December 4th, 2005
Why it’s important to digitize our documents
The Katrina wrath has given as enough lessons and one of that is the importance of digitizing our documents. Why? Because paper is vurnerable to water and wind. What if it gets wet and you have no back up copy of your documents? What if it’s the deed of sale of your land? What if it’s your life insurance certificate? Health plan? Marriage certificate? Legal documents? If these are all in paper and they get wet and thrown out in the window and have gone to places during the typhoon you can just say goodbye to your docs. But if you have digitized it and you have a back up copy of it located in 3 countrys around the world you’ll have no problem at all. I think the Philippine government especially the local government of towns should implement this right now. If not we are going to experience this.
Other benefits of digitizing our documents.
Searching is no problem at all.
Accessing is not a problem too. If there is a hotspot or an internet cafe nearby you can always make a printout of your documents. You say the original copy? The original copy won’t be a problem because there will be a branch of the government who will take care of the authenticity of your digitized copy. If you want to see a sample visit NSO. You’ll noticed that they have already started digitizing our birth certificates and other documents.
How to do it?
- Buy a scanner or pay an internet cafe to scan your documents. It should cost you around PhP20 per doc.
- Email your document to yourself. e.g your Gmail account or Yahoo account. I suggest you use Gmail since it’s 2gig in capacity, enough to handle all of your documents.
- Or if you don’t have a Gmail account email email me at eidderf@gmail.com and I’ll send you an invite. (Gmail account is acquired thru invites e.g. you receive an invitation to use Gmail thru someone who already has a Gmail account).
- Relax
That’s it. You have just secured your important documents. Remember you are not limited into digitizing your documents only. You may also digitized your old pictures (if you don’t have a digital camera yet). You may back up your important telephone numbers. You’re favorite recipe. Your chat messages. Anything. Trust me it pays to have your documents digitized.
