The last bastion...

Whatever you may have against government offices, archives, and Dickensian solicitors…they do at least stand like bulwarks against the rising tide of electronic disinformation. Local planning authorities for example, tend, even today, to keep up actual ‘files’ on the applications they receive – we mean files containing paper with writing on it – in stark contrast to telecom providers whose idea of customer relations is a kind of e-management that cleverly enables them not to know who they connected to what last week. At any rate, this is how it is in Germany. What do work however in Germany are wonderful easy-to-pronounce little things called “Registraturrichtlinien”, not to mention the “Geschäftsordnungen”, for which we have our Prussian forefathers to thank, principles of orderly official desk-work embodied and implemented by the state-accredited firm of Regis. These good people not only manufactured the paper and the files, but did so with a measure of good sense, organisational talent and mature intelligence that one has to admire. We hope we’ve convinced you…and all we’d like add at this point is that you, too, can make use of this wealth of experience by simply storing your more important documents in the containers that we will be describing below, and saying “NO” to the computer!