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Baltimore Police Department Is Still Using Lotus Notes (baltimoresun.com)
swm writes: The Baltimore police department is still using an antiquated (1996) case-management system based on Lotus notes. A recent technology assessment found "millions of records and roughly 150 databases built into the system, each designed to address different unit and personnel needs," reports Baltimore Sun. The report found that the "siloed nature of the Lotus Notes databases made it difficult for officers to match, verify or search for information. [...] Various systems may also contain 'conflicting information' about the same case, or may not reflect the most complete information."
"At the same time, detectives continue compiling and using paper case folders," the report stated. "Depending on the unit and the detective, the appropriate Lotus Notes database and/or hard copy case folder system may or may not be up-to-date, and the systems may or may not match." The consultant who is paid to maintain the system says that it is "working wonderfully for the police." Despite these concerns that the assessment addressed, Baltimore's spending panel agreed to pay $176,800 to the consultant to help maintain the outdated system. The police department's chief spokesperson said in a statement Thursday that the agency will be moving away from Lotus Notes in the future. "However, until such time, we must manage and maintain the product that we currently use which is Lotus Notes," he said.
"At the same time, detectives continue compiling and using paper case folders," the report stated. "Depending on the unit and the detective, the appropriate Lotus Notes database and/or hard copy case folder system may or may not be up-to-date, and the systems may or may not match." The consultant who is paid to maintain the system says that it is "working wonderfully for the police." Despite these concerns that the assessment addressed, Baltimore's spending panel agreed to pay $176,800 to the consultant to help maintain the outdated system. The police department's chief spokesperson said in a statement Thursday that the agency will be moving away from Lotus Notes in the future. "However, until such time, we must manage and maintain the product that we currently use which is Lotus Notes," he said.
suspect calls himself a "consultant"
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
If not, so what? Dos aint done 'til Lotus wont run. Trump Powa!
"You never get fired for IBM" is what led to this garbage.
captcha: compost
There are still numerous businesses on Lotus Notes and many more that are out there still migrating them to new platforms. Migrating Lotus Notes mail to new systems is not a big deal, but many of those same businesses have hundreds of databases that need to go to new platforms. That may take years and many businesses are slow to spend the money to make the move. If all businesses still haven't moved, is it a surprise that a government agency is still on the system?
You couldn't pay me enough to manage Lotus Notes. It appears there are ways to migrate Notes apps to MS SharePoint, but you can bet it would be a painful, expensive nightmare.
After working 20 years in IT, I can honestly say there is nothing to compare to Lotus Notes and its simplistic and powerful way it works. This is why its still there. The only reason it is not currently top dog, is because exchange came along in the late 90s and outlook was better than the Lotus Mail client. Anyone trying to tell me sharepoint is good has rocks in their head, its bloated and requires way to much training and development to make it anywhere near an out of the box Lotus Notes install.
They need more black on black homicides. Hands up mup da doo didda po mo gub dat tum muhfugen bix nood!
$176k to keep it working? It will cost them $176 Million to replace it, resulting a similar level of hassles, errors, and inconsistencies as before. Just different ones.
Most or all of the problems in the article have no relationship to the fact that the software helping to support the bureaucracy is Notes. The detectives use of paper case files won't magically go away just because the software is replaced. Also, just perhaps, they Know What They're Doing, and paper has valuable or required chain-of-evidence advantages?
Isn't almost everything else of its ilk "decades old" (never mind still in active development like Notes)
Did IBM ever make their money back on Lotus? How much did they spend on it? IIRC it was like $2 billion in 1995 dollars. I bet the manager who OKed it thought they were really clever, until someone pointed out that they don't actually sell software at IBM. They've probably sunk another $2 billion into trying to make anything from that company work.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
At least it still works.
Expensive and sucks
This conclusion makes me think that there are some out there that want to purge anything, people or kit older than 10 years.,,
or to Microsoft.
So you guys are all ready for your taxes to go up significantly to rewrite all of the antiquated systems of all the government agencies that you deal with, right?
My company spends that much on MS Exchange.
Generally you shouldn't fix something if it isn't broken.
IBM still sells Lotus Notes as IBM Notes. It is still a supported product. One person might call Notes old. Others might refer to Notes as a mature software package. In particular, ignore the mail aspects of Notes. Notes is so much more than that, in particular the document management system can be quite powerful. It can also be quite the pain in the ass as the Baltimore PD are realizing.
Baltimore still has a police department?
The consultant who is paid to maintain the system says that it is "working wonderfully for the police."
I'll bet it's working wonderfully for the people in Baltimore, too. I've heard citizens gather there in the streets to cheer the police department's processing efficiency.
Integration and consolidation would be nearly trivial and fun. I'm game.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Lotus Notes for Email sucks.
