UpDate - Vol. 11, No. 22, Page 7
March 5, 1992
MIS develops system for electronic look at reports

     Management Information Services (MIS) has developed a new
electronic report system that piggy-backs on the EMC2 electronic
mail system, Carl W. Jacobson, MIS director, has announced.
     The electronic report system allows large administrative
reports to be stored on-line, providing electronic viewing from
workstations across the campus, he said.  "Reports accessed using
this system use no paper, require no delivery trucks and are
available the instant they are created," Jacobson explained.
     "With the introduction of the campus-wide paper recycling
effort, we've all become increasingly aware of the amount of paper
used each day," he said, noting that, even though advances in
computing have provided more and more on-line access to
institutional information, the country's computer-generated
printing increased this year by 30 percent.
     "The expense of paper printing includes both dollar and
environmental costs," he said.  "While paper purchases impact our
accounts, they also have obvious impact on our green Earth.  Beyond
these obvious costs lie the largest portion of printing expense:
the cost of handling, delivery, distribution and the time delays
associated with these efforts."
     According to Jacobson, "as electronic mail has made
significant inroads into our campus culture and has helped us to
reduce the creation and distribution of paper correspondence,
'electronic report' systems can do the same to address the problems
of large-volume computing printing."
     In this new system, predetermined reports are "delivered" to
users and appear in "inboxes" similar to those found in the EMC2
mail system.  Reports selected from these inboxes can be browsed
through using a powerful set of viewing tools.
     "This is where the electronic reports system parts company
with the basic e-mail system," Jacobson explained, "as the viewing
tools control the display of report headings, the scrolling of
report lines, the highlighting of important information and the
viewing of 132 columns of data."
     Reports may be stored in personal file folders or forwarded to
other electronic report system users.  Report inboxes and file
folders are separate from those in EMC2 so that large reports will
not clutter daily e-mail lists, he said.
     I/O Control currently is working with offices responsible for
the production of institutional reports to determine which of them
are suitable for electronic distribution.
     "With published cost estimates for the production and handling
of computer reports running as high as 25 cents per page, every
report that can be placed in the electronic reports system can
contribute to significant savings to our institution and our
environment," Jacobson said.