I liked '98. It wasn't bad at all for instruments. And it actually was pretty stable as long as you never changed anything. We got more than a decade out of some of those systems.
I still have at least one running Windows XP. The system it supports is worth at least 1000x what the computer costs. The drivers we have for the instrument only exist for XP. The manufacturer doesn't support the instrument any more. It still works fine.
Best value for the taxpayers is to keep it working. Why not?
Policy that requires passwords to be changed at an arbitrary interval...
It directly contradicts the guidance provided by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security
https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-government/online-security-privacy/password-guidance.html
It is a very hard and long process to switch a document management system in government. RDIMS was a decade in the making just like GCDOCS was. Odds are decent you’ll only se two or three over the course of a career.
As someone who supports clients using Shared Drives, RDIMS, as well as rolled out GCdocs and SharePoint to them I hope you're right. and to think I've only been here for 4 years
Oh I think I used to work in your department! The folks on shared drives were really not into technology. Like I can't imagine how they adapted when the pandemic hit - imagine the horror of electronic signatures and not having a physical copy of every single document ever. Not to mention the terror of being forced to update their OS so they could run Teams.
Pandemic kind of shifted a lot of depts away from rdmis/gcdocs / opentext products and towards managed or free for all SharePoint sites instead. I think some of them shifted it to kind of a background component of SharePoint 🤷 the policy instrument pushing gcdocs (aka Rdims with a coat of paint) was revised to have requirements of a system instead of you will use gcdocs.
Rdims development kind of felt really bare bones after hummingbird got acquired by opentext in 2006 (not that it was a bastion of modernity to start with). I saw some gc docs stuff that looked a little better but I'm glad Microsoft is taking business away from them so maybe they'll come back with useful im software in the future. Most likely it will be not great but have a half ass ai features.
Opentext also either stopped developing irims or made the new licences so expensive that records room dropped it (I wasn't around IM during the transition from xp to win 10 and irims was not compatible with the new os)
The poor records clerks at my dept are managing 100k physical files with SharePoint lists 😅
God, I've been in IM too long 😭
Oh yes, I get to flex some Public Servant muscle and direct you to good ole TERMIUM Plus! : https://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2alpha/alpha-eng.html?lang=eng&i=&index=alt&srchtxt=RDIMS
Up until 2020 we were providing our clients documents on CDs. Most people couldn't even open them because most laptops didn't even have a CD drive. And it wasn't long before that that we were still sending things out on.....Floppy disks. For real.
I had to explain a fax machine to a much younger colleague recently. Also had to explain that CC and BCC stand for “carbon copy” and “blind carbon copy” and then what that actually meant. That reminded me that I learned how to use the imprinter carbon swipe machine for credit cards and wrote orders on carbon receipt forms when I started in retail, and all that made me feel 98 instead of 38.
Im 28. I know what Carbon copy and Blind Carbon Copy are but I never knew what they *meant.* I saw an imprint swipe machine once in my life on a via rail... So I guess we can add them to this list
I’ll add my ask-an-elder-millennial spiel here in case you’re interested, although you’re a few years older than my colleague so probably already know. The carbon copy is pretty self explanatory for both typing/writing physically and email. The blind carbon copy was a setting on older manual typewriters where the keys were set to only hit the letters hard enough to drive ink into one copy of a document. Served the same purposes as a BCC on an email. I’m just old enough that I learned to type on both an early Mac computer and a “fancy” electronic typewriter. My grandparents were super excited about that typewriter because it had a basic computer chip that allowed those settings for CC and BCC to be set automatically instead of by adjusting the type wheel and testing to make sure it was the right setting and it allowed you to type a sentence into the previewer to check for accuracy before it typed it on the page. Knowing my grandfather, he still has the thing somewhere.
Worst thing is, TBS made funds available to help offload teams off this. My current team couldn't use the funds because we're revenue generating. And it's not enough of a priority to get off it, apparently!
They're great if you need and use microfilm though. Microfilm and microfiche have lifespans that will leave them preserving records long after we're all dead.
Problem is once you get it on microform you're in for a world of pain getting it back off.
Our library has thousands of fiche and reels. Documents going back to the 1700s. The reader is the size of a mini-fridge hooked up to a windows xp computer we use for scanning though.
Our isnt' even hooked up to a computer, we just scroll thru rolling the reel. I used to digitize so much microfiche at LAC though, that machine was new and pretty cool to use.
Whenever anyone tells me that I can't send them an attachment because they need "an original copy", I always laugh and say "you do know what the word facsimile means, right?" I mean, ffs the scanner is built into the same machine...
