Met Police quizzed by London Assembly member over Windows XP

[DJ-1701]

'A London Assembly member has questioned why the Metropolitan Police are still using Windows XP on tens of thousands of computers.'

 

Met Police quizzed by London Assembly member over Windows XP - BBC News

[Vasriel]

They spent £1.65 million on extended support, they still have 27,000 PCs still to be updated and they are not updating them to Windows 10.

 

No wonder theres not enough Police Officers these days when these kind of decisions are being made.

[just_david]

buried right at the bottom: stuck because of legacy software.

 

I wonder if this will happen again with windows 7 or if there's less bespoke software around

[mavhc]

Why don't people ask someone to teach them about what they need to ask for with software: 1. The Source Code. 2. The Source Code. 3. The Source Code. 4. Standard OS API usage, why doesn't it work on Win7/10, not much has changed. 5. The Source Code. 6. Standard OS Deployment method (waves to Capita). 7. Same for the server parts. 8. The Source Code. 9. The Documentation to go with the source code, that you actually gave to another company to read and see if it was complete. 10. The Source Code.

[Blue_Cookeh]

Why don't people ask someone to teach them about what they need to ask for with software: 1. The Source Code. 2. The Source Code. 3. The Source Code. 4. Standard OS API usage, why doesn't it work on Win7/10, not much has changed. 5. The Source Code. 6. Standard OS Deployment method (waves to Capita). 7. Same for the server parts. 8. The Source Code. 9. The Documentation to go with the source code, that you actually gave to another company to read and see if it was complete. 10. The Source Code.

 

Agreed, how can you have bespoke software developed and paid for without having a clause in there that agrees to hand over all source code?!

 

and if it isn't bespoke? Maybe it's time to look at a supported alternative.

[FN-GM]

Why don't people ask someone to teach them about what they need to ask for with software: 1. The Source Code. 2. The Source Code. 3. The Source Code. 4. Standard OS API usage, why doesn't it work on Win7/10, not much has changed. 5. The Source Code. 6. Standard OS Deployment method (waves to Capita). 7. Same for the server parts. 8. The Source Code. 9. The Documentation to go with the source code, that you actually gave to another company to read and see if it was complete. 10. The Source Code.

 

Whilst it doesn't solve the problem 100% but it would help loads if they make more software web browser based and not tied to a particular platform.

 

Also instead of paying all this money to support XP why not put it into development work to make this software compatible?

Edited August 11, 2016 by FN-GM

[just_david]

Why don't people ask someone to teach them about what they need to ask for with software: 1. The Source Code. 2. The Source Code. 3. The Source Code. 4. Standard OS API usage, why doesn't it work on Win7/10, not much has changed. 5. The Source Code. 6. Standard OS Deployment method (waves to Capita). 7. Same for the server parts. 8. The Source Code. 9. The Documentation to go with the source code, that you actually gave to another company to read and see if it was complete. 10. The Source Code.

 

I doubt if the companies would want to release the source code, and even if they did would anyone be around have the expertise to update it.

 

and what standard api's do they use, can it be done with standard api's.

and

did these standards exist back when it was designed

 

I guess more web based apps would reduce the problem in the long term

[3s-gtech]

I'd guess it's things like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOLMES_2 - doesn't look like it's been updated for years but I bet it's still used.

[DJ-1701]

I just hope they are moving to the 64-Bit OS... and not running any 16-Bit applications...

[mikeprice]

I'd guess it's things like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOLMES_2 - doesn't look like it's been updated for years but I bet it's still used.

 

Yup - that'll be it I imagine.

 

Having said that I knew of a company that I used to work for that was still routing all the credit card authorisation through a system that I wrote when I worked there in 1995 - it ran on DOS and it still worked fine 5 years ago

(When I wrote them in those days I wrote them to last!!!!)

[mavhc]

HOLMES 2 - Home Office Large Major Enquiry System

 

How quaint

[unixman_again]

They spent £1.65 million on extended support, they still have 27,000 PCs still to be updated and they are not updating them to Windows 10.

 

The hardware may not support W10 and replacing a whole swag of PCs that will is probably too expensive. That's the problem with modern hardware - it's just too reliable and far outlasts the o/ses. I remember when it was the other way around.

