Scottish Police Revert to Microsoft Office

LordGuha writes "The Central Scotland Policy is removing StarOffice and replacing it with Microsoft Office citing lower maintenance and running costs and greater integration with other departments. According to the article StarOffice was implemented in 2000 when the department was low in cash but lately have estimated that the Microsoft software would cost no more and lead to greater efficiencies."

Comments

Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[nokilli]

The other 95% were using Microsoft Office. So that answers why they were having so much trouble with StarOffice. They weren't. They were having trouble working with everybody else using Microsoft Office.

You know, it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place. 99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen. Oh yeah, and open and save documents. That's all they ever do.

I'd bet real money that the textarea element in a browser like Firefox provides all the text-editing functionality that these people need, especially if you add spell correct via JavaScript. Hit submit and there's your save function, to a central server that can be accessed from any department. Click a link and there's your file open functionality. Amazing!

You can even do forms! LOL

Why aren't they using a system like this? Because some idiot somewhere equates more-expensive with easier-to-use. It's the oldest story in IT, and it's always a tragedy.
--
Why didn't you know?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[wwphx]

I spent 9 years working in IT for one of the top 10 police departments in the USA. I mainly did database development and administration, network administration, user support.

There's really not enough information in the fine article to draw a lot of the conclusions being put forth.

In our shop there are, largely speaking, two sides to IT: the mainframe (now super mini) side that contained all the criminal information, and the micro side, used mainly for administrative support. The mobile data terminals and the computers used by most of the sworn population connected to the mainframe. They used pre-designed screens for storing and retrieving information. The support staff used various Office products to provide various services, up to and including reports summarizing criminal data.

But keep in mind that we were a gov't agency. We had to have file interop with the rest of the City, and County, and State, and Feds. We had more severe budget restrictions than most private sector had to deal with. Try not having a pool of money for training for the future year, it isn't fun. When I needed training for a new product, I had to wait for my department head to be out of town and the bureau manager asked me how a project was going. I told him I needed training, he got funds taken out of equipment maintenance to send me to Atlanta for a week. This is not a slush fund, this was money to be used for maintaining the mainframe, fortunately there was some unused funds.

As a rule, if money isn't allocated, it isn't spent. And that is a hard and fast rule.

For the criminal side, they had standards that were dictated by the FBI and the National Criminal Information System. Everything has to be coded in specific ways. Trust me, you DO NOT want to see the information schema! It is not correctly normalized and nothing can be done about it because THEY DON'T CONTROL IT. They had to work around those problems as best they could.

The basic problem is that you don't have a dozen Java programmers and a dozen C++ programmers sitting around just waiting to solve every little problem. We had three network administrators supporting 15+ sites. We had five developers (on the administrative side) for a total micro staff of maybe 15 or so when I left supporting over 2000 officers and another 1800 or so civilian, not including physical networking support (cabling, PC installation and hardware support).

Saying "all you need is a web applet to do X, Y, Z" is disingenuous. It will never be that simple. Until you've lived in police IT for more than 5 years, you won't have a clue what their overall requirements are and you're making assumptions that don't translate. Their data must ultimately fit legally-mandated forms. That's taken care of by tight data restrictions on the criminal side. On the administrative side, by using Office, you have a mobile work force of people who can move back and forth between various other City departments, assuming they can pass the background investigation.

You're talking an insanely complex system and set of requirements that have grown out of old technology over decades and decades of modification.

Yes, it's a MS shop. Started with 3Com 3+Share file servers, went to Lan Manager, now NT Server. Desktops went from Dos to Windows to Win2K and now probably XP. Apps went from Word, Multiplan, DataFlex to Office and SQL Server. There are non-MS technologies both in the server room and on the desktop, but the only place you'll see *nix is on specific apps, such as the Automated Fingerprint Identification System which started out on an RS/6000, I have no idea what it's on, it was not in my realm.

