Start Date
11-12-2016 12:00 AM
Description
In private households, once received paper-based documents are increasingly substituted by electronic documents. In order to “get organized”, an individual nowadays needs to oversee a plethora of digital and physical information items stored at various locations. As a technological solution, cloud-based storage services such as an Electronic Data Safe (EDS) emerge as a home for all digital valuables. In this paper, we analyze how such an EDS fits into an individual’s information ecology by drawing upon the results of a qualitative interview study with 39 users of three different EDS services. We develop a typology of the content that is kept safe in an EDS, reflect upon the motivations and upon an EDS’s role with respect to other cloud-based storage services individuals are using. The challenges of maintaining a digital, personal archive are depicted and “data value zones” are introduced as a sensitizing concept to reflect upon problematic areas.
Recommended Citation
Pfister, Joachim and Schwabe, Gerhard, "Going Paperless with Electronic Data Safes: Information Ecology Fit and Challenges" (2016). ICIS 2016 Proceedings. 16.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2016/HumanBehavior/Presentations/16
Going Paperless with Electronic Data Safes: Information Ecology Fit and Challenges
In private households, once received paper-based documents are increasingly substituted by electronic documents. In order to “get organized”, an individual nowadays needs to oversee a plethora of digital and physical information items stored at various locations. As a technological solution, cloud-based storage services such as an Electronic Data Safe (EDS) emerge as a home for all digital valuables. In this paper, we analyze how such an EDS fits into an individual’s information ecology by drawing upon the results of a qualitative interview study with 39 users of three different EDS services. We develop a typology of the content that is kept safe in an EDS, reflect upon the motivations and upon an EDS’s role with respect to other cloud-based storage services individuals are using. The challenges of maintaining a digital, personal archive are depicted and “data value zones” are introduced as a sensitizing concept to reflect upon problematic areas.