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Thursday, 25 February 2010 00:47
Technology users and organizational executives need to be more involved in basic data storage and transmission decisions.
To highlight the significance of the issues consider the problem faced by George, the Director of Music for an educational organization. George tried to email a very large document to the Board of Directors. His email was rejected by the organization's mail server. The rejection message said (in part):
“The message has been blocked because it contains a component (as a MIME part or nested within) with declared name or MIME type or contents type violating our access policy. To transfer contents that may be considered risky or unwanted by site policies, or simply too large for mailing, please consider publishing your content on the web, and only sending an URL of the document to the recipient.”
His organization mail server recently had added filtering of all outgoing mail so as to avoid transmission of content that might be rejected by recipient sites. A month earlier someone had emailed an executable file and the mail message was rejected and their site was added to a block-list.
George has attempted to send a large MS Office spreadsheet with detailed budgetary information. Help Desk staff were able to resolve the problem. Later that day, George met the IT manager over a quiet cup of coffee to explain his annoyance over the matter.
The head of IT asked George what is the importance of long term ability to read and recover the information sent. George explained that so long as the file could be reliably accessed within his life-time this would be good enough for him. The IT guy was on the ball – he asked George if this was his first incidence where he could not get information into external user hands in a timely manner and with complete format accuracy. The answer: “Oh, no! I've received prior complaints from certain board members.”
The IT guy mentioned the many factors that impinge on the policy decisions that vitally impact future generations. He related the many thousands of WordPerfect, WordStar, and MultiMate files that contain potentially important records and information the contents of which are possibly not recoverable today. George had not considered his problem from the 100,000 foot level. Suddenly he felt a passion to be involved in solving a problem that strikes at the heart of the very purpose of an educational body – the accurate transmission of information to future generations.
Information that ceases to be accessible can result in a loss of culture and of context for a whole society. Document format standards play a vital role in keeping future generations in touch with the past. Those who can not learn from the past are bound to repeat its mistakes.