[sted]

The hardware may not support W10 and replacing a whole swag of PCs that will is probably too expensive. That's the problem with modern hardware - it's just too reliable and far outlasts the o/ses. I remember when it was the other way around.

 

it would have to be pretty old not to support windows 10 as it runs at least to me better on older hardware than 7/8 Ive got it running on some crappy on hyperthreaded p4s and Celerons they must be 7+ years old

[3s-gtech]

We're picking on HOLMES2 here, but the recommended minimum requirements for the 'mobile' version are:

 

Intel® Pentium® M Processor 780 (2.26GHz)

Windows XP Professional SP1a or SP2

MS Office 2000 (SR-1) or MS Office XP (Service Pack 3)

Hard disk 100GB (7200 RPM)

DVD/CD-RW combo

Memory 2GB

 

That page hasn't been updated since Vista's release, so I doubt much has changed. There may be others, such as the interfaces used to access the PNC (the central system is fine, but individual force setups may not be) plus I found the force's access to IT staff, upgrades and resources pretty painful. How's about staff training PCs running NT4 in late 2005? The funding isn't really there, until something goes majorly wrong (such as an extensive malware infestation on their creaking old networks) when suddenly it all gets a knee jerk, poorly planned upgrade which then suffers bugs and implementation issues for the next several years. Windows 8.1 is a great OS IMO, but I think they need to plan better and think further ahead.

[FN-GM]

Out of curiosity I have requested the Windows XP information from Greater Manchester Police.

[localzuk]

The hardware may not support W10 and replacing a whole swag of PCs that will is probably too expensive. That's the problem with modern hardware - it's just too reliable and far outlasts the o/ses. I remember when it was the other way around.

 

27,000 PCs replaced at around £400 each for the PC alone, that's about £11m. Double that to cover the cost of actually installing them and the like. So, £22m. Let's round it up to a nice round £30m, to cover those machines that need a bit of specialisation. That's less than 1% of the Met's annual budget. They've had several years to do it, so could have spread the cost also, meaning their yearly spend would have been less than 0.5% of their budget.

 

I think they can afford it!

[DJ-1701]

Out of curiosity I have requested the Windows XP information from Greater Manchester Police.

 

[Mock Response]At present time we only have one machine with Windows XP. After exhausted testing, we plan to roll this out to the rest of the PCs the beginning of next year.[/Mock Response]

 

With regard to Windows 8 still being installed, to be fair a lot of organisations tend to leave it a year before contemplating the move to a new platform, just to see the general issues and bugs, and hope that the majority have been fixed.

[localzuk]

I wonder if they use VDI or similar? Would seem sensible for an organisation like the Met. Most of their machines will be running identical setups, and there's no need for the clients to be anything but thin clients. In which case, switching OS's would be as simple as pointing clients at a different VDI image, once it was ready.

[TechMonkey]

27,000 PCs replaced at around £400 each for the PC alone, that's about £11m. Double that to cover the cost of actually installing them and the like. So, £22m. Let's round it up to a nice round £30m, to cover those machines that need a bit of specialisation. That's less than 1% of the Met's annual budget. They've had several years to do it, so could have spread the cost also, meaning their yearly spend would have been less than 0.5% of their budget.

 

I think they can afford it!

 

But they are being asked to slash their budgets year on year plus have more front line officers. Yes I think someone has dropped the ball here, but I doubt it is as simple as reallocating 1% of a budget that I bet is allocated within an inch of its life already.

[3s-gtech]

It's an investment. If they lose/leak confidential information (and they handle some incredibly sensitive information) due to an unpatched security flaw in outdated and unsupported software, that £30m could start to look like a sound purchase. The lack of any sort of Bitlocker encryption on those machines compounds it, my experience was also of some fairly lax security practice for users (emailing the CI from a colleague's unlocked workstation notwithstanding).

[mjk]

They could just convert them to chromeboxes and spend the "£30M cost" of windows on updating their awful software to something web based.

 

...or spend it on policemen or donuts or something.

[mavhc]

The main question to ask is: did you not see this coming? What did you expect would happen?

[Geoff]

Speaking of legacy, do the police still have their ICL mainframes with VME I wonder?

[3s-gtech]

Looks like that's what the PNC runs on, still. I don't think there's an issue with that, so long as it has remained patched and upgraded (as it's a centralised system this is more likely).