Why TIFF?

Social Security is transitioning to the eDIB paperless document management system. The eDIB system is based upon TIFF files. TIFF seems at first glance to be an archaic type of file that has few users. It looks to be a legacy format, something used in the early days of scanning documents, but largely abandoned today. The type of file used by most of the world is the PDF (portable document file) that goes along with Adobe Acrobat software. Is there a rational reason why Social Security went with TIFF?

The PDF Zone has an interesting discussion of PDF versus TIFF, which may help support Social Security's decision. Here are some excerpts:

Deciding whether to go PDF or TIFF with your documents seems like a no-brainer for many users. But there's a time and a place for both document formats. And, increasingly, companies are evaluating whether to switch to using TIFF in their document workflows.

TIFF, or tagged image file format, is a popular format for high-color depth (32-bit) images. ...

For the majority of users who are putting text in their documents, the PDF is hands down a better choice. It is a universally accepted format that any recipient can view using the free Acrobat Reader utility. ...

[PDF] is also a much more secure file format that offers the ability to control factors such as who can read or alter your document.

You can alter a PDF much more easily than a TIFF file. Between the features available in Acrobat, Acrobat Pro and third-party add-ons, you can do several things not possible with TIFFs, such as:

• Add bookmarks, notes and highlighting without altering the original file
• Insert hyperlinks to other documents
• Index a PDF for complex searches. ...

But don't count TIFF out yet. TIFF is a great choice for archiving images, and may be a better choice in the long run than PDF. ...

The major drawback of TIFF is that, because it has been neglected by Adobe, it lacks standardized support for advanced imaging features that have been developed in the last few years. ...

"A TIFF connected to a database with OCR provides the same capability as a PDF with OCR that has been catalogued," says George Thornton, managing partner of On Site E-Discovery. On Site's clients are law firms with hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that need to be scanned into digital format, then OCRed and searched for keywords to provide evidence in a case. These databases can grow into multiple terabytes, so saving space is crucial. "When I have a large document collection I use TIFFs with a database," says Thornton. "For business purposes, I tend to send PDFs."

We have some themes here:

1. Normally, using PDF files is a "no-brainer." It is much more widely used. The Adobe Acrobat software used with PDF files is far more advanced than the TIFF software.
2. TIFF has advantages when one is dealing with photographs.
3. TIFF has advantages (that are unexplained by this article) when used in conjunction with a database, particularly a large database.

The only one of these that might explain Social Security's use of TIFF is the last one, that TIFF has advantages when used with large databases. Clearly, Social Security intends to use its scanned files with very large databases. However, the reasons why TIFF may be better than PDF when used with large databases are unclear. It is also unclear how big an issue database compatibility is.

It is also unclear how much thought was given to the fact that Social Security's document imaging system will never stand in isolation as most document imaging systems do. Social Security's imaging system has to interact extensively with the outside world. Claimants and their attorneys must be able to view records. Social Security must be able to receive medical and other records from outside the agency that are already scanned in PDF. Eventually, claimants and their attorneys are likely to be able to view their files over the internet, which will be difficult with TIFF files. And there has to be the question of whether TIFF really has any future.

Going with TIFF was a crucial decision for Social Security, which has implications for decades to come. If the decision to go with TIFF was a mistake, the transition to PDF is going to be terribly expensive. The TIFF decision deserves attention from Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG), the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Congress. It may seem boring, technical and confusing, but, in the end, it was probably the most consequential decision made by former Commissioner Barnhart. As far as I know, no one who was not directly involved has taken an in depth look at the choice of TIFF.