Trends Mapping of Paperless issue

Trends mapping

Year 2002

27 February
The electronic transactions in e-Grades, e-Giving, e-Parking and Kronos Time Keeping projects of university life have reduced the amount of paperwork and time that is involved in filling out applications, applying for parking permits, filing grades and other administrative tasks.

April-Jun
The audiologists at the Washington Audiology & Imaging Center use computers called Clios, which are similar to a small laptop computer and have a wireless transmitter that works like an antenna. This allows patient information that has been entered into the electronic medical record to be transmitted into the main file database. At the end of the evaluation, the audiologist can complete their chart entry by using the Clio or a desktop computer at various kiosks throughout the office.

Year 2003

22 February
Microsoft is trying to make that offices becoming paperless using InfoPath. InfoPath is an application that lets you design and use electronic forms. Users can build forms in InfoPath that store the data within the form as XML files. As with a Web page, an InfoPath form starts with a layout table. Each data source for a form needs to be associated with a connection in the form. You can create two types of data connections: those that submit data and those that receive data. InfoPath forms do offer three levels of form security: Restricted, Domain and Full Trust.

October
Chubb & Son initiated a download promotion campaign, contacting those agencies that weren't using download and alerting them of the upcoming initiative to discontinue sending agencies copies of certain personal lines documents. Mark Galante, assistant vice president of Chubb & Son says the campaign's success is reflected by Chubb's receiving the Download Company of the Year Percentage Growth award from ACORD and, most recently, the Download Partner of the Year award from the Applied Systems Client Network (ASCnet). Download offers not only support of a paperless environment, but time and savings-time savings, therefore money savings-for the agency.

Year 2005

8 January
Krishnan of LL2B.com, a digital age thinker, has set about burying paper. His crusade against paper chase in government offices has happily been endorsed by the Electronic Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT), which uses his web enabled, platform independent, paperless solution developed totally using open source technology.

25 January
With the growth and maturity of online statement delivery, paperless statements are fast becoming the norm in the banking industry. Paperless statements can be made available through emails, e-banking services or over websites and are usually free of charge.

27 May
Green Earth Office Supply offers a wide variety of office supplies that are earth friendly and sustainable. Green Field Paper offers a wide variety of alternative options, including paper made from hemp, cotton, and recycled paper. Office Depot offers recycled content paper and is a leader in green office supplies. Recycled Products Purchasing Cooperative is a nonprofit organization that sells recycled paper and alternative paper.

5 July
Grant D. Griffiths, Attorney purchased the Fijitsu ScanSnap scanner and use the full version of Adobe Acrobat. He uses a great program called pagesender to do all incoming and outgoing faxes.

July/August
Many small institutions have been imaging checks for years, enjoying the savings, efficiencies and new product opportunities possible in a paperless environment. Those that aren’t yet image-enabled are expected to be coaxed along by continued Fed consolidation and rising paper processing prices. But small organizations’ plans for image exchange suffer from the sluggish pace of large banks, whose own adoption requires significant investment and process re-engineering.

14 November
Electronic imaging has grown extremely popular on Towson University since the ImageNow software was first piloted in February 2005. Financial Services' Accounts Payable unit enhanced business processes with the assistance of ImageNow. Besides, Undergraduate Admissions also benefited the most from electronic imaging.

2 December
Xerox Corp. is developing electronic paper: thin digital displays that respond to a stylus, like a pen on paper. Notations can be easily erased or saved digitally. Anoto Group would allow notations made with a stylus on a page printed with a special magnetic ink to simultaneously appear on a computer screen.

Year 2007

27 January
Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is all set venture into the digital era. The corporation is close to signing a Rs 1,100 crore (Rs 11 billion) Electronic Data Management System (EDMS) contract with a consortium-led by global IT major Hewlett-Packard (HP) that will transfer it to the paperless world by 2010. Under the deal, the consortium that wins the contract would have to install scanners to convert existing policies into digital format and archive it at a central server. Each policy contains 20-30 sheets of paper, resulting in around 400 crore (Rs 4 billion) sheets that have to be scanned. The process is long-drawn and could take upto 3-3.5 years. Once LIC gets paperless the customer can avail of loan, make changes in the policy and all branches will be able to access to his documents. The scanning of 400 crore papers is expected to be completed by 2010. But with over 3 crore (Rs 30 million) policies added every year, around 9 crore (Rs 90 million) of dockets would have to be scanned in addition to the existing policies. This is not an easy task.