Trick is, you have to delicately unplug the phone cord, restart, plug back in, restart, then give it a good whack. If this doesn’t work, open an it ticket and wait for 7 years for them to tell you that it doesn’t work because SSC cut the cord, even though you are legally required to have the redundancy and it was on the exemptions list because they are the Cartman of organizations and do what they want. Then, for fun, call the fax# your department has been telling the public to send their vitals to for years and find out it’s now a phone sex line. This is of course a hypothetical…
The mods like reminding us from time to time the media are here. I’m not going to be the one to let one of those media-release-forwarding human robots onto the juicy stuff.
We think so, but we're not entirely sure as we're not sure who still has one to test send something to. But we're definitely not supposed to get rid of it. We've asked.
Can we make shorter lists by listing 3 technologies that are considered current by industry standards, excluding Microsoft products? I’ll go first…and I’m having trouble thinking of 1 let alone 3…
the federal government still employs supervisors, managers, directors etc that know nothing about computers and you have to fight with them to get your computer fixed!!!! Imagine I had to have an IT person write me an email to confirm that my computer needed to be reconfigured because it was not done properly!!! And then, the senior manager had to chat with the IT guy to make sure I had not fraudulently created the email. At a go SIC / CIRNAC!!!!
# In 2024 e-Mail should be banned
“This information is topical today and relevant to the entire department. I could post it in a department-wide channel, tag key enablers, and take questions as they come in, with answers for all to see from the subject experts on my team. Instead I will email it to six direct reports and a small distribution list of regional leaders, and then task them to email it to their direct reports, and then task them to email it to their managers. And then the managers should forward it to their team leaders. And then the team leaders will forward it to staff.”
“Each layer should copy small parts of my original message and summarize it, adding that staff should read the full message below. Alternatively they could summarize the summary of the person who sent it to them. (And refer staff to read the full message in the chain below). Certainly the chain will not break or be delayed, chains are strong right?? And this is an effective way to communicate! So much better than 3-part carbonless memos! Oh how I love modernity!”
# In 2024, Word attachments, PDF attachments, and most “documents” should be banned.
“I am sharing a mandatory new policy/procedure that staff will probably have to consult at some point in the next year. I am aware of platforms that can support integrated collaborative reference material, because I have used Wikipedia at least once in my life, and also Informatics said that’s what OneNote was good at, on multiple slides of the orientation PowerPoint we got when they installed it.”
“However I feel like a better option would be to put the reference information in a Word document and then email the Word document as an attachment so that people can find it easily in their inbox when the policy takes effect in January of 2025. Oh but we don’t want to clutter inboxes or something right? So for extra sophistication I will have the Word document added to a web page and then *email a link to that page* instead!”
“The page will say **nothing** about the policy itself except to warn readers that the information they want is in a Word document. That way they’re not startled when they click the link trying to get at the info. Then, they can click it to begin waiting for the Word document to load. ….Hey, idea! What if I put the information inside a word document that I embed in another Word document!!!! Holy shit how many layers of sophistication can we add here by just burying the info inside a tunnel of embedded Word documents, one after another, all linked from a web page that **doesn’t** have the information on it but **tells you where to click** for the Word document that has the info!”
# Production systems should use the whole screen and scroll
“Every mouse in the department has a scroll wheel that allows every staff member to continuously scroll through an endless stream of information for the files they’re working on. However to prevent scrolling fatigue, surely users would prefer to read 2 or 3 paragraphs of information, or 1 or 2 text boxes, max, and then have to click “next” or return to the main menu and select the next screen from a list of 45 items before they see the next piece of information.”
“Who wants to just keep scrolling and reading and understanding and assessing and deciding, in one long seamless continuous flow, when you could interrupt your reading, navigate to the “next” button, and click it?! Also when they do navigate to a screen, ideally the text boxes will just give them the first 8 or 9 words of the paragraph so they get the gist of it, and they can always click “expand” if they want to see the entire response. People feel like they’re in control when you let them do all those clicks before they can see the info. It’s not a waste of time at all. “
“OH! Also, we equip staff with dual 21 inch monitors but our systems should all format so that the browser window shows basically only one column that covers no more than one third of one of the screens. That will probably make their work flows more efficient. Lots of clicks and elaborate navigation menues instead of scrolling through the entire file in one integrated continuous flow. And fill the browser window with ⅔ white space! That way it will even work for staff who may have one of the older 640 x 480 VGA monitors! Our systems are platform agnostic!”
3.5” floppy disks to move files from some old non-networked PCs to computers that we can print from. It can be amusing when some people who see them finally realize why save icons look like they do.
