Baltimore Police Department Is Still Using Lotus Notes (baltimoresun.com) 138
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that the assessment addressed, Baltimore's spending panel agreed to pay $176,800 to the consultant to help maintain the outdated system.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that the assessment addressed, Baltimore's spending panel agreed to pay $176,800 to the consultant to help maintain the outdated system.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.
Anyone report a robbery (Score:5, Funny)
suspect calls himself a "consultant"
Re:Anyone report a robbery (Score:4, Interesting)
$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.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but that's bull. I know what I get paid, working for a federal contractor, and I know what they pay for my benefits. ALL THE REST of the loading is for corporate managers, and ROI.
If he's been maintaining it for more that 2 years, they should have just hired him.
And *someone's* got to nurse it along, until the City springs a few tens of mill to replace the system, including the new hardware to run it on.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Don't forget Groove. The bastard child of Lotus Notes adopted by MS then euthanized.
Why is this news? (Score:1)
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?
Ewwww... (Score:2)
Re: Ewwww... (Score:2, Interesting)
Painful because of Microsoft.
Share point sucks. See, now thatâ(TM)s a technical opinion.
Re: (Score:3)
That is not a technical opinion, that is an undisputed, unqualified, provable fact.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Ewwww... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft drastically dumbed down SharePoint for Office365 which has made it less prone to failure but nobody bothers to use it still due to the terrible UI that Microsoft forces on everything for the sake of being "touch friendly".
Re:Ewwww... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Are you referring to the migration itself, or the fact that afterward you’re stuck using Sharepoint?
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, get Sharepoint to replicate to 100 different sites across the world.
Re:Ewwww... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Maintaining and upgrading a custom police crime tracking system.
Yea it’s old but how many institutions have the random Access database.
Re: (Score:3)
My first encounter with Lotus notes went something like this, "what a piece of shit." You could pay me to manage it, but I doubt you could afford me.
Re: (Score:2)
I was forced into it via the company being bought by the French. But like an arranged marriage you can grow to love each other. Now that yet another French company is buying the current French company we face moving away from it to something Microsoft. The sad thing is that my Global Messaging Team in the last two years has really cleaned the crap out of the 100 odd sites running servers. We have WebEx meetings with my team members in France and Pennsylvania, me in Everett, twice a week. I'm sad to se
Re: (Score:2)
I used Lotus Notes about two decades ago. I still shudder at the thought of it.
Re: (Score:1)
I completely agree! I too was forced to use Lotus Notes from my contracting employer, and MS Outlook at the company I was supporting.
My contracting employer would pop rivets if I wasn't watching my LN inbox 24/7. My excuse was a consistent "I was busy supporting the client". It was a daily hell monitoring both the 200+ daily emails from Outlook and the noise from LN all day every day. And I never really got the hang of LN. And I never cared to. Their version of LN was years behind and sucked ass to use. I h
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd rather go back to rooms full of filing cabinets than use SharePoint.
Lotus Notes is amazing. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
It got a glorious review [codinghorror.com] by a respected developer.
Re: Lotus Notes is amazing. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Sending secure mail internally was easy as long as you kept track of you user's .id files.
Re: (Score:3)
My God... The time wasted dealing with .id files. What do you mean I can't just reset my password? What is this unintuitive PoS?
Directory (NDS/AD) integration? Huh? It's just a fad, we can ignore that...
When it comes to technology nightmares, LN gets filed right with BB and BES. Security at the expense of everything else.
Re: (Score:2)
But Notes was/is actually secure. Some guy with kali VM isn't going to be just accessing everyone's mailbox in 10min like up until very recently was the situation on most AD/Echange/Outlook environments.
But hey who care right. Having the entire company bent over because someone clicked a phish mail was totally worth it so you could avoid 30min waiting for helpdesk to get you a new id file or and because you are to dumb to remember your password.
Re:Lotus Notes is amazing. (Score:4, Informative)
"outlook was better than the Lotus Mail client"
ANYTHING would be better than the Lotus mail client. Kids shooting wadded-up paper notes as spitwads through straws would be better. I was forced to use Lotus Notes for about a year and still shudder. The UI was obtuse. It was feature-poor and slow, painfully slow, to deliver messages. It was unstable. It was bad in every way that software can be bad. We ended up using the telephone a lot more than a modern software operation should, because e-mail was so bad. Whoever programmed it should be shot.
I never used Notes for anything other than e-mail, but that experience would make me run screaming from the rest of it. It's very hard to square your "nothing to compare" observation with my experience.
Re: (Score:1)
This! All day long it sucked ass! It sucked ass so baaaaaaaad!! From the end user perspective, it was easily the WORST email client I've ever used! Fucking AOL was better than Lotus Notes!
Re:Lotus Notes is amazing. (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Domino is a strange name for software, being that dominoes are associated with falling over.
Re: (Score:2)
But don't knock Domino
Or you may find your 100 servers falling over one after the other?
Re: (Score:1)
...Said no one ever
There's a reason no one uses it anymore. It tries to be everything, but good at nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
I used Notes at a place I consulted at in the late 90's, and I thought it was pretty good, at least as a concept, for it kept losing messages for some reason. Perhaps it was configured wrong.
I even once started an OSS project to emulate the parts of it I liked. But I got distracted and never finished.
For example, you could pose a question, and list all pending questions, and sort or filter them by project, application, entity, etc. based on user-defined categories or lists. Most places use email or SharePoi
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the other competing factor Notes had back in the day was Groupwise. If you were a Novell Netware shop, odds were good in the late 1990s you ran Groupwise as your email/calendaring application because of the Netware integration.
