What do users think about paperless technology

Our experience in the development and implementation of an electronic archive system shows that many difficulties in the transition to electronic storage of documents are due to purely psychological reasons: users are accustomed to think in the categories of the “paper” era and get used to many innovations with great difficulty.

The human factor (speaking more precisely - conservatism of thinking, which consists in adherence to uncomfortable, but generally accepted and well-established, practices) —that is not taken into account in most cases when introducing electronic document management and electronic document storage systems. It is very difficult to choose the right strategy, which in a short time would allow users to fully utilize the possibilities of new technologies.

When introducing electronic document management systems and archives, it is necessary to take into account such a moment as the psychological readiness of potential users. The lack of attention to the human factor sometimes leads to paradoxical consequences (especially often observed in various kinds of state institutions): the system is installed, but people still continue to work and think "paper-based" because "this is more reliable."

Recently, we found research data on the Web, which is a kind of illustration of the above reflections. The French Public Opinion Research Institute, commissioned by the Generix Group, conducted a sociological survey aimed at clarifying the attitude of the French to paperless technologies - the widespread transition to electronic document circulation and electronic document storage.
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After reading this survey, we thought: what is the situation in Russia? Having conducted a search on the Internet resources, we found out that in our country similar studies were not conducted. To fill this gap, we decided to conduct our survey among Habr's users. Based on the data obtained, we want to write an article - compare the results obtained and analyze the reasons why this is the case.

Our questions concern many things: documents that companies store in paper form, readiness to work exclusively with electronic documents, the degree of use of paperless technologies in a company, software used, operations carried out by the company via the Internet, opportunities and advantages of introducing paperless technologies, as well as factors preventing their spread. You can participate in our survey by following this link: www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZQ3CG26 .

Many thanks in advance to everyone who will take part, we will be happy for the ideas expressed in the comments!