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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that the assessment addressed, Baltimore's spending panel agreed to pay $176,800 to the consultant to help maintain the outdated system.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that the assessment addressed, Baltimore's spending panel agreed to pay $176,800 to the consultant to help maintain the outdated system.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.
Painful because of Microsoft.
Share point sucks. See, now thatâ(TM)s a technical opinion.
$176k to keep it working?
I think you mean "running". It's clearly not working if they are resorting to paper because the system is inadequate.
It will cost them $176 Million to replace it, resulting a similar level of hassles, errors, and inconsistencies as before. Just different ones.
Only because they will use a corrupt process to select a vendor for the replacement. You could literally do the kind of crap they're doing with notes now with a PHP CMS.
Also, just perhaps, they Know What They're Doing, and paper has valuable or required chain-of-evidence advantages?
If they knew what they were doing, they never would have used Notes. It would have made more sense to use AS/400. (I still can't remember which "Series" is which by letter.) But just their bad luck, they got the notes salesman instead of the minicomputer salesman.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
“Viable”. Not great, not even decent, but viable. I don’t think I have ever seen Sharepoint improve upon software it replaced, in terms of features, usability, reliability, maintenance or administration. I’ve been involved in a few migrations where we had to do a token product selection, so we simply drew up some functional requirements along the lines of “let’s look at what we have now, and write down what of that functionality is essential”. Sharepoint wasn’t even able to meet all of even the most basic requirements... but was selected every time because it was Microsoft and “we already have it for other stuff”. It’s not even cheaper than what it replaced. Users and administrators aren’t using it properly. The workflow stuff is mildly useful in small and medium companies, but other than that I’d be hard pressed to come up with something good to say about it. Even the newer version. The architecture is still the stuff of nightmares.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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.
You couldn't pay me enough to manage Lotus Notes.
I'd take USD$176,800 annually, same as this person.
We still have some Notes databases in use, though they're slowly being replaced. These systems typically have a bunch of group/user based security, workflow and notifications, so getting all that right can be a long process - all the simple stuff was done years ago.
I can totally see a case management system being band-aided across the decades as an entirely new system might still be more than the cost of maintenance and licensing.
I'm running 30,000 users all over the globe on IBM Domino (it hasn't been Lotus for two decades.) It is interesting but I must say there are some really cool things about it. Think of it this way, Exchange is a mail program that tries to be a database. Domino is a database program that tries to be a mail server. With Domino, email is just one way to use it. It's data replication between hosts over the WAN is like nothing Exchange could do. Domino was designed in the 90s when intermittent dial-up between hosts was the common solution. I have about 100 servers sitting in Tunisia, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, all the EU, US and even Canada. They all talk together and share the same address book and master config.
So yes, now that we have been bought by another larger French aerospace company, we will be moving to some form of Exchange. It will still take years to get out from under all the applications so I'm sure I'm good until retirement in about 10 years.
But don't knock Domino until you have really looked at it. Did you know it runs on Unix and Linux? IBM supports it on the AS4000 so do you want to talk about uptime?
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
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.
$178k for a consultant is a good deal. It would be difficult to hire a full time employee at that amount (Factoring in benefits).
It is probably the Union Employees making a fuss about ungodly consulting fees. But in truth Having this Legacy System running with a consultant keeping it running. Is probably the most financially prudent course of action that the department can do.
Replacement systems will cost millions to replace and support contracts will be much more then $178k a year. If they are going to replace a system, if they want to be financial prudent they should join up with other departments in that state and upgrade all of them. Because for most software the price would scale better with higher number of people using it.
Being that most programs are using under 10% of the system resources at the time, a single system can probably handle 3 or 4 times the load that are actually being used. So if the replacement system was bought and shared across multible departments they can split a lot of the costs and make it more financially responsible.
However at this moment, I wouldn't want my tax money going to an upgrade that will not offer any real benefit or cost savings. Just because what they have is on old software.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.