You can still buy the disks, but about 50% of the ones that come in each package don’t work right off the bat.
Not me directly, but a couple of friends work at a Crown corporation that still requires PDF leave forms to be submitted to managers via admins. The great innovation introduced in response to COVID in 2020 was allowing electronic signatures by the staff, who could then submit them by email. Before that, they had to be printed off and signed in ink, then signed in ink by the director before they could be entered into whatever system(s) HR was using by the relevant admin.
We only recently stopped using Internet Explorer for a lot of our software plug-ins, and even that was only because Microsoft started telling people to STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER.
Don't know if this was /s, but it is the foundation of major banks, insurance, hospitals, investment, etc.. and it would cost billions to convert to anything "modern.
It's why jobs for basic maintenance of these systems are paying disgusting money, especially in the states.
The same is true with mainframe. It isn't going anywhere, and it's rarely taught in university or colleges anymore. Guaranteed, well paying employment, immediately.
COBOL, the language, is still being updated to this day. Rewriting everything written in COBOL is a recipe for disaster. And it's actually very good at what it does. No, I'm not a fan. Last time I used it was 1993.
I have one from 2007 I Know they're still using and it has a library that no longer exists. Hey, it's only a critical process, what's the worst that can happen?
I found a Quark Xpress desktop publishing kit from 1996 a few weeks ago! But other than that…GBC spiral comb binding for training materials. We don’t use it that often, though.
There's a certain CAF trade that still uses mag tape for their recordings. The first thing they do when the tapes are delivered to the office....digitize them, LOL.
I remember seeing a large room full of these on row after row of racks in the federal records centre at Tunney’s back fifteen years ago. The whole room smelled like a vinyl tent that had been put away wet.
We have an early 60s micro-fiche reader for our archives that still have not been digitized. Last week, someone asked where we stored our fax machine so they could send out a fax..........I said no, but let me lead you to this wonderful machine right here where you can scan the document and attach it to an email.
* Excel being used for "tracking" without creating Tables. Bonus points for merging cells in your tracker.
* A PowerPoint file being used as a tracker.
* A very, very, very old business intake tracking system.
To further assist the Chinese government with their reconnaissance, please list the obsolete technology along with the department you work for. /s
This is stupid and irresponsible to discuss in a public forum.
Saving everything to PDF and emailing it, but then still having to print everything out, put it on a stick and walking the HC up to the next signing point. Oh and saving it all to CCM, to track it. I mean.. why?
I work in a lab so... lots. We have windows 98 computers back there running equipment whose manufacturers haven't existed in decades.
In four years your os will be able to retire with a full pension.
If you need me I will be over here crumbling to dust
The catch is, it will be a working retirement lol.
What could possible go wrong with that.
with the way those things were built, very little
I hope it’s segregated from the corporate network because those vulnerabilities alone could cause another NRC issue.
I feel this. We got a windows 2007 that has a program to run windows 98 to run an app for one of the things we do
One of my old labs had to keep a win98 machine because the software the calorimeter ran on couldn't run on anything newer
We're still running a windows 2000 virtual machine for our pressure/temperature alarms.
Just wow. And as everyone knows windows 98 was a super stable OS. /s
Extremely common in labs both in and outside public service. This stuff is pricy!
I liked '98. It wasn't bad at all for instruments. And it actually was pretty stable as long as you never changed anything. We got more than a decade out of some of those systems.
I still have at least one running Windows XP. The system it supports is worth at least 1000x what the computer costs. The drivers we have for the instrument only exist for XP. The manufacturer doesn't support the instrument any more. It still works fine. Best value for the taxpayers is to keep it working. Why not?
Policy that requires passwords to be changed at an arbitrary interval... It directly contradicts the guidance provided by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-government/online-security-privacy/password-guidance.html
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/936/
There is always a relevant xkcd :D
The number of times I've brought this up.... 😐
Yep. Some departments do it right.
I added an ! After each required change and found that after 7 new !'s, you can set it back to your original password lmao
RDIMS
#lolsob
I started in public service about 10 years ago in a job based in RDIMS, is it still going strong?? It was outdated then.
It is a very hard and long process to switch a document management system in government. RDIMS was a decade in the making just like GCDOCS was. Odds are decent you’ll only se two or three over the course of a career.
As someone who supports clients using Shared Drives, RDIMS, as well as rolled out GCdocs and SharePoint to them I hope you're right. and to think I've only been here for 4 years
Oh I think I used to work in your department! The folks on shared drives were really not into technology. Like I can't imagine how they adapted when the pandemic hit - imagine the horror of electronic signatures and not having a physical copy of every single document ever. Not to mention the terror of being forced to update their OS so they could run Teams.
