawing

[raddan]

I made the switch to whiteboard, which I keep on the wall next to my desk. I find that it is better than paper, because paper is almost always too small, and it lets me discuss ideas with other employees a bit easier.

I tried "virtual whiteboard" with pen input recently at my CS department, and I found it very difficult to use, partly because the pen input device I was looking at was not the same thing I was drawing on.

Doodles

[hivebrain]

When Word or Acrobat allows me to draw 3D boxes and other geometric shapes in the margins of docs, then we'll talk.

A: The law.

[hal2814]

If you work in health care, at a law office, in insurance, in a financial institution or virtually anything else heavily regulated by the government, you must keep paper copies of most of your stuff. You just can't have a paperless office in those situations.

Re:A: The law.

[Red Flayer]

Also, anything that has to be audited/signed/checked off for process control/accountability, which relates back to regulations.

Not so. Approvals & audits can be documented via software, as long as the software is certified (which isn't that hard to do).

There are tons of software solutions out there for document management that can push documents through approval workflows, etc., that meet all standards for process control and accountability. I won't mention specific vendor names, but there are literally dozens of vendors that offer these systems at a reasonable price... and they have the SOx certifications to go with them.

Resistance Of Change

[thechemic]

I work in an office with 200+ cubes. We have all the latest office productivity tools. 99% of the employees have 10-30 yellow stickys stuck all over their desk for reminders. People seem somehow amazed and awestruck by my clean and streamlined desk that is clutter free and yellow sticky free. Sometimes people are even brave enough to ask "how do you do it? How do you work without... stickys??!!". I tell them about this technological miracle that was recently invented (years ago) called Outlook. Features include calendar with reminders and even... a task list! Amazed... my coworkers usually run back to their desk to place another yellow sticky on top of a recently expiring yellow sticky, that says "reminder, learn about outlook tool". I feel like I'm surrounded by spear-chuckers

Re:Resistance Of Change

[$RANDOMLUSER]

...this technological miracle that was recently invented (years ago) called Outlook.

You had me up until that bit.

My office is paperless for years

[tftp]

I know there are other reasons why offices are not becoming paperless. What are your reasons?

I don't use paper at my home office. I have a printer for rare occasions, like when I want to print a backup set of driving directions for a long trip (the primary set being the GPS.) Some say they don't trust Windows (or any other OS, I guess) with their data. That's what backups are for. When was the last time you did a backup of all your papers, by the way? Papers are easy to lose and nearly impossible to find when you need them.

I have a scanner next to me, if I have a paper (like a manual on something I bought) I scan it and save. The paper manual may then be recycled. Less stuff to lay around and produce dust.

Even when I worked at a larger company (last year) the office was mostly paperless. All communication was done through email and IM and phone. I wasn't involved with code reviews, but meetings were done without papers - using a projector connected to presenter's notebook. The only paper I handled there was time cards, and that was only because of certain accounting regulations (it must be a physical document with a signature.)

It's half solved

[jgreco]

I've had flatbed scanners for a long time, auto-feeding, etc. Way back, scanning was very manual and OCR took a Really Long Time. That was a turnoff for many years.

These days, there are really good scanners out there (we just picked up a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1400) and the OCR isn't too painful on a modern box. The ScanSnap is color and double-sided with a large ADF - and blazing fast. I cannot picture too many improvements, except maybe a scanner that would unfold paper and remove staples... but the sticking point is still document management and access.

We're part of the way there. The largest remaining problems are software and people.

The upside? A banker's box of papers can be consolidated onto a quarter of a DVD - all searchable. I want that. :-)

Old saying

[AliasMarlowe]

"A paperless office is as useful as a paperless toilet. Some things would be impractical..."
OK, it's not that old a saying, but it's valid in a number of ways.

Re:Old saying

[dvice_null]

Instead of paper you could use water, hand (just use your other hand for eating) or cloth in the toilet. Ancient Romans used a cloth around a stick and it worked fine for them.

Re:Old saying

[clickety6]

"A paperless office is as useful as a paperless toilet.

But they both mean everything has to be done digitally... ;-)

Re:Old saying

[CRCulver]

In my travel experience, Third World countries that maintain the taboo of eating with the left hand do so because they have mastered the art of wiping their asses, but not washing their hands. At most they would just quickly run water over the hand, but the idea of using soup and scrubbing their hands good just doesn't seem to occur to the masses.

Re:Old saying

[pjt33]

What kind of soup do you find works best?

Re:Old saying

[Zen Hash]

Why not? I built my office around my toilet. That way when I sit down to work, I don't have to stop for anything. Less distractions too, since people rarely come into my office anymore unless they have a good reason.

The paperless toilet.