Oh hey let me create a rule because I realize i'm getting a lot of email from one source. Ok rules created how to run it on all the emails I've already gotten... nope.
Let me go get a chicken born under a full moon and some eye of newt to enable Sametime chat logging.
Oh hey let me search for something in Lotus Notes email, better go get a coffee while this thing searches. Oh no someone just messaged me in same time, while Notes is search I bet I can just pop open this message at the same time, oh I can't.
Hey I'm getting harassed by this one client who thinks I should instantly respond to their emails and they are sending me read receipts, let me just turn that off... I can't.
Hey let me easily access this through my phone from any of the millions of mail clients, nope. Webmail, official app or nothing.
Will this attachment that is a fairly common format open from the email, let me get out my lucky 8 ball.
Lotus Notes Email, I will never miss you.
It's not even the problem that specifically lotus notes sucks (it's software) nor that it's old and no longer supported. Forget all the specifics. Even the problems between different case systems, some of which might be on paper, and the problem of syncing.
The real problem is that "the digital" has zilch staying power. It doesn't matter what system you're using, nor what company originally supplied the thing. Fifty years down the road it'll be unsupportable and a hundred years down the road nobody will be able to read any case files once put in there. No such problem with paper. Alright, yes, if you pick the wrong kind of paper then it'll disintegrate in 200 years too. But we have quite a few years experience with that. With computing, not so much. Tape formats, hard drive interfaces, even the storage tech itself, doesn't last much more than a decade or two. And then what?
Sure you can build something fancy now. It's what these guys did back when too. And now it's "outdated". What of your fancy new thing twenty years hence, hm? Time to learn, kiddies.
Where I work, we just migrated to Outlook in the past couple of years. Our databases, group email accounts, and apps still remain in Lotus Notes. Therefore I must run both.
And we're much larger and far more profitable than the Baltimore Police Department.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
I figured this was like building a police station or bridge, where we could rely on it lasting for 50 or 60 years, and in a pinch keep it going for 100 or more years. But you're saying that everything needs to be rewritten every five or ten years? Seriously? That's just crazy! Why would you even do that?
Canadian Salvation Army also still uses Lotus Notes for email.
*** On the Internet, no one knows you're using a VIC-20
For that matter, also a surprise, Micro Focus still makes and maintains Novell GroupWise. Just because it's not Exchange or Google doesn't mean it's not around anymore. Who the hell wrote this article? Great, they paid a consultant to maintain a piece of software that is probably a few versions back, but could be updated to this year's version. This happens probably half a million times a day. "Someone isn't using Exchange or Google for their email!" Isn't news, or even that noteworthy. Lawyers love GroupWise and Notes over Exchange because they both have better journaling and discovery.
Lotus Domino / Notes works fine and is supported by IBM.
1) Latest version is Domino 9.0.1 (server) and Notes 9.01 (Client) released on 2016 . Now you can use Domino apps on cloud and IBM Collaboration cloud for mail. There is no end of support for Lotus Notes 9.0 listed yet (https://www-01.ibm.com/software/support/lifecycleapp)
2) Notes 9.0.1 Fixpack 10IF3 was released on 2018/05/21
3) The article does not says which version of Lotus Notes are they using.
4) If you don't like using Lotus Notes, the same mail and nsf applications can be turned into web applications.
5) Domino applications are very easy to create and maintain.
6) Lotus Notes was designed by Ray Ozzie. Even Bill Gates said he was one the greatest software architects.
7) Microsoft has done a great job thrashing everybody that uses Lotus Notes, just like they did with OS/2 users.
Soo much integration. Given that integration was inward facing, but it was awesome. At the same time centralized and distributed user accounts, databases, replication, forms, email. All that. I worked for several companies that had massive installs of that stuff and it was truly amazing to see the creativeness abound in various departments.
In some ways it was difficult and become kind of arcane. But at the time, there was very little that did a comparable job of all those tasks.
Yeah, most of the DB's became a mess of incompetence and misadventure. Yes, the technical talent became very expensive and in dwindling supply. Like a lot of products, its downfall was its regressive and self-defeating pricing.
One of the large SLAC accelerators is run by a distributed control system from the early 80s. It would cost millions to replace and we have better places to spend the money.
Its not that we don't know about or want newer systems, its just that in any situation with limited budgets, you have to prioritize.
I have worked with a large company that had a lot of Lotus Notes applications that caused all kinds of migration issues. Lots of pain, suffering, angst and failure moving to another platform if they found one.
The craziest part of the whole story is they chose to move to Sharepoint for a lot of their migrations.
Once again Microsoft has found a way to rebrand Lotus technology / software and claim it new.