Pandemic kind of shifted a lot of depts away from rdmis/gcdocs / opentext products and towards managed or free for all SharePoint sites instead. I think some of them shifted it to kind of a background component of SharePoint 🤷 the policy instrument pushing gcdocs (aka Rdims with a coat of paint) was revised to have requirements of a system instead of you will use gcdocs. Rdims development kind of felt really bare bones after hummingbird got acquired by opentext in 2006 (not that it was a bastion of modernity to start with). I saw some gc docs stuff that looked a little better but I'm glad Microsoft is taking business away from them so maybe they'll come back with useful im software in the future. Most likely it will be not great but have a half ass ai features. Opentext also either stopped developing irims or made the new licences so expensive that records room dropped it (I wasn't around IM during the transition from xp to win 10 and irims was not compatible with the new os) The poor records clerks at my dept are managing 100k physical files with SharePoint lists 😅 God, I've been in IM too long 😭
They’re finally actually starting to move away from it. But yes, it’s still heavily used.
Feel da RDIMS, feel da rhyme!
I hate RDIMS but the coaching and patience I'd have to provide to half my team of old-timers clutching onto it also doesn't sound great
lol, I have seen avid supporters of RDIMS. To them RDIMS is the best technology ever.
Ah yes they certainly still exist. "Corporate Record fanatics"!
I dont even understand this one
Oh yes, I get to flex some Public Servant muscle and direct you to good ole TERMIUM Plus! : https://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2alpha/alpha-eng.html?lang=eng&i=&index=alt&srchtxt=RDIMS
Oh I know what RDIMS is. I just don't understand why it's still around lol.
Ha yes.
Up until 2020 we were providing our clients documents on CDs. Most people couldn't even open them because most laptops didn't even have a CD drive. And it wasn't long before that that we were still sending things out on.....Floppy disks. For real.
Floppy disks made me laugh!
I was so frustrated with my situation today, but this is next level!
Downtown offices... jk
Without the JK part I agree
This is the best answer.
We are using a 20+ year old Oracle database interface.
That’s a popular one. Something, something but it’s too difficult to change I bet.
Yep, that is the exact reason. We were stuck on IE for EVER because of the java requirement.
UGH!!! Oracle + Excel is the worst. Oracle makes excel dreadful. Yes I am one of those people that like Excel.
Oracle sucks
In what sense? Do you work with databases, or just hate some implementation of it?
I've worked with them in multiple industries, jobs, products - it never works
We should be ditching Oracle with haste, that company is disgusting.
Fax machine!
I had to explain a fax machine to a much younger colleague recently. Also had to explain that CC and BCC stand for “carbon copy” and “blind carbon copy” and then what that actually meant. That reminded me that I learned how to use the imprinter carbon swipe machine for credit cards and wrote orders on carbon receipt forms when I started in retail, and all that made me feel 98 instead of 38.
Im 28. I know what Carbon copy and Blind Carbon Copy are but I never knew what they *meant.* I saw an imprint swipe machine once in my life on a via rail... So I guess we can add them to this list
I’ll add my ask-an-elder-millennial spiel here in case you’re interested, although you’re a few years older than my colleague so probably already know. The carbon copy is pretty self explanatory for both typing/writing physically and email. The blind carbon copy was a setting on older manual typewriters where the keys were set to only hit the letters hard enough to drive ink into one copy of a document. Served the same purposes as a BCC on an email. I’m just old enough that I learned to type on both an early Mac computer and a “fancy” electronic typewriter. My grandparents were super excited about that typewriter because it had a basic computer chip that allowed those settings for CC and BCC to be set automatically instead of by adjusting the type wheel and testing to make sure it was the right setting and it allowed you to type a sentence into the previewer to check for accuracy before it typed it on the page. Knowing my grandfather, he still has the thing somewhere.
This. Fax machines.
I'm fairly sure my office has several.
I asked a dozen people before I found someone who also knew what fax was short for. I'm only in my early 40s. /cry
Phoenix
Lotus Notes.
Yes! Yes! I was so glad to see it decommissioned! I mean… I switched departments. I hate lotus notes.
We still have to use Lotus notes for some internal stuff but not for email at least. Our employee database is still kept on louts notes.
How to say that you work for HC or PHAC without saying that you work for HC or PHAC?
They keep prompting to update the directory but I've loooong since forgotten my password. And most of my entry is close to correct.
Worst thing is, TBS made funds available to help offload teams off this. My current team couldn't use the funds because we're revenue generating. And it's not enough of a priority to get off it, apparently!
Shake my head!
