Rewritten from IT ProPortal.

Written by
Gordon Kelly

Gordon Kelly is a London based writer and journalist specializing in technology, music and film.

We’ve been talking about the paperless office for decades, so why is it still just a dream?

In 2012 the global demand for paper is expected to exceed 400 million tons for the first time. Before recycling this equates to 7.2 billion trees, after recycling it still tops four billion trees and eliminates an area the size of Croatia. Remarkably this landmark will be set against a background of flourishing digital media, economic downturn and increasing pressure to live in an environmentally friendly manner. It is a damning situation: try as we might, we just can’t break our addiction to paper.

Nearly 40 years ago this scenario was seemingly unimaginable. Speaking in Business Week in 1975 Vincent E. Giuliano of Arthur D. Little Inc, the world’s oldest management consultancy firm, predicted the use of paper would rapidly decline by 1980 “and by 1990, most record-handling will be electronic.” His comments came in an article entitled ‘The Office of the Future‘ under a subsection called ‘The Paperless Office’. It is thought to be the first time this ominous phrase was used.

A Changing Vision

The notion of ditching paper spread like wildfire and pouring petrol onto the flames was technology. The idea wasn’t new. As far back as 1945 American engineer Vannevar Bush theorised about the memex machine (a portmanteau of ‘memory’ and ‘index’), which individuals would use to store their books, records and communications. It would provide an “enlarged intimate supplement to one’s memory… a sort of mechanized private file and library. It would use microfilm storage, dry photography, and analog [sic] computing to give post war scholars access to a huge, indexed repository of knowledge-any section of which could be called up with a few keystrokes.”

Bush famously went much further in his essay ‘As We May Think‘, predicting the concept of the Internet, search and even Wikipedia:

“Wholly new forms of encyclopaedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client’s interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient’s reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. … The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail, which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails, which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world’s record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.”

Bush fed the appetite for technology and for the rest of the century technology drove forward as IBM, Apple and Microsoft went about turning science fiction into science fact. Having initially been ridiculed, Bill Gates’ radical statement that “Microsoft was founded with a vision of a computer on every desk, and in every home” actually underestimated demand. In the face of such overwhelming progress the printed page didn’t seem to stand a chance.

Misplaced Faith

The problem was, however, that throughout the digital revolution our consumption of paper not only grew, but exploded. Between 1980 and 2000 global paper consumption doubled and discord grew. 2001 saw the publication of influential MIT book The Myth of the Paperless Office and it became just the first of many. So what went wrong? All too easily the answer is put down to human nature: the idea that we could not accept change after centuries of paper use or an unbreakable dependence on secretaries, dictation and aversion to reading from a screen. In extreme circumstances the argument did (and still does) hold weight, but two far simpler and intertwined reasons had greater impact: computers were unreliable and printing became cheap.

Unreliability came in many forms. Documents were easier and faster to create digitally, but computers – particularly early computers – crashed, a lot. In addition many early ecosystems were incompatible, universal file formats were largely absent and there was a high rate of hardware obsolescence. All of which trained the user to believe that a document created digitally was not truly ‘backed up’ until it was safely printed out. Printer prices fell, document production went up and paper copies were widely distributed. Then along came the Internet, email and web pages and suddenly millions of other people’s communications, documents and web pages became additional printer fodder.

As such technology was actually driving the consumption of paper.

September 08, 2010

TO: Heads of Federal agencies

SUBJECT:   Guidance on Managing Records in Cloud Computing Environments

EXPIRATION DATE: September 30, 2013
WRITTEN BY: David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States

1. What is the purpose of this bulletin?

This bulletin addresses records management considerations in cloud computing environments and is a formal articulation of NARA’s view of agencies’ records management responsibilities. As agencies are increasingly evaluating, piloting, and adopting these technologies, they must comply with all Federal records management laws, regulations, and policies.

2. How does this bulletin differ from “Frequently Asked Questions about Managing Federal Records in Cloud Computing Environments”?

NARA issued an FAQ in February 2010 to provide agencies with a basic overview of cloud computing. This bulletin expands on that discussion by including a more detailed definition, Federal agency examples of cloud computing, records management guidelines, and contract language to consider when procuring cloud computing services.

3. What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is a technology that allows users to access and use shared data and computing services via the Internet or a Virtual Private Network. It gives users access to resources without having to build infrastructure to support these resources within their own environments or networks.

General interpretations of cloud computing include “renting” storage space on another organization’s servers or hosting a suite of services. Other interpretations of cloud computing reference particular social media applications, cloud-based e-mail, and other types of Web applications. However, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been designated to develop standards and guidelines for the Federal cloud computing effort and to provide an authoritative definition.

NIST defines cloud computing as “a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” (NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, Version 15, 10-07-2009) NIST has stated that the definition of Cloud Computing is evolving. The user should consult the most current definition available from NIST and other resources.
NIST also identifies five essential characteristics of cloud computing:

On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.

Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.

Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.

Measured Service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

(NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, Version 15, 10-07-2009)

The terminology above is used in the IT community and by NIST to describe characteristics of cloud computing.

4. What are cloud computing service and deployment models?