Stage 1. Upgrade and Migrate
Avoid bottlenecks and prepare for future upgrades:
· Faster hardware
· New operating systems
· Efficient network equipment
· Fast Wireless Networks

Stage 2. Organize and Streamline
Analyze, design and implement a "smart office":
· Financial and accounting software
· Calendar and contact management software with optional PDA
· Paperless office - scan paper files, save storage space
· Network printing and faxing
· Connect remote offices

Stage 3. Protect and Safeguard
Secure hardware and information:
· Backup and fault-tolerance of critical systems
· Power failure protection
· Viruses and spyware protection
· Privacy and financial records
· System maintenance

It used to be that access to information was good. Is that still true? Have we reached a point where too much information is not good? Too much of anything is not good. Too much ice cream will kill you. I don't think the issue is too much information. More important is decision overload. We believe that every person, or organization, can only make so many competent decisions in a given amount of time. Up until the point that we change our biology, there are some fixed limits on the speed by which we individually process information. However, there are enormously powerful tools by which we can extend the amount and extend the capacity of, for example, how information is organized. The simplest example is our telephone numbers. Why do they come in a grouping of three and four instead of just throwing all seven at you. It's because you can't remember seven very easily, but you can remember three and four. That's a primitive example of what might be called chunking information. We can handle more information if we can chunk it, and we can chunk it at higher and higher levels of complexity, and we can employ better models of organizing information. If you have powerful models, you can just handle a lot more.

So the quality of our decisions goes down. That's it. I know some elected representatives who say they can't assimilate all the information they need to make truly informed decisions, so their staff makes the decisions on most issues. To which I replied, "Exactly who elected your staff?" And this is typical. People are required to make decisions faster and faster without adequate decision support. And there is a dangerous mismatch between the amount of decision-making that you have to do, and information that's available and the speed at which an answer is required. The information is out there, but in the wrong hands. Read More

Excerpts from an Interview with Alvin Toffler by James Daly