Document Imaging and the Obama Presidency

Of course it's impossible to see the future, but that doesn't prevent anyone from trying. In the current economic straits, moreover, accurately spotting trends that can impact your business is especially valuable. All of which brings us to the questions:

What will document imaging look like in 2009? Will there be major changes in the industry? New technologies? Exciting startups?

John Mancini over at AIIM had an interesting post the other day based on a survey in which respondents who work in the document imaging industry pointed out the three vertical markets where they saw the most opportunity in 2009:

Healthcare / Medical -- 59%
Insurance -- 38%
State and Local Government -- 33%

These thoughts make a lot of sense, because they seem to pinpoint the change this nation experienced two weeks ago: the election of Barack Obama.

One of the main pieces of legislation Obama sponsored while he was in the Senate was called "Google for Government." Read about it here. The idea was to create a Web site that showed where Federal tax dollars were being spent.

Obama has promised to apply this same transparency standard to the government as a whole. This will no doubt create the need for document imaging services to move the tons and tons of paperwork into digital formats, so the people can see them.

Only time will tell if that project is successful, but the trying is bound to be profitable for the document imaging industry as a whole, especially the companies that get those contracts.