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magazine
08
agenda
Print a small part of total
document costs
The availability of high speed, high quality
colour MFPs is encouraging businesses to
bring more print jobs in-house, often for
financial reasons. But how easy is it to
compare the true cost of outsourced and
in-house documents and what factors should
you include in your calculations?
A new report from Infotrends,
The True Cost
of Business Communications
, provides a detailed
breakdown of print and non-print costs for US
organisations and shows how the cost per page is
just one part of the total cost (see table above).
InfoTrends found that non-print costs
(e.g. composition, design, editing, project
management) are typically higher than actual
print costs in environments where older
methods are used for producing, purchasing,
creating and managing printed documents.
However, the ratio of print costs to non-print
costs varies dramatically depending on the
quantity being printed.
InfoTrends advises companies to analyse
the internal work processes involved in the
production of common documents and then
compare the annual costs of creating, producing
and distributing these documents in-house and
via an outsourcing partner.
www.infotrends.com
Local councils criticised for lax attitude to
data protection
The Information Commissioner’s Office
(ICO) has criticised local authorities for their
attitude to data protection and fined four
local councils a total of £300,000 for security
breaches.
Risks to electronic data are well publicised,
but as the four cases outlined below make clear,
it is also important to build security into hard
copy document processes and workflows.
n
Leeds City Council was fined £95,000 after it
sent sensitive personal details about a child in
care to the wrong person. The breach occurred
because the council re-uses old envelopes for
internal mail and had failed to cross out the
sender’s address. As a result, sensitive material
including details of a criminal offence was
posted to someone who had nothing to do with
the case.
n
Plymouth City Council was fined £60,000
after a mix-up at a shared printer caused
allegations of child neglect to be sent to the
wrong family.When two reports about separate
cases were sent to the same printer, three pages
from one were mistakenly picked up with the
second and all sent to the same family.
n
Devon County Council was fined £90,000
after a social worker used a previous case as
a template for an adoption panel report and
mistakenly sent out a copy of the old report
instead of the new one. The mistake revealed the
personal data of 22 people, including details of
alleged criminal offences and their mental and
physical health.
n
The London Borough of Lewisham received
a penalty of £70,000 after a social worker left
sensitive documents in a plastic shopping bag on
a train. The files included GP and police reports
and allegations of sexual abuse and neglect.
Information Commissioner Christopher
Graham said: “It would be far too easy to
consider these breaches as simple human error.
The reality is that they are caused by councils
treating sensitive personal data in the same
routine way they would deal with more general
correspondence. Far too often in these cases, the
councils do not appear to have acknowledged
that the data they are handling is about real
people.”
To date, the ICO has issued 19 local councils
with fines totalling £1,885,000 for breaches of
the Data Protection Act.
www.ico.gov.uk
• The ICO has published a Data Protection
Code of Practice on managing the risks related
to anonymisation. The code explains how
to protect the privacy rights of individuals
while providing rich sources of data as part
of an open Government agenda. It includes
examples of how personal data can be
anonymised for medical research purposes; in
response to Freedom of Information requests;
and to help market researchers analyse
people’s purchasing habits.
Secure print and user authentication can help
protect sensitive paper documents
Total Breakdown of Print and Non-Print Costs
Consumers to watch seven hours of video per day
Surging video consumption on tablets and smartphones is transforming the way consumers
access information and entertainment and is putting a great strain on wired
broadband networks, Bell Labs warns in a new study.
The research arm of Alcatel-Lucent predicts that by 2020 US consumers will watch
seven hours of video each day, compared to 4.8 hours today. The increase is largely the
result of multi-tasking, i.e. conducting a video call on a tablet while watching television.
At the same time, there will be a dramatic shift from broadcasting to on-demand
viewing. Bell Labs predicts that by 2020 video-on-demand services, such as high
definition movie services and video sharing sites, will account for 77% of daily
consumption compared to 33% today: traditional broadcast TV services will see their
share drop from 66% to 10%.
The third major change will be a twelve-fold increase in internet video content as
cloud services, news sites and social networking applications become more video-based
and are available for viewing on tablets and smartphones anywhere and at any time.
Alcatel Lucent has launched OpenTouch Conversation for iPad. Combining voice, video,
instant messaging and collaboration in a single client, it allows users to make better use
of corporate iPads.
Function
Avg. Costs
for 500
% of Total
Avg costs
for 500
Creative (internal)
$705
8.6%
Creative (external)
$1,045
12.7%
Editorial
$2,691
32.8%
Project management
$657
8.0%
Warehousing/
Archiving
$37
0.5%
Shipping/
Distribution
$236
2.9%
Printing & Finishing
$2,843
34.6%
Total
$8,214
100%