mrph | Paperless office, clueless office...? (Reply)

Yes, it's a work rant for once...

Paper still has its uses. Especially for confidential documents.

The only thing worse than writing something for internal distribution only, stamping "Commercially Confidential" all over it and then having it find its way out to suppliers/customers/competitors is writing something for internal distribution, adding more idiot-proofing by writing "Do not send it to our business partners at Acme Inc! Whatever you may think, whatever they may have signed, they're not part of the company!" in 20-point bold text on the front page, and still having it find its way to Acme Inc. That would be... unfortunate

It's also something which IMHO is much more likely with soft copies, as some folks don't actually bother to look at the file contents before they redistribute them - and cover notes in e-mails etc can be stripped out when the file circulates internally, or lost when it's saved and then forwarded at a later date.

But how to stop it? Given that the likely culprits aren't going to go away anytime soon, and aren't easily 'educated'... there has to be some sort of idiot-proof safety measure that might work. Well, hopefully. It's that or stick to good old paper, as they might be a little less likely to ignore warnings on the front page of a document they're photocopying...

I'm not saying that we've made this kind of blunder, of course. We haven't. Yet. But it doesn't take a crystal ball to see it lurking somewhere in the future.