news The Federal Department of Health and Ageing has revealed it will be the latest Australian government agency to dump IBM’s Lotus Notes/Domino environment in favour of a switch to a collaboration platform built on the Outlook/Exchange ecosystem, as part of a continuing trend of migrations to the Microsoft platform.

In tender documents released yesterday and first reported by iTNews, the department noted that it currently used version 8.5 of the Lotus Notes/Domino system for its 6,000-odd staff located across some 40 sites around Australia. The platform is used for email, address books, contacts, calendaring and resource management (such as booking rooms) functionality.

“In late 2012, a decision was taken to transition/migrate email from Lotus Notes and Domino to Microsoft Outlook and Exchange,” the department noted. “This will allow the Department to more fully leverage the integrated functionality of the Microsoft Office suite and maximise the options available to it in considering the ongoing ICT support services and agreements that will be in place from mid-2015.”

As is common with organisations which have been using Notes/Domino for some time, the department also has a range of business applications which have been developed using the IBM platform, any of which interoperate with the email and calendar functions of Lotus. As part of its tendering effort kicked off this week, the department noted that it was also seeking advice on a strategy to decommission those platforms and establish alternate systems. It appears as though the department will go to market separately at some stage in the future for service providers to assist it with actually migrating off those legacy systems.

The current agreement under which DoHA operates its Lotus collaboration platform is an IT services arrangement which the department noted was scheduled to expire on 30 June 2015. “… there are sourcing and procurement strategies being developed to enable an appropriate sourcing process to be in place in advance of 30 June 2015,” the department wrote. “It is expected that the full migration of email from Lotus Notes and Domino to Microsoft Outlook and Exchange will be completed by June 2014, well in advance of any change in IT service provision arrangements.”

Also included as part of the deal will be the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which sources some, but not all, of its IT services from DoHA’s central IT function. The TGA has about 690 staff, primarily located in Canberra.

The news of DoHA’s shift away from Notes/Domino may reflect the first step in what could potentially be long-term plans to break up its extensive IT outsourcing agreement with IBM, which has not been formally tested in a tender process since it was signed in 1999.

In tender documents released in September 2012, DoHA noted that it was looking for an advising partner to develop and provide appropriate options for the provision of core ICT services; develop an ICT sourcing strategy, provide a project plan to implement the ICT sourcing strategy, and provide professional skills to develop the proposed ICT sourcing strategy. It is unclear how this new advice will relate to existing advice provided to Health on its ICT sourcing strategy and costing $1.5 million in 2010, as reported by iTNews.

It is unusual for sizable departments such as DoHA to require an external organisation to develop its IT sourcing strategy, with such a strategy more normally developed by the in-house office of the chief information officer. DoHA does have such an office — the Office of the chief information knowledge officer, as well as a centralised IT function which it describes as being responsible for the provision of the majority of its networked and shared IT services; and it also has discrete IT functions within certain line of business areas.

DoHA’s current chief information knowledge officer is Paul Madden, who was appointed to the position in December 2010.

The last time DoHA renewed the contract with IBM was in December 2010, after initially denying that it had done so, and in the context of significant media pressure from outlets such as iTNews, which has pointed out to Health that significant government contracts are required to be market tested through the tendering process regularly, to ensure departments are obtaining value for money. At the time, the department had gained special dispensation to be able to renew the long-running IBM contract without putting it to competitive tender.

Delimiter is currently seeking to access any ICT sourcing strategy advice provided to DoHA or developed internally, under Freedom of Information laws.

DoHA will be just the latest major Australian organisation to shift off Lotus Notes and onto Exchange, with many other groups having conducted such projects over the past few years. One notable exception is the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which has publicly described itself as “a happy Notes camper”.

opinion/analysis
It looks like the cracks are starting to appear in DoHA’s long-running relationship with IBM. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see it break up the contract substantially over the next year and hand chunks off to rival companies such as CSC or Fujitsu.

Tweet

1. Michael Wyres
   Posted 21/02/2013 at 1:48 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Fibre to the Notes…

   …slowly dying!

2. BrownieBoy
   Posted 21/02/2013 at 2:18 pm | Permalink | Reply

   “Outlook/Exchange is not an ecosystem or an application development platform” – Renai LeMay, October 2012

   http://delimiter.com.au/2012/10/02/lotus-position-abs-a-happy-notes-camper/#comment-500592

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 21/02/2013 at 2:23 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Huh? not sure what you’re saying.

