Toward the Electronic Office (1981) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
The Office as a System
The Office as a System
Pages 7-20
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From page 7... ...
Office automation is a buzz phrase, an advertising slogan, that we see in the trade press and the popular press. Office automation has also become a whole new industry and there are a variety of approaches to it.
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From page 8... ...
They had just installed a large number of word processing systems, yet, they had the standard ratio of secretaries to attorneys: namely, one secretary for every two attorneys. I asked the managing parther, "How did you manage before you had word processors?
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From page 9... ...
So, merely producing more text can lead to information overload, less productivity and less efficiency, and a high cost of installed capital equipment without any real measurable benefits. There is another effect that I call "the copying machine effect." Some twenty-five years ago, when the process of xerography first came into being, a well-known computer company did a very careful market survey of whether or not they should go into the copying business.
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From page 10... ...
Every organization has an information sector that is the infrastructure that supports the substantive work that is going on. So, an office information system is the infrastructure inside an organization that supports the performance of substantive office work.
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From page 11... ...
As Dr. Licklider suggested: the issue is emphasizing integrating components; not putting in a lot of special purpose boxes to handle special purpose tasks, but putting together a lot of pieces, some high technology, some low technology, and organizing them and integrating them so that we can build a system that addresses the application.
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From page 12... ...
" I am not sure what the effective measure is if you are going to look at what a professional office worker does.
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From page 13... ...
These possibilities include everything from today's office information system of filing cabinets and typewriters to something that is marginally better, such as small expenditures for electronic typewriters with a small amount of memory or major investments such as stand alone word processors, shared logic word processors, electronic mail systems and minicomputer based systems. These are all different possible realizations of different versions of office information systems for the same organization.
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From page 14... ...
These include calendars, electronic message systems, automated note pads, and other similar devices which help people manage themselves and their time. Another category of functional support are the tools for the decision-maker, not tools for the so-called executive, but tools for the person who needs to access data and to use decision support capabilities in order to examine, analyze, project and display information and then make decisions based upon that data.
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From page 15... ...
Numerous data processing vendors have badly stubbed their toes thinking, well, gee we have got a text processing system our programmers use to prepare program texts. We will merely put a new nameplate on it and call it a word processing system and put it into an office environment.
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From page 16... ...
The design of office procedures, office jobs, office structures and then using technology almost as a catalyst. I have seen cases when it was said, we are going to have an office automation effort and everybody gets very excited and starts analyzing their office and figuring out what is going on.
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From page 17... ...
There is also a key issue of skill degradation or enhancement. Are you going to turn people today who have a variety of intersting jobs into essentially an entry person staring at a key board all day typing in data that comes in from other sources, or are you going to remove the boring work and turn them more into paraprofessionals who have a chance to exercise some autonomy and responsibility?
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From page 18... ...
Are you condemning them to an endless life in front of the terminal, or are you saying, this is an upwards step in a variety of ways. There is a whole issue of how do people view office work and themselves.
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From page 19... ...
I should not have to go hat in hand to somebody with the name of information resources manager or office automations czar and ask him to solve my problem for me. It is my problem, why am I asking him to solve it?
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From page 20... ...
I told you at the beginning that the bad news was that nobody wants office automation. Well, I would like to conclude with some good news.
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