Migrating and interoperating betweeen MS/Novell was kind of practical, so it was a pretty logical migration path when Novell started to spiral in the early 2000s and people started wanting a general purpose operating system capable of running more than just file sharing. Plus
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Notes was never the best solution for E-mail but it absolutely was genius at everything else it did; but like any powerful tool you did need to learn how to use it. Oh it was also secure too. Beyond that offline replication meant you actually could do meaningful work on your portable while traveling. To this day I can't do as much with my laptop on plane for example because without VPN access so I can hit swarepoint - I have no current information, have to make manual list of the all the documents I hav
sounds like a bargain (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't inject facts and logic, they don't like that on Slashdot.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
$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
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What was once OS/400 running on AS/400 is now IBM i running on Power (they merged i series and p series into a unified Power line a while back too besides just the various OS rebranding along the way)
Re: (Score:2)
What was once OS/400 running on AS/400 is now IBM i running on Power (they merged i series and p series into a unified Power line a while back too besides just the various OS rebranding along the way),
Well, it's been on POWER now for quite some time, just with some kind of hardware translation in the middle. Did they port "IBM i" (gack) directly to POWER now?
Re: (Score:2)
I have 100 Domino servers on Windows Server, one on an AS400 (to be retired) and have it running on CentOS in my lab (damn corporate fear the Linux.) The AS400 is slated for replacement but I do have to say it is one solid bit of kit.
Re: (Score:3)
People resort to paper because it's what they're used to, not necessarily because an electronic system is inadequate.
That's not to say it isnt inadequate, just that fitness for its intended purpose often has very little effect on wether a system is actually deployed or used.
Re: (Score:2)
Presumably using the system is part of their job. Can't cops follow instructions?
Re: (Score:2)
$176k is probably 3/4 of an FTE, and considering the City's police budget is about $500m, there probably isn't much room for any kind of wholesale replacement. I have worked with Lotus Notes in the past. It has a lot of faults, but it I recall that the servers were quite robust, and just kept working. In a cash-strapped city budget, it is hard to justify paying for replacement when the current system works, albeit sounds like there is a lot of room for improvement.
Re: (Score:2)
That was my thought exactly.
The advantage of a new system is not price or even total cost of ownership.
The advantage is being able to find staff who can support the system. Taking advantage of modern infrastructure that is more reliable. And using the upgrade to clean up a lot of junk.
But new systems vs the cost of maintaining a funky home grown system is going to be expensive and expensive to maintain.
Ugh (Score:2)
Did IBM ever make their money back on Lotus? How much did they spend on it? IIRC it was like $2 billion in 1995 doll
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure they have made that up with just my company and 100 server with 30,000 users. But really, it's not as bad as you think.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure about improved but we have beat them in to stable.
Wait... (Score:2, Insightful)
This conclusion makes me think that there are some out there that want to purge anything, people or kit older than 10 years.,,
so what? (Score:3)
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?
Really? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Just migrated from Lotus Notes (Score:2)
And we're much larger and far more profitable than the Baltimore Police Department.
Re: (Score:2)
My last exposure to Load Us Notes was 10 years ago. The databases were non-relational flat files and yes, there were hundreds of them. And hundreds. As an email system I think it was ok, but people started wanting to do more with it
Re: (Score:2)
Going through that now with 100 servers and 30k users. Some servers have Enterprise Vault, some are DAOS, most are running applications that the site never told you about but it is business critical. Email me, I need a shoulder to cry on.
Wait, are you saying everything changes? (Score:2)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
Cars last about 15 years. They can last 50, or 5. When you replace them depends on the economics of keeping them running. When you can't get service techs, and parts shoot up in price, you figure out how to migrate to and finance a less expensive car.
If your local police department was running a fleet of 30 year old Ford LTD Crown Vics [imcdb.org] you would rightfully question the economics. And (possibly) rightfully decide to keep them running.
Lotus Notes is nearly 30 years old [ibm.com], though its architecture dates to th
Canadian Salvation Army (Score:1)
Is this a Microsoft Ad ? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Hrumph! Server is Domino 9.0.2 and stable client is Notes 9.02FP7. They have FP10 our but we haven't tested it. One really fucked up thing is that FP can mean Fix Pack or Feature Pack. FP7 was the latest Fix Pack.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not just supported by IBM but they dogfood it too. It'll be around for a while after IBM gives up, even.
I wouldn't recommended it, but Baltimore PD got 99 problems (mostly with corruption) and this ain't one of them.
Re: (Score:3)
3) The article does not says which version of Lotus Notes are they using.
Sure they do. It says it right there in the first line of the summary: "The Baltimore police department". Given police funding in America this directly translates to Lotus Notes 2 running on a Netware network.
For the time, LN was awesome (Score:2)
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
We use very old computers (Score:2)
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.
Sharepoint is the new Notes (Score:2)
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.
Suck it Microsoft (Score:2)
something something ain't done
A bit of a ridiculous story... (Score:1)
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.
tf (Score:1)
Re:tf (Score:4, Informative)
An ancient groupware product maintained and sold by IBM.
It's built on replicating proprietary non-SQL databases, a PKI system for access control, encryption and digital signatures. The servers can translate the content into web pages, or fat clients can access the system using the native format.
It's honestly an amazing bit of software which gets a bad rep due to a clunky UI, predating open standards on many of these things and a very fat, fat client.
IBM's purchase of Lotus and subsequent poor marketing has kept it from competing with MS for decades now. It's been relegated to government use and IBM use. The concept is due for a re-invention, but cloud services like Google Docs and o365 provide the most important bits of functionality and are closest to replacing its capabilities.
IBM is very good at supporting things for a LONG time, so I don't think it's going to disappear very soon.
Lotus Notes gets a bad rep. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
This Is An Outrage! (Score:1)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Bullshit reporting (Score:2)
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
That's okay, Arizona uses Lotus Notes extensively (Score:1)
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 ama
GDPR (Score:1)