But the average time for decisions at the moment is 16 months. A spokesman for the Immigration Service Union said the difficulties arose because the civil service was attempting to do three things at once - change its workflow system, move office...
It's also about workflow standards. The search engine strategy is quite clever. Cataloguing all files in the same XML format is just the first hurdle. The big players don't want to play ball. That's understandable.
For the moment, it is best to regard these as sacrosanct - if we begin to mess with them, we could bring the business to its knees. If we have a full workflow solution that is being underutilised while other systems struggle with internal event...
The latest version of Microsoft's desktop email application, Outlook 2003, matches the immediacy of IM, offering pop-up windows that notify recipients of new messages the moment they arrive. Will this become a spam engine?
As expected, the company announced the Windows Workflow Foundation, a combination of a new workflow engine, as well as tools and a programming model for developers to use to add such abilities into their own software.
Another big driver at the moment will be a reactive need, and a key driver there will be corporate governance. But once you can organise the technology then you can take these very big archives, like the BBC are doing at the moment, and make it all...