14–16. May
In March of this year, Liverpool Primary Care Trust working with software provider Clinical Solutions extended its patient-management and clinical-consultation system from two to four of the city’s walk-in centres (WiCs). The centres had been working in isolation — two using an electronic system and two on a paper-based system. This would benefit patient care and provide an effective means for the PCT to allocate resources, based on real time information. Working from isolated paper-based systems created a host of difficulties for Liverpool’s WiC staff and the PCTs. In terms of patient histories and records of care at the centres, it took time for staff to locate the details they were looking for, and they had no access to other centres’ records (where a patient might have previously been treated). Patients were thus forced to wait longer than necessary. Paper records are no longer liable to loss or unauthorized viewing, as the system can be configured to give different levels of access depending on the rights granted to the individual user. Both time and money is saved as they no longer need to pay storage for paper records and all the information is in one place.


15 June
All Customs offices must use the Customs Information System by December this year, said Royal Customs Department deputy director-general (Operations) Datuk Ibrahim Jaafar. We expect 97 stations nationwide to be 100% paperless and using the online system to ensure speed and efficiency. Last year, the department collected RM1.016bil in taxes and this was mainly due to the efficiency of the officers and cooperation by the public.

24 July
Paperless does not mean 'no paper.' It means LESS paper. Going paperless means configuring the right hardware and software and it remains subjective because there is a huge technological world out there with many products. With the MacBook and ScanSnap, every document can be scanned. With pagesender, all of faxes can come into Mini and are emailed to MacBook no matter where the users are. By using the paperless or virtual office described above, we are able to work out of a home office without the need for walls full of file cabinets, a loud and expensive copier and piles of file folders taking up good carpet space.

17 August
A paperless vehicle entry system is being tested at border check points in Sarawak, Sabah and Brunei. They will only have to fill in their data on the Customs Department website, and a sticker will be issued to them at the Customs checkpoint upon online verification. Motorists can apply for the entry permit from their homes. This way, the process will take less than a minute at the checkpoints, compared to the longer time needed for manual registration.

6 Nov
Paper has a number of problems in addition to its environmental implications and also lacks a number of the affordances of its digital counterparts. The key is to recognize that paper is all about process, whereas digital media are all about information and retrieval. Embracing paperless reference filing is not the same thing as rejecting paper's important role in our work. From article 17, the writer, norbauer said the first and perhaps most important aspect of his paperless workflow is Fujitsu ScanSnap. He uses JungleDisk to automatically back up his "inbox" and "Archive" folders to S3. He also ditched all of his paper photographs by commissioning ScanCafe to cheaply digitize the negatives.


Year 2008

8 January
A school on a remote Scottish island is showing that huge savings can be made through careful scrutiny of resources and going digital. They realized just how much we were spending on photocopying. Between 2005 and 2006, they spent just over £20,000 on paper, ink, jotters, everything. ImageRunner 6800, was a sophisticated machine that could, with the addition of a PC and suitable software (Ecopy), be turned into an industrial-strength scanning machine - an e-copier. The students do most of their work in OneNote [software] on the Ultra Mobiles so this has cut down on paper.

19 January
A spokesman of a major bookstore in Penang said people seemed to prefer sending e-cards and SMS greetings these days compared to conventional season greeting cards. They were selling 20% less Chinese New Year greeting cards compared to last year. Sending SMS greetings and e-cards were convenient, fast, cheap and that they would not get lost in the post like conventional ones. It is also environment-friendly and as part of the trend towards a paperless society.

29 February
The paperless environment is growing in all areas of classroom instruction including lectures, homework, quizzes and examinations. A paperless classroom allows professors to provide immediate feedback to students on papers and exams and can save professors a great deal of time in preparing presentations. Advantages are less paperwork to hand out to students, absent students have access to assignments and PowerPoint information, teachers have fewer student papers to transport and potentially lose, online quizzes provide instant feedback to students, online quizzes provide statistical data to guide teacher instruction, less time spent on grading and lower paper costs for School/department. Where there are advantages, there are also disadvantages as well. Students who do not have computers are home, students may not possess strong computer skills, students may require direct instruction on how to access computer based processes they are being asked to do, students may have difficulty learning from a computer screen, and might require more multimodal means of instruction.