Mass documentation organization effort

[Gina Hertel <Ghertel -at- ALPHA88 -dot- COM>]

        Senior management at my company is looking for a way to organize
(and essentially index) ALL of our proprietary
        documentation company-wide (including technical info, marketing
docs, sales support info, etc.) and he wants ME, as the Manager
Technical Communications, to organize it.  At present, all of the
departments hold on to their own content, which makes it difficult to
access if the content owner is sick/ on-site, etc.

        I have the following questions:
        (1) Does a company-wide documentation organization project seem
like something that could/should fall under the responsibility of the
Technical Communications Department?
        (2) If no, who should be responsible for this kind of mass
organization effort?
        (3) If yes, how would any managers/members of a Technical
Communication department go about doing this?
        (4) I assume others have more than a haphazard approach to
maintaining all company documentation.  What is it?
        (5) Does anyone have any idea how LONG a project like this would
take?

        As an aside, my company has recently decided to implement
Documentum. Is  this project something
        that Documentum could help me accomplish? Would I be able to
"file" docs in an easily accessible way with
        this system? Is it possible to use some kind of search feature
in conjunction with this "document library" idea?

        I'm new to this, and would really appreciate any feedback.


Gina Hertel