I like *nix, huge pluses over MS servers. But OO/SO just isn't there. The IT requirements for interoperability with so many other departments both in the City and at other layers of gov't are too vast to take a critical area and make it less than 100% compatible with the rest of the infrastructure is bad. I make no claim to have a clue how Scotl

In other news...

[sYn pHrEAk]

In other news, math skills of Scottish police reported to be at an all time low.

Corrections

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, it's Central Scotland Police, ie the police in the Central region, not all.
Secondly, they are migrating nearly *everything* back to MS. TheRegister have a better description here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/11/ms_lochs_d own_police/
complete with anglo-saxon mispronunciation joke ;-)
It's a shame, but maybe they are right. It's not easy to pay enough for good linux/unix admins on public sector wages.

Did anyone read TFA

[guruevi]

Central Scotland Police has signed a three-year deal with Microsoft that will see the force standardise on Microsoft Server 2003 and Windows XP (SP2). The deal was struck under the Office of Government Commerce's (OGC) agreement with Microsoft to offer preferential rates for public sector organisations, and will cost the force less than £60,000 per year. 60000 pounds = +/- 60 pounds/workplace = +/- 108 USD It is not because they could not read the other documents, it is because MS offered them W2k3 + Office2k3 for a mere 100 dollars! Where can I get their software that cheap?

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[Jarnis]

You need to be a large organization, and threaten to move to OSS (or have already done so).

Then you get a killer deal - for a few years. Let's see 3 years from now what the yearly cost is after that. Maybe 200$/seat. Or more. But hey, at that point people calculate that moving (back) to OSS is (slightly) more expensive than paying MS again for another contract.

Free/cheap samples or initial contracts are nice way to milk a customer to max later on. MS can think long-term - they are willing to dump some short-term profits for long term wins. They'll milk the difference back over the next 10-15 years - probably several times over.

*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

First time I've ever posted here, and I really knew what to expect from this thread, but I had to say this.

We all automatically assume that the police organization doesn't know what it's doing, doesn't know how to perform cost-benefit analysis, and all are just a bunch of non-tech-savvy pawns. They made the switch to OpenOffice *5* years ago. You don't think that's enough time to give something a shot and evaluate it? You don't think that's enough time to see how much something is going to cost or impact your organization? You don't think that they had people working on it and trying to honestly switch to OSS? Unless you work there, I think your post is way out of line (as well as a lot of others in this thread).

I'm not a Microsoft apologist, but why can't you see past your own point of view? OSS isn't better just because it's free or because it's not Microsoft. Sheesh. Give these people some credit for at least trying something new.

Re:*Sigh*

[nokilli]

I'm not disputing the accuracy of their cost-benefit analysis.

I'm simply pointing out that the reason they reached this conclusion wasn't because they were using StarOffice, but because everybody else was using Microsoft Office.

The costs were in getting StarOffice to work with Microsoft Office. The article makes it sound like it's the fault of StarOffice. It isn't. It's Microsoft who throws up the barriers to prevent OSS from working with their software, not the other way around.

If everybody else were using StarOffice, no way would they be switching to Microsoft Office.
--
Why didn't you know?

Star Office Problems.

[jellomizer]

There are still some major problems for Star Office.

First it normally defaultly saves in Star Office Format not MS Word format, yes this is an easy change but people when they are done just hit the save Icon and they are done, they don't want to go threw tens of choices and find the document that everyone else uses.

Second Individuals has invested time in MS Office. From those High School Computer Class to College Classes, CS101. The education system for computers are so dumb that they teach people how to use Microsoft Word but not a Word Processor. So almost everyone who enters the Work field know Office.

Third Speed. Open Office has had a speed problem from day 1. Yea Office isn't a speed daemon but it is fast where the users feel it is important, boot up and typing and saving.

Forth Interface. Open Office is setup with a good interface for Linux but not for Windows or Mac. This is actually very important to know the OS you are porting to and follow the OS's Interface guidelines. If you don't the application looks 3rd party and just doesn't feel right.

