Does your organization have offices, file cabinets, storage rooms, and offsite facilities full of unidentified paper files and elec- tronic documents? If so, you prob- ably have an “information toxic dump!” Twenty-five years ago most organizations had a “cen- tral filing system” and “Mabel” – whose sole responsibility was ensuring that the records that the organization needed for legal reasons were maintained proper- ly. Managers had private secretar- ies who were paid to make sure that when their bosses were done with the papers in their office, they were transferred (with the help of file clerks) to the central filing system. The central filing system was purged on an annual basis. Then Bill Gates made it pos- sible for organizations to put a computer on every desk, and the dynamics of records management changed dramatically. “Mabel” and the file clerks were fired or transferred to other positions. Central File Rooms were turned into offices. The file cabinets were scattered around offices wherever there was space – supply rooms, hallways, and individual offices. Managers were expected to man- age their own information and do their own filing. Secretaries became administrators with proj- ects of their own. Soon, records management as it existed began to disintegrate! Records management today Today in most offices, informa- tion exists in three “silos” of infor- mation: 1. Individual offices 2. File cabinets scattered around the office 3. Office storage rooms and offsite filing facilities The information in individual offices is managed somewhere between very well or very poor- ly – depending on the skills of the individual employee – but in any case is rarely available to other members of the organiza- tion should the employee who has the information, or filed it, be Is there an information toxic dump in your office? BUSINESS FEATURE ––––––––––––––––– By Barbara Hemphill, Founder, Productive Environment Institute 3 74 TileLetter | October 2018