Presumptive Shareability

After the first of the year, we’ll be cranking up as we complete porting of our existing target documents into our new taxonomic organization, resolve some filtering and usability touches we want to integrate into our default GSA front end, primp and polish the layout and presentation of the front end, implement a few basic OneBox modules, and set in motion what we’re now referring to as the “Rolling Thunder Roadshow” to all our eight office locations.

The RTR will be our way to recognize and promote among all our staff the changes in how documents and other files are made easily and intuitively findable, and given a new level of access and usability throughout our non-profit organization. After all, that is the core purpose of enterprise search. And a key element of all this is changing deeply rooted individual notions or assumptions about what can or should be “shareable.”

In working on this project within a non-profit environment, we have learned that most employees have an inclination to undershare, not overshare. Not because they are selfish or secretive; rather, because the type of transparent sharing that enterprise search makes possible is foreign to most of them. It is familiar to them to be asked to provide a document to others on request in person, by phone or by email. It is foreign to them to decide in advance that a document they created or have received from someone else should be transparent to the rest of the entire organization. The concepts of creation and possession are severed from the concept of findability.

To be sure, the increasing use of collaborative web-based document tools within our organization — principally our adoption two years ago of Google Apps — has helped us on this journey. Most staff at this point are familiar with the concept, if not the practice in their individual work, of creating or editing or uploading documents that can be “shared” from a common web location. They get that, even if they don’t do it themselves, because increasingly others demand they do so… when they get a “share” message email from Google Docs about a document someone created or edited there; when they get an email with a link to something someone else posted in our domain’s Google Sites; or when they get a message to fill out a Google Docs form for, well, whatever.

As we prepare for the RTR, the team working on this project have brainstormed about what we can say or demonstrate to the staff in each office, to prompt them to rethink (OK, in some cases just think) what types of documents should be shared with others by adding them to the new document repositories.

We now refer to this as “presumptive shareability.” In particular situations, it may not be appropriate to make the document or file transparent through enterprise search, but in most cases it will be because all are situations where the document or file has served a shareable purpose, i.e, use by more than one person or re-use by one or more persons.

Among the situations we think should trigger staff to think to add the document or file in question to the shared repository are the following:

• An attachment to an email message you send or forward to someone else.
• You request or receive a file as an email attachment from someone within the organization.
• You receive a non-confidential file attachment from someone outside the organization.
• Every time you re-use a document or form as part of your work.
• You learn that the PowerPoint (or other presentation format) for a training or conference event you attended is now available for viewing or downloading.
• You lug home substantive hard-copy handouts distributed from a training or conference.
• Can you say, “presentation” and/or “portable”? Whatever it is, if it is a PDF or PPT file it is presumptively shareable.
• If it is the “final” version of a case-related pleading, memorandum, exhibit or correspondence and you think others may find it usable, share it.
• Usable documents you discover and think to save to your desktop as part of research on the Web, regardless of file type (PDF, DOC, XLS, etc.)
• Similarly, when doing work-related research on the Web, anytime you think to bookmark a web page or save the page to your desktop as an HTML or TXT file.
• … you get the drift.

Shareability promotes findability. That’s our story and we’re stickin’ to it.