Fifth Work Flow. Open Offices goal is to create all the functionality and compatibility of Office but it forgot to get the work flow. Watch a non technical person use Office and you will see that their ways of solving problems may surprise you. They avoid using Style Sheets and just go for the Font Drop Down, except for hitting tab they will use the space and they never ever use hot keys for anything. The menus are off limit to them (The same with the windows start button) If they don't see it it must be an advanced feature that they shouldn't use.

Open Office is good for techs but not for normal people

Still?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Even conceding that current versions of Star/Open Office are far superior to the version in question, Star/OpenOffice obviously still does not work and play well with MS Office. Given that 95% of the Scottish police stations use MS Office, interoperability is a primary requirement.

You know, I used to be the standard-bearer for that argument, but as of OO 1.9x, interoperability with MS is getting pretty damned good. Particularly the word processor.

Anyone having trouble with it still is usually using Linux and hasn't gotten their true-type fonts working correctly.

Re:Still?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Most of the documents I'm dealing with contain inserted images, figures drawn with the built-in drawing utility, tables, styles, templates, equations and whatnot. Using a recent OO version, I can generally access the text and images, but that's about it: forget about page layout, most equations and drawings, etc.

I'm a scientist, so I can assure you I deal with equations, figures, pictures, etc. all the time. The newest version of OO - 1.9 - deals with equations from MS Equation and images too. Not sure what you're using for your drawings. I'd recommend common image formats and the conversion will be fine - if you use less supported proprietary standards and expect them to work outside Word, well, that's not very realistic when the plugin was probably made for Word and Word alone.

The layout looked fine too for me. I agree that, with the myriad of vendor plugins that exist for Word, that guaranteeing interoperability won't get you far. But as a user you can make sure your documents open fine in either by avoiding more rare plugin formats.

Nah, it was a smart move on all parts

[hey!]

Having worn both hats, geek and suit, I have to say you can't make this kind of decision purely on technical OR non-technical criteria. You have to use all your knowledge to do what's best for the organization.

Personally, I'd have taken this deal if I were the IT director, and I'm borderline Linux zealot. You take Ceasars salt, you do Ceasars bidding -- and if crucifiction doesn't appela to you, you look after his interests. MS offered them a deal that's a no-brainer. Just do the math.

They have about 1000 officers plus support staff. Don't know how many licenses this is but MS offered them a package deal at £60,000, which divided by the staff works out to £60/body/year. So it's as close to free beer as makes no difference, especially if this saves a staff position a year dealing with the fact nearly everyone else uses MS. Let's say that financially, it's the same as getting the software for free.

Add to this that the deal includes software they need to comply with legal requirements, software they estimate they'd have paid £100,000 to build custom, and now they're far ahead. It's the same old story, fortunately less common today than a few years ago: the app I need isn't available on Linux. In a couple of years when the deal runs out, the free alternatives will have closed the gap more, either forcing the market price of MS software down, or making it even more feasible to switch over if that really makes sense.

From MS's standpoint, this is very smart move. This deal is exactly what I'd have offered. MS wasn't making any dough from these guys anyways, an since its marginal cost for duplicating the software is nil, the limitation on dropping their price is that they don't want to encourage people to switch just to get the deal. That level is probably close to zero at this point in time: for most organizations, the TCO savings of F/OSS isn't attractive enough to switch once the you factor in sunk costs, conversion/training costs, and short term opportunity costs.

So, MS walks away with 60K in their pocket per year, which is not much but it is better than zero. They also get the priceless publicity of a high profile organization going F/OSS and giving up.

It's a natural and, unfortunately, effective competitive strategy in a business where the marginal cost of a product is zero. I expect that as Linux and OpenOffice get better and better we'll be hearing a lot more stories like this.

Ach, laddie!

[Junior J. Junior III]

Why dinnae they switch to ScotsOffice? Microsoft, Open, whatever Office you use, if it's not Scottish, it's CRAP!