|
In 2005, Tom McKinney, executive director of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Minnesota, had a wish of his own. The organization had accumulated dozens of boxes of records on over 2,500 wishes that had been granted to seriously ill children, and McKinney wanted to organize them in a secure but accessible way. With help from Xiotech Corporation, the organization now has a Web-accessible data base of the documents that can be easily viewed by authorized personnel?without compromising the sensitive data within the files.
The Minnesota chapter of Make- A-Wish is one of 71 in the country, covering territories of various sizes. The Minnesota chapter was founded in 1982. According to the chapter's website, "Wishes can range from holding a live bunny to a family trip to Disney World; be as functional as a computer; or as exciting as meeting a favorite celebrity. Whatever the wish, it is the dream of the child. In fulfilling wishes, Make-A-Wish Foundation of Minnesota puts emphasis on the joy of having a wish come true... it has been said that doctors provide the medicine and we provide the magic."
Behind those wishes is a hardworking organization, a corps of dedicated volunteers, and a lot of documentation. "We had 50 or 60 boxes packed with paper," says McKinney, "about 2,650 files, which were stored at an off-site location. We were paying for the storage, and if we needed information from a stored file, we had to go search through the boxes by hand and hope we could find what we wanted. The national organization requires that we permanently keep every file on every wish, but it's important to us as well. The information in those files is our history, and we know we have to protect it."
In early 2006, McKinney asked volunteers to come in and help scan documents. "We knew it would require a lot of effort and take a lot of time," McKinney says. "And it wouldn't have been very sophisticated, but we knew we had to do something." Then one of the volunteers suggested Xiotech, which was in the process of developing its Archive Management Services program. Make-A-Wish soon became the service's pilot customer. Archive Management Services Fulfill the Wish Archive Management Services integrate Xiotech's innovative storage technology with its document review and management expertise. It's an end-to-end solution for capturing and managing paper and electronic documents for a variety of purposes?from general information access like Make-a-Wish requires to compliance, risk mitigation, and litigation issues.
At a high level, Archive Management Services provide: Assessment of existing data retention policies and consulting to update these policies or create new ones when needed.
Data collection, conversion, scanning, and indexing in a searchable format. Analysis of archived data by age, type, value, potential liability, and other measures. Simple, secure, Web-based data access 24 hours a day. Auditing to ensure that files are handled in compliance with policies.
Pricing for the service is normally on a monthly per-gigabyte basis, allowing customers to budget for data management. Services to Make-A-Wish are being donated.
"Being a pilot made us a little nervous," McKinney admits. "It was fear of the unknown. We wondered if the boxes would arrive safely, if documents would get lost. In fact, there were no problems at all. When we first started working with Xiotech, we just sent samples. They asked us what we needed and how we wanted to be able to sort the information. We could have requested more complex indexing, but our real needs were relatively simple. And seeing how Xiotech's storage systems protect data gave us confidence on the process."
"Xiotech did some practice runs on the samples we sent," McKinney continues. "Both we and the team at Xiotech were satisfied with the results, so our volunteers packed up the rest of the boxes, and we shipped them to Xiotech's production facility in Norwich, Connecticut. We established guidelines for what would be saved and what wouldn't, and we labeled some specific items that we wanted in the database, but Xiotech did most of the selecting based on our guidelines. The sorting and scanning they do is a very laborintensive process, and they did an excellent job.
|