     • BrownieBoy
       Posted 21/02/2013 at 2:53 pm | Permalink | Reply

       @Renai,

       In the article above, you have referred to Outlook/Exchange as an “ecosystem” once again, despite saying 3 months ago that it’s no such thing.

       • Renai LeMay
         Posted 21/02/2013 at 3:51 pm | Permalink | Reply

         It’s just a generic term. It’s obviously not the same style of app development platform which Notes/Domino has included as part of its functionality; I understand that ;)

3. Brad
   Posted 21/02/2013 at 4:13 pm | Permalink | Reply

   So replace a robust client/server system with generally trouble-free maintenance and upgrading abilities with one of the dodgiest systems on the planet. Then spend ludicrous amounts of money finding third party replacements for custom developed apps (please don’t even consider the joke that is SharePoint).

   *clap* *clap* *clap* Nice work.

4. Paul Sinclair
   Posted 21/02/2013 at 6:21 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Gee Renai , not as much Notes hate and gloating as usual. I’m impressed.

   BTW, you could update that Notes graphic seeming as its 5+ years old, but I guess you wouldn’t want to give the impression that Notes is an evolving open standards platform for Social Business as that would dilute the ‘delimiter’ message.

5. Anonymous
   Posted 22/02/2013 at 1:13 am | Permalink | Reply

   I wonder if they considered this? http://agimo.gov.au/policy-guides-procurement/open-source-software

   “The revised Australian Government Open Source Software Policy was released on 27 January 2011 and applies to any ICT procurement activity commenced after 1 March 2011. It requires agencies to consider open source software when undertaking software procurements.”

6. sceptic86
   Posted 22/02/2013 at 10:16 am | Permalink | Reply

   “In late 2012, a decision was taken to transition/migrate email from Lotus Notes and Domino to Microsoft Outlook and Exchange,”

   Isn’t that a bit backward? Make a decision to do something, announce it, commit to it and then work out a strategy?

   Suppose the strategy says: It will cost you ten times as much as you thought, take three times as long and you won’t get the same functionality out of the platform you have selected. It will also disrupt normal business operations and you won’t recoup the cost – ever.

   Surely the sensible thing would have been to work out the strategy first and make a decision based upon the data gathering and analysis you’ve just done?

   BTW, re “At the time, the department had gained special dispensation to be able to renew the long-running IBM contract without putting it to competitive tender.”

   If Health had not been given “special dispensation”, would Paul Madden and/or Jane Halton have been liable for prosecution under the FMA?

   • Ben Zemm
     Posted 22/02/2013 at 9:35 pm | Permalink | Reply

     I know! We could call it the Gruntmaster 6000!

7. Stephen H
   Posted 22/02/2013 at 11:45 am | Permalink | Reply

   I was in the Department about 10 years ago, and its Notes implementation was abysmal. If you can’t actually use the features, just get an email program.

8. Jason Browm
   Posted 22/02/2013 at 3:24 pm | Permalink | Reply

   How come no alternatives have been considered? Why just Microsoft ? What about the FMA ?

   No one can replace Notes and Domino with Exchange at Health and the TGA because they do more than email with.

   Email can be swapped, but the Domino infrastructure will remain. Just ask Centrelink, DFAT, Defence, FaCISA, Westpac, NAB, Qantas etc how it goes down. The truth is out there. Two infrastructures – two sets of cost.

   I know, I know they will buy Sharepoint, SQL Server, IIS, Lynx and rewrite stuff… but that cost money. Surely in 2012 Health has better things to do with our money… like reducing waiting times in emergency rooms – sorry what was I thinking.

9. BrownieBoy
   Posted 23/02/2013 at 10:41 am | Permalink | Reply

   Rare for a Govt department to declare its own incompetence so openly. Hey, we’ve already made our decision, now we just need to decide what it is we want to do. What do you mean, the horse doesn’t *push* the cart?

   I mean, why spend our tax dollars on something like actual health care when instead, you can be ringing the dinner bell for every IT consultancy in Australia to come and replace the working solutions that you already have?

10. Gavin Bollard
    Posted 25/02/2013 at 11:05 am | Permalink | Reply

    I hope it works out for them. We need good healthcare.

    I’d rather they kept the old system if it was working and put the money into places where it matters though.

11. z dywanami
    Posted 08/03/2013 at 10:49 am | Permalink | Reply

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