November 30, 2005
Dear Everyone:
Back in May the Information Management (IM) function was moved from “Boring and Really Expensive Services” (BRES) into the Information Technology Company (ITC). Along with IM, the electronic document management system (EDMS) also moved to ITC. While BRES owned the EDMS, the real cost of using the system within BRES was hidden. Costs were allocated from one department to another, but remained within BRES.
After the move, BRES began to see how much they were paying for the system. For instance, having a Cabinet cost $333 per month. BRES has over a dozen Cabinets in three main locations. To make matters worse, ITC has decided to raise the cost of a Cabinet to a cool $1000 per month, beginning January 1st.
Suddenly, BRES wants to move all their folders and documents out of all those Cabinets and into one “Super Cabinet” in each location. Before the end of the year. Guess who got handed that little task.
So for the past month or so, I’ve been working with one of the technical support people to figure out how we’re going to do this. We also need to communicate to the BRES people about the changes that are now rapidly approaching. There is a group within BRES called “Change Management”. They provide the service of helping a project with communications. They’re worth every penny.
We started working with one of these Change Management people who, it turns out, I’ve known for years as he used to be the Lead in “Livermore” when I worked there. I also found out that, for purposes of identification, my project was really a much smaller part of a bigger project.
The bigger project is an overall audit of all of BRES’s documents, both paper and electronic. Eventually, all of their electronic documents will be stored in the EDMS. Many BRES people have resisted using the system, or just don’t know about it, and still store their documents on what are called “shared drives”.
This Audit Project has been ongoing for quite some time. In addition to cleaning up the electronic documents, many of which are old and no longer necessary, the Powers That Be (PTB) decided to develop a single file structure for all of BRES to use. This is a huge undertaking which will not only take months to accomplish, but needs to be communicated to the end users to convince them that having all their documents moved around is actually a good thing.
But there isn’t time for all that right now. We’ve got about two weeks to get all those Cabinets converted into folders in the “Super Cabinet”. So we’ve been working just on communicating to the BRES people that their Cabinets will be converted into Level 1 folders within the Super Cabinet.
Until this morning when we found out that the head of the EDMS told BRES that they would only be billed for one Cabinet per location, even if the other Cabinets stayed in place past the first of the year. Before you could say, “Woopsie, daisy!” my little project vanished into thin air. Not that I’m off the hook. Guess who’s going to map all those documents into the new file structure.
But at least it doesn’t have to be done in the next two weeks.
In other news…
Before Thanksgiving week, “Jeannie” and I found out that Pride & Prejudice was playing at a local art house. We thought we’d have to wait until it hit the bigger theaters, but no. That Sunday, I went to “Jeannie’s” place, where I found her watching Pride and Prejudice, the A&E version on DVD. Then we went to see the new movie version. (The difference is Pride AND Prejudice (old) versus Pride Ampersand Prejudice (new).)
The new movie is sumptuous with detail. During a ball scene, when everyone was dancing, “Jeannie” remarked that you could almost smell it. Donald Sutherland has a field day as a country gentleman with perhaps too many daughters all of whom had to find suitable husbands. It seems at the end of the Eighteenth Century, a young woman’s only real job was to land a man, almost any man.
The marvelous thing about a movie based on a Jane Austen novel is that everyone is so articulate. Why use five words when fifteen will do? The marvelous thing about having the same book adapted to different movies is that you get to compare one Mr. Darcy with another. “Jeannie” likes the new Mr. Darcy better than the A&E Mr. Darcy. If you don’t know who Mr. Darcy is, see the movie or rent the DVD.
Last Sunday, I stopped by to help “Jeannie” with her new computer and new Stenograph software. She kept fretting about a couple of potted plants that she had bought and now couldn’t find. I was very good and refrained from asking if she had looked in the freezer. (When we lived together, I would do the grocery shopping and she would help put the groceries away. One day, she put the TV Guide in the freezer along with the frozen vegetables.)
She did find the potted plants eventually. They were behind the sofa in the living room. One can only guess how they arrived at that location.
Love, as always,
Pete
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