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moritzwarhierHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

Sounds like Germany, and it's not just public services

Sounds like Germany, and it's not just public services. I used to work part-time in 1st level IT support in a local hospital when I was younger. The main "theme" of my superior's work subjects there (2009-2016) was the migration from XP to 7. You heard that right. And apart from the usual Office- and AD-Lock-In, the most problematic workstations of course were always ones with very specialized software. Virtualization and terminal services were in use, but the whole selling point of Windows was mostly put ad absurdum already, because they needed Windows licenses for dedicated machines running e.g. specialized MRT software, but those weren't even part of the main network anyway. They needed arcane syncing procedures anyway and Windows provided no value whatsoever on these devices. Same for the patient monitoring systems on ICU beds. …

Original discussionDigital vassals? French Government ‘exposes citizens’ data to US'180 source comments · at import
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Saline9515HN

Having worked for the French state and wrestled a few times with its IT services, I can tell you that the reason for choosing Microsoft isn't cost, or "efficiency". It's that they only know Microsoft, they don't want to learn something else, and if there's a problem, it's Microsoft's fault, no theirs, so they don't have to deal with their own incompetence. If you want an anecdote, we were working with SAS, a statistical software which required costly licences (more than a million € for a few dozens of workers). I suggested to switch to R or Python to the top director, who agreed. First meeting with the service in charge, the chief opens with "ok, we are asked to change, but the goal here is to show that we tried, and found that it's not possible." I resigned a few months after, as everything was in the same vein.

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sampl3usernameHN

I also had an encounter with government software... I think the long-lasting solution will be to move to a web-based application system, instead of depending on Desktop applications made for Windows or Linux. Using a web app system, the government only has to concern itself with proper development and maintenance of servers and web apps, and the public workers can use any operating system with a web browser.

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protocoltureHN

>What I'm trying to say is: like in many offices, any slight change made users hostile, I remember doing a Windows 7 deployment for a customer, and one of their staff had 3 A4 binders. Probably 1000 pages, of typed notes about how Windows XP works. The second she sat down at her new Windows 7 machine it was like she had lost her memory. She was instantly aggravated and couldnt find the start menu. Dropped her windows xp binders in the bin and told me to effectively "get lost" so she can relearn it from scratch. I was thrown. Like its basically the same system with some UI tweaks but she was acting like I had pushed her onto debian or something.

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toodleooHN

I’ve come to find that change is not always good, and resistance to change can be good for those that resist. For example, our German team knew the software that headquarters was going to deploy to them was broken, so they secretly continued to use their old existing process. When the new software was deployed “successfully”, the same software was then deployed in the U.S. and broke horribly. The Germans were told that their responsibility was their region (only), so they literally took care of themselves and refused to be forced to be the guinea pigs. In addition, I’ve come to learn not to immediately upgrade my OS at work, if I can help it. Typically, being an early adopter means you can get some nasty bugs that sometimes can take days to figure out. No thanks.

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edwcrossHN

> seriously, google "cologne KVB windows trashcan" I did, and didn't get any relevant results. I had to google "koeln kVB windows papierkorb" to get several photos with screenshots of such screens.

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