What Iron Man would bring to Document Management

Think about what Document Management will be like
in the not too distant future it is an exercise that we should do every day. Not only as an imaginative exercise, but as a way of visualizing ourselves as professionals capable of providing effective solutions , regardless of the technological changes that come.

The document management of the future

A few years ago, when I saw the Iron Man movie, I began to imagine a whole scenario of future document management . Which, I must say, that I see closer and closer .

The JARVIS system would make transparency and access to public information a reality in a matter of seconds

The question about what Iron Man could contribute to Document Management is mainly based on its JARVIS Artificial Intelligence system which, at the outset I must say, that It has made me hallucinate on more than one occasion with the endless possibilities that a system like this could bring to the business world and of course, the political world – basically transparency and access to public information would be an issue that this system would make a reality in a matter of seconds – ensuring impressive efficiency on many fronts.
Now, imagining the scenario that said technology would be totally to Document Management, we would have more or less the following scenarios:

Perhaps over time, the same system will suggest a more efficient way of organizing information.

– A system capable of centralizing all corporate information – this would obviously depend on the infrastructure available for such – and not just centralize, analyze and know it.

– In reference to the previous point, a human would tell said system how it “should” organize the information and this would be a matter of seconds, for all the digital information to be organized. Now, since we are talking about artificial intelligence, perhaps over time, the same system will suggest a more efficient way of doing it. Then not only would we have centralized information , but it would also be organized . Now, with an efficient, fast and multitasking digital assistant, all the new information would be organized as soon as it was generated. Something that we hardly achieve today.

The system would be autonomous enough to decide if a document should be deleted or not

– And if we talk about defining retention times and final disposal processes , it would not be an exception. This system could make a much more objective assessment by being able to consult all the possible variables. On the one hand, it would connect to all the databases that serve as a legal reference, it would have usage statistics and so on, and it could formulate a retention and disposition suggestion; And why not, it could do the whole process autonomously. Eliminating with it the human subjectivity in the documentary evaluation processes.

– And not to mention the elimination . A system does not have the need to say “let’s save it just in case”, at a given moment the system will be autonomous enough to decide if a document should be deleted or not . And if it requires deletion, the system will execute the process autonomously. Finally, the decision will be preceded by countless calculations that will allow reaching said decision. Yes, gentlemen, Big Data will make it possible to predict almost anything , including the final disposition of documents.

An assistant like JARVIS would efficiently retrieve the document we need and bring us absolutely all the information

– Currently, we are amazed by Google, with its advanced searches
and which can be refined as much as we want to obtain a result that is as accurate as possible. Many corporate information systems try to take the Google model and implement it in their solutions. But they imagine searches to be much more efficient. An assistant like JARVIS would not only efficiently retrieve the document we need, but it would bring us absolutely all the information – to which we have access, of course – related to it. Then it would no longer be tedious and complex to know if a response was given to a communication and with what office it was answered, and when, and by whom…. Everything would be presented efficiently and it would be a matter of asking our digital assistant and he would take care of bringing everything. Now, remember that we have centralized information, so we are talking about comprehensive searches that involve not just one source of information.

– And what if you want a report ? Well, our friend wouldn’t have any problem. Let’s remember that it would include all the power of Big Data, and it would only be a matter of you telling it what and how , and in a matter of seconds you would already have the information at hand.

When this happens, what will be the role of the Archivist?

Perhaps some will tell me that I am crazy and that what I propose is, in the extreme, futuristic and unreal . And maybe so. We are just seeing how AI begins to be part of our realities and it will take a few years for what Iron Man proposes as an assistant to become a reality in scenarios such as Document Management. But… When this happens, what will be the role of the Archivist?

Author:

Sergio Gomez Florez

Archivist
Cell: (+57) 319 2997220
Twitter: @sghomez

Skype: s.ghomez