[Charles Dodgeson]

Back in the 80s, I remember someone saying that a paperless office would be about as useful as the paperless toilet.

I'm not sure why I feel that this is true. But I'm hoping this discussion will provide insight.

Surface computing

[gilesjuk]

A whole desk computer is what you need, with easy ways of sending someone a document.

Imagine if you had a meeting room and the whole desk was a computer, but you could effectively bring your own computer display over to the desk? No need to bring your laptop, no need to bring a notepad with you.

Ok, we will need to move away from WIMP to make this possible perhaps?

A couple of things

[Todd Knarr]

Some of the reasons I still use paper:

1. Off-line use. I can refer to paper copies and make notes on them even when I'm not around the computer.
2. Audit trail. Most document-management systems and e-mail systems have document retention policies that're under someone else's control. Sometimes I need to control copies of the documents independently of company policies (eg. anything related to HR, records that might prove inconvenient for management later (like my detailing of exactly why something they want to do is a Bad Idea), etc.).
3. Change control. Many times documents can be changed in the computer and, while it records that there was a change, there's no record anymore of what the document said before the change. The paper copies in my drawer can't be changed and I can pull them out to prove that yes that was what was originally specified.
4. Space. My desk's a lot bigger than the computer monitor, and I can lay out a lot more papers and diagrams on it than I can have visible on the monitor at one time. Very useful, that.
5. Reliability. I don't have to worry about the contents of my desk drawers and noteboard going *poof* when a system upgrade goes south and it turns out the restore process requires things IT can't afford to do.

Re:In short

[Hylandr]

Quote: There are still people.. lots of them.. who will print out emails to read them. No technology will fix this.

Agreed. My place of work takes orders from the website, prints them and plops them into their ERP system. I have been brought in to fix this but there are active parties fighting me tooth and claw.

For too many reasons to list. Needing a "Human Glue" means job security.

- Dan.

Two Good Reasons

[BlueBoxSW.com]

1) A crisp blank sheet of paper is the greatest design tool ever invented.

2) Most computer applications don't support the many-to-many relationships with the same ease physical mediums do.

Tablet + OneNote = what you need.

[postermmxvicom]

I am a math teacher and use a tablet wirelessly connected to a projector to teach using OneNote. It has all the advantages of a chalkboard or pen and paper plus:

I always have all of my notes. Always.

My notes are in color. I have a large selection of colors and sizes. (and my highlighters dont get messed up or run out)

If I didnt leave myself enough room, I can make more room.

If I want to take an idea in another direction, I can copy what I have to another page and fork off in the direction I want.

Using OneNote, I can search through my handwritten notes as if they were text. Very useful for quickly finding old notes that are buried amidst lots of notes.

I can resize diagrams.

I can print pages to OneNote and use OCR to get the text from it or write all over it.

I can quickly copy any part of my screen to it.

I can publish my notes as PDF's or print copies.

I have not found one draw back. In fact, I would like you to try to think of one (perhaps I have over looked it).

Make sure you turn on pressure sensitive ink (obviously buy a tablet that is pressure sensitive) and select an ink thick enough so you can see the changes in width with the changes in pressure. This makes it look just like a hand written diagram.

The only word of caution to teachers is if you are copying and pasting something - give your students time to recopy it in their notes.

Also, get a tablet that is convertible. Then it is your laptop when you are doing regular stuff and yet when you need to draw a diagram - you can!

The real motto for tablet computers needs to be "Use but not over use" (just like the motion stuff for wii)

Dont write a paper in tablet mode - type it, it's faster. etc.

I am a mathematician who, like yourself, "thinks on paper". The tablet is the computer you need.

Get one with a dual digitizer. Active and passive. Get a convertible. Get OneNote. Resist the urge to do everything in tablet mode. I would bet most people with your sensibilities would not be disappointed. I know I am not.

Plus, I've heard there are OneNote like apps which also do math stuff, like evaluate determinants for you, draw graphs, take derivatives etc.. I have not looked into those yet.

I have used this set up for four years.

Re:Workflow

[tyger_purr]

The "miracle" of word processors has brought us a general decline in the quality of output. Secretaries had extensive knowledge in how to professionally layout and format a document. Now that nay numb nuts with word can produce a doc and think it looks good. As a CAD guy, I can tell you the same thing is happening in engineering to a greater degree. Engineers are coming out of school with only a cursory introduction to drafting and they think they can produce quality professional looking sheets. Unfortunately engineering drawings depend more on the layout and format to make them clear and engineers generally don't have a clue. They know what information needs to be on there and they put it on. It's all clear to them, but if you read it cold you'll get lost in the chaos. Who needs secretaries? a whole lot more people than realize it.