I seem to have a never ending battle with our IT people. Right now, two things are bothering me, both involving e-mail.
The first is the smaller of the two and involves how the Lotus Notes server is setup. Currently, we have to use the proprietary (read that expensive) Lotus Notes client to access the server. Although the server can be setup to use the widely accepted POP3 and SMTP protocols, our IT people would rather tie us to the proprietary software from Lotus. While this does allow us to use the "features" of Notes, such as calendaring and such, it comes at a very large cost (about $100US per license vs. no cost for any POP3/SMTP mail client and, of course, about $50,000 for the Notes server license). In these times of economic downturn, one has to wonder which is more important, calendaring or saving tens of thousands of dollars per year?
The other thing relates to domain names. Our current domain is courts.state.hi.us. As far as I know, it is compliant with the standard naming conventions for non-federal (US) governmental agencies. While all government entities in the US, through about 1994, used the .GOV top-level domain, I think it changed to having only US federal agencies to use .GOV and all other government agencies to use the .US domain. This is based on RFC 1581.
I don't know if things have changed since then, but as far as I know, it hasn't. If it hasn't, I have to wonder why we are beginning the process to change from .US to .GOV? I contacted the head of our IT division and he said we are just following the Hawai'i Executive Branch which has already changed over. When I asked him what RFC or other Internet standard this was based on he said he did not know and referred my to the Executive Branch person in charge of that change.
If anyone can point to anything that says, one way or the other, which domain state government agencies are to use I would appreciate it. Thanks in advance.
Aloha!
Comments (4)
The domain change sounds like a political descision.
As is replacing Notes with something cheaper.
An aditional problem here is that it's dificult to take away a feature, like the calendaring. It depends strongly on who actually uses it. If it's just some low-level 'troops' then it's no issue. But you don't touch the General's toys that easily.
Posted by sjon | July 31, 2003 10:40 PM
Posted on July 31, 2003 22:40
Changing from Notes has costs as well as saving money. As Sjon noted there's how you replace the calendar feature (or justify it's absence to those that used it). The other costs are the replacement. The client itself might be free from license (eg. Outlook Express), but there's the setup and support issues. If the company is large then there are a lot of people who will be unfamiliar and will need training, ongoing support, and that's after you've taken the time to move all their email accross and setup the new client.
Factor that in, and the savings might not be so great.
Just a thought.
Posted by Phil | August 1, 2003 12:57 AM
Posted on August 1, 2003 00:57
Just because Domino DOES support the usage of SMTP / POP3 / iMAP / does not (I believe) mean that there is NO client cost to access them. Ithink you will ifnd that there is still a requirement for the client to have a "Client Access License" or CAL to use the services.
Posted by Peter | August 2, 2003 5:18 AM
Posted on August 2, 2003 05:18
The RFC you're looking for is RFC 2146, U.S. Government Internet Domain Names, May 1997, which has a back-trail (don't all RFCs?) to 1995. Basically, previously-registered .gov entities which aren't part of the federal government are encouraged to change to the .state.us domain. New registrations are restricted to US federal agencies under a "one agency, one name" rule. I'd suspect that what's happening is that the Hawaiian agencies are trying to simplify a situation where people don't know where to look for everyone.
Posted by Jon | August 4, 2003 4:40 AM
Posted on August 4, 2003 04:40