NationStates Jolt Archive

I work at the offices of Regione Lombardia. It has a legislative assembly of 80 representatives; an executive branch of about 12 assessori ("ministers" of a region); and a plethora of sub-offices, ranging from ARPA (environment protection agency), to internal libraries for laws and deliberations etc etc.
This, of course, generates a huge amount of information (most of it useless) that must be exchanged between different offices and branches, divided in three different buildings (the Pirelli building, the nearby seat of the offices of the representatives, and another building about 1 km from the Pirelli).
All of our offices have one or more computers - paid by the administration budget - and a powerful (and expensive) internal network system. The representatives are also given a laptop with wifi capability.

Do you know what is the main vector of information? You would guess - and so did I - the computer network.

Naahh...

PAPER!

:headbang: TONS :headbang: OF :headbang: PAPER! :headbang:

Hatehatehatehatehate...

Paper is addictive. Y'know, we here don't trust computers. Heh.

how else are you gonna get snowflakes in june?

I work for a new media company, and the same is true here - we have huge filing cabinets dedicated to the reams of things people insist on printing out. Printing out! Offices are so wasteful when they really don't need to be. I've also started a mini-crusade against the hundreds of plastic cups that people insist on throwing away instead of recycling, by constructing a massive cup tower to demonstrate just how many of the things one individual can rack up in just a couple of weeks.

how else are you gonna get snowflakes in june?

Live in the southern hemisphere? :p

It seems to be the same almost everywhere, sadly. The technologies exist to facilitate truly paperless systems, but such systems fail to materialise because our bureaucracies are still struggling to overcome the inertia of more than 5 centuries of reliance on printed documentation.

Some believe that we are now living through the last days of such paper-driven administrations, but I fear that the crushing weight of "this is how it's always been done" thinking will continue to win out.

Bertie Aherne agrees (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1832090.ece).

I still draw on paper.

OHNOESPAPERISGLOBALWARMING!

here we use paper for a lot of things, largely because we're involved in print quite a lot so seeing things on paper is much better than on screen.

most administration stuff is also printed because its felt a paper copy is safer than an electronic one, which is kinda true considering a fire would destroy both our paper copies and our file server... *reminds self to make a good backup of the server today :p*


however for communications here we use email to great effect :) its a small business (5 employees) so we can talk to each other pretty easily lol, but emails allow us to keep records of who's done what and when, which is often useful

here we use paper for a lot of things, largely because we're involved in print quite a lot so seeing things on paper is much better than on screen.

most administration stuff is also printed because its felt a paper copy is safer than an electronic one, which is kinda true considering a fire would destroy both our paper copies and our file server... *reminds self to make a good backup of the server today :p*


however for communications here we use email to great effect :) its a small business (5 employees) so we can talk to each other pretty easily lol, but emails allow us to keep records of who's done what and when, which is often useful

I have worked with quite a few companies in housing a backup file server for cheep in their existing or newly purchased resistant safe

But there should ALWAYS be an off sight housing of information, There are companies that can do it over the web or someone locally (The local university goes through an armored car company to house the tapes daily off sight) As well as two other backup means
disaster recovery is usually 7 miles as your standard BTW

As for my office we use only one piece of paper per checked in machine and hoping to get rid of that too, and thats just a signature form and that has people above us waiting for a viable alternative

I have worked with quite a few companies in housing a backup file server for cheep in their existing or newly purchased resistant safe

But there should ALWAYS be an off sight housing of information, There are companies that can do it over the web or someone locally (The local university goes through an armored car company to house the tapes daily off sight) As well as two other backup means
disaster recovery is usually 7 miles as your standard BTW


its a fairly small LAN system here, with a 1Tb shared gigabit file server, so backing it up should be fairly quick.

the neat thing is you can plug a USB HD in the back of it and it'll copy itself onto the external drive automatically. just need to get a 1000gb USB HDD that's relatively portable now! i'd probably take it home to keep safe with me, cos i live about 20 miles away from the office here :)

its a fairly small LAN system here, with a 1Tb shared gigabit file server, so backing it up should be fairly quick.

the neat thing is you can plug a USB HD in the back of it and it'll copy itself onto the external drive automatically. just need to get a 1000gb USB HDD that's relatively portable now! i'd probably take it home to keep safe with me, cos i live about 20 miles away from the office here :)

They are not bad a lot of the manufactures make a 1 TB external nowadays

Example http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136100
(Brand not necessarily endorsed by me just showing that they do exist)

My office drowns in paperwork, even though we have IT systems, which the people use to create more paperwork.

They are not bad a lot of the manufactures make a 1 TB external nowadays

Example http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136100
(Brand not necessarily endorsed by me just showing that they do exist)

Oh and to add to that we are at over 80 terabytes of active storage with versioning about 120 ... makes it interesting

If we don't use paper the terrorists win

Personallly I'd like to see a paperless school textbook. Of course some paper textbooks would have to remain with children who have sight defects (as technologies that would alleviate that particullar problem would make the devices too expensive for widespread use).

Personallly I'd like to see a paperless school textbook. Of course some paper textbooks would have to remain with children who have sight defects (as technologies that would alleviate that particullar problem would make the devices too expensive for widespread use).

We used one for my java programming class a few years ago ... CD "book"

Was it expensive? A school textbook device would have to be fairly tough yet cheap. It wouldn't need much memory (maybe the document could be stored on a flash drive?) either.

Was it expensive? A school textbook device would have to be fairly tough yet cheap. It wouldn't need much memory (maybe the document could be stored on a flash drive?) either.

We got them for 15 dollars ... Ditell book if I remember right

And if you registered you could download it from their website if the CD was lost, was cool at the time

Must. Reform. The. Education. System!

If we don't use paper the terrorists win

They already did.