October 18, 2006
Dear Everyone:
We’re in the middle of an Information Management Conference here at work. By “we”, I mean nearly everyone in my work group, “Information Management Consulting” (IM Consulting.) A couple of the “Hobby” people are staying in “Hobby”, primarily because they didn’t have a presentation to give and/or they couldn’t find a customer whose project would pay for them to fly out here. Besides, somebody has to hold down the fort.
By “we”, I also mean a heck of a lot of other people in the Information Management Center of Excellence (IM COE), a part of the Information Technology Company (ITC). And quite a few people in ITC who are not part of IM COE; they’re the more technical ones. More about that in a bit.
First, a little back story: In the mid-1990’s, everyone was getting a personal computer to do their work. Problem was, one operating company might be using Lotus 1-2-3, the original spreadsheet software, while others were using the upstart Microsoft application called Excel. Likewise, one group was using WordPerfect to do their word processing and others were trying out MS Word. Paradox versus Access.
In addition, various
email applications were
beginning to replace the mainframe version.
Everybody was on a different page.
The computer people tried to instill some order by proposing the
“Common Operating Environment” (COE, not to be confused with the
This was a great idea. A worker in a particular operating company could go from “Pleasant Hill” to “Pleasanton” and find the exact same setup as they had before, thus cutting way down on the learning curve. In fact, the COE was such a great idea that they did a survey in the late 1990s and found out that there were about 42 separate and distinct versions of COE. Apparently, some operating environments were more “common” than others.
So the company decided to bite the bullet and introduce the “Global Information Link” (GIL). Literally everyone anywhere in the company would have the exact same machine, the exact same “core” applications. A department that absolutely had to have a specialized application could get it, provided they were willing to pay to have it “GIL integrated.”
Finally, everyone was on the same page. And life was good.
That was GIL version 1.0. It lasted until after the merger with “Another Company”, in 2001. Bear in mind that the average lifespan of a computer is three years. The computers needed to be replaced, so they came out with GIL version 2.0. Version 1 was standardization (and stabilization). GIL2 dealt more with the network environment, what lets all the computers talk to each other and printers and things.
That was four years ago. It’s time to replace all those dying computers again. Enter GIL3.
What makes GIL3 so special is that it will integrate all the Records and Information Management (RIM) principles so near and dear to our little RIM hearts. This is the holy grail of RIM. We’re making history here.
And that explains why so many “pure” technical people are at the IM Conference. They’re there to start promoting GIL3. And to start learning what Information Management really means. In particular, what IM means in a world of computers.
As the keynote speaker, the head of records for the CIA, said (I’m paraphrasing): “This is not your grandfather’s records management.” The introduction of computers has made it excruciatingly easy to create records and equally difficult to manage them in the traditional sense of records management. It’s time to think outside the (records center) box.
We’re working on it.
In other news…
The conference ends tomorrow at noon.
On Friday, just around noon, “Jeannie” and I will board a plane
for
Then I’m taking Tuesday as an additional vacation day to recover from my “vacation”. I might as well. I still have 14 days to burn through before the end of the year.
Love, as always,
Pete
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