Many, many years ago, I worked at a company where they gave me an old 20 Mhz 386 IBM PS/2 tower running OS/2 and Lotus Notes. It took at least 10 minutes to start Lotus Notes after OS/2 booted. (BTW, I loved OS/2.) Then, they sent out an email that they were upgrading everyone's computers to 486 machines. After everyone else I knew got upgraded and I still had not, I sent the IT people an email asking why my ancient, slow 20 Mhz 386 had not been replaced with a 486. Their reply was that since I was already running Lotus Notes on it, I did not need the upgrade! What a terrible, terrible company.
I eventually was upgraded with more modern hardware over the years at that same company. But I still remember how lousy Lotus Notes was, even when it was faster on later machines. I'm thankful I no longer work at that company and that I no longer use horrible Lotus Notes.
something something ain't done
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Notes
You can still get it. Unless your for monopoly status for companies...The product uses a more traditional messaging model that does date 30 years back, but it works. If anything they should be pushing IBM/partners to help them migrate to a secure cloud.
wtf is Lotus Notes. A disease?
When the User Interface Hall of Shame has a dedicated page just for your program : http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/lo... , it's time to worry.
I worked with Lotus Notes for many years and although its far from perfect it was actually maybe 30 years ahead of it's time. Most of the negative comes from people who don't understand what Lotus Notes is and/or think that the included email client is Lotus Notes. Which I agree was not very good and could have been improved drastically.
Lotus Notes is basically just a non relational database with a lot of build in core support for access control and replication. People are using NoSQL, Mongo and other non relational databasee and think that this is something new. This has been in Lotus Notes from the start. The Lotus Notes client software is basically just like the web browser is today with the app running completely in the browser.
What is great about Lotus Notes are the included features out of the box. It's basiaclly just a rapid application development software for data. The offline synchronizing and replication of data is amazing really. Because although you can implement replication in any system the replication system is built in and can handle replication for everything. So any system you build, automatically has data replication. The security is also built in with fine grained control to individual fields built in.
I could build for example a complete working CRM system in just one hour that had offline editing, replication and synchronization of data, fine grained access control, both fat client and web client enabled with zero code changes, Workflow integration, email integration, and much more. And this could be done without writing little or no code.
Sometimes the older system is coded better than the newer system. I see no problem here. At the most bleeding edge companies... ahem... Lotus Notes is still used, but you'll never see that on the news... they'll squash the story before it gets out! No problem!
What are they not paying Microsoft's $10 per month per mailbox subscription like "everyone" else?
We can't have a government agency not unnecessarily paying over and over and over again for a product they don't need.
"Lotus Notes, designed as a customizable email and database system, has been the Police Department’s main system for detective case management since 1996."
So that means the police department has been using the same version of Lotus Notes since '96???
Bullshit reporting at it's finest. If they are using the same version from '96 then yes it's out dated. If not then no.
Regardless of whatever system is used it comes down to how it is designed and maintained. That costs money which is probably why they are having issues since money probably got cut from the budget to maintain and develop the system.
It also helps to understand the needs of the business and what the technology can do. Here's a tip: you can search across Notes databases. I know shocking.
"The Baltimore police department is still using an antiquated (1996) case-management system"
"Baltimore's spending panel agreed to pay $176,800 to the consultant "
" The consultant who is paid to maintain the system says that it is "working wonderfully..."
I had a good laugh, thanks.
Just because a product (in this case Lotus Notes/IBM Domino) has a long history does NOT mean it is obsolete.
We're still using PowerSoft/Sybase/SAP/Appeon PowerBuilder here, and that's a product that has worked fine for us for 20+ years with through 4 major vendors and a large number of migrations through various versions (Appeoon PB 2017 R3 is the latest, and it's looking to get major improvements to catch up through 2018 and 2019).
TCO is what organizations need to assess when considering technology, and it seems to me that compared to what I have seen, $176,000 is a steal for what this solution likely offers.
Having said that, you would have thought case management for police would be a solved problem by now. But the law, policing, and courts are NOT simple things and are certainly not the same everywhere so it doesn't surprise me that these problems are still not solved by a single "solution".
My most recent experience has been on the Arizona District Court system website:
http://www2.azd.uscourts.gov/azd/callive.nsf/dazweb-view+by+date?openview&count=1000
Those are Lotus Notes pages served through a Domino web server instance. I'd rather visit an ASP.NET website.
You can tell that page load performance is fantastic and clearly doesn't bring the poor server to its knees begging for mercy to stop making requests for a page that should be cached. The display of the pages on the website looks amazing and modern. Especially the font choices and font spacing and ability to display well on a mobile device. The way each individual entry displays will win all the awards for best design and UX. I'm sure that web application security and proper database indexes are also a top priority. /sarcasm
In short, there are no redeeming qualities of the Lotus Notes platform.
He just wants to shit on Unions
Lazy Baltimore Sun didn't bother changing the site options and blocked it from EU customers.