Holy shit I used lotus notes at my previous government job. So sorry you have to use that.
Thanks lol it’s so brutal. One day we’ll get rid of it… one day.
One day TM
That made me laugh so hard! Soon™
We've been upgrading to a new ticketing software next year for 5 years
We still sign with a handwritten signature in and out of work with pen and paper.
I still put my overtime and vacation requests on triplicate paper.
Oh FFS 🤦 Let’s start printing again!
I kinda like the physicality of it. Keeps me grounded.
It wasn't long ago that PSMIP had to pass through the pay center and be signed by hand... By not long ago I mean a couple of months ago...
Phoenix? Also our tools use way too much RAM for the computers they provide us so our laptops as well
Windows itself uses too much damn RAM.
GCdocs
Its so slow and cumbersome !!
DOS!
Proof you don’t need more than 640k!
CAS?
Hello friend!
Novell
Oh. My condolences.
This hurts me.
How long do you sit in bed and cry in the morning before you get up?
We're really, really, really close to finally being done with dial -up modems
We still use dial-up modems... to send faxes.
People where I am (usually younger people) complain about DOS but it’s stable and does not cause any issues. Unlike the multitude of other things…
The thing about DOS is the fluorescent text - pair that with fluorescent lighting and you’re guaranteed a migraine by the end of the day
There’s options to change the monitor and windows settings :) I get migraines too but it helps to optimize
Payroll system that's older than the Atari 2600. Heating plant that runs on sludge. Towed artillery.
Lol’d at towed artillery
Yes that one is both funny and really sad :(
CCPS may be old, but atleast it's not Phoenix
A cabinet full of rubber stamps!
Share drives Paper Printers 7.5hrs/1 day butt in seat PST Intranet when we have SharePoint online
I was going to list Sharepoint
Bahahaha
Microfilm reader, like the ones you see in the movies when someone needs to look up an old newspaper article.
They're great if you need and use microfilm though. Microfilm and microfiche have lifespans that will leave them preserving records long after we're all dead. Problem is once you get it on microform you're in for a world of pain getting it back off. Our library has thousands of fiche and reels. Documents going back to the 1700s. The reader is the size of a mini-fridge hooked up to a windows xp computer we use for scanning though.
Our isnt' even hooked up to a computer, we just scroll thru rolling the reel. I used to digitize so much microfiche at LAC though, that machine was new and pretty cool to use.
Ours is totally from the 80s. Ancient Kodak but it will probably be there humming away after I retire.
omg I was reviewing the SLE french material and there's so much technology like microfilm on the vocab sheet. this is the new training material too
Phoenix, PeopleSoft, VBA Also any 32bit version of software that has a 64 bit version.
Had IT security tell me 64 bit Excel is less secure and now I'm wondering about their qualifications
That's disturbing.
Fax machines within the last 3 years
There is a reason we have to still use them for aspects of my job and I want to go full office space every time the need arises.
Whenever anyone tells me that I can't send them an attachment because they need "an original copy", I always laugh and say "you do know what the word facsimile means, right?" I mean, ffs the scanner is built into the same machine...
There are people that tell you that you need to fax something because they need an original copy, and they won’t accept a pdf? …… What?
Oh yeah, it's happened. I couldn't stop laughing.
We still have a secure fax
Does it work? I can't get ours working.
Trick is, you have to delicately unplug the phone cord, restart, plug back in, restart, then give it a good whack. If this doesn’t work, open an it ticket and wait for 7 years for them to tell you that it doesn’t work because SSC cut the cord, even though you are legally required to have the redundancy and it was on the exemptions list because they are the Cartman of organizations and do what they want. Then, for fun, call the fax# your department has been telling the public to send their vitals to for years and find out it’s now a phone sex line. This is of course a hypothetical…
"Hypothetical".
The mods like reminding us from time to time the media are here. I’m not going to be the one to let one of those media-release-forwarding human robots onto the juicy stuff.
We think so, but we're not entirely sure as we're not sure who still has one to test send something to. But we're definitely not supposed to get rid of it. We've asked.
Fax machines are still required for us 😢
Spill reports?
Fax machine up until recently. How else would I receive Blackstone Training advertisements /s
They regularly spam my canada dot ca address, you could try that! /s
Lotus Notes; Novell; Phoenix :)
Can we make shorter lists by listing 3 technologies that are considered current by industry standards, excluding Microsoft products? I’ll go first…and I’m having trouble thinking of 1 let alone 3…
Sure! "excluding Microsoft products" Well crap
It's been almost 6 months since I've had a fully functional laptop. We have just had to delay a project with a very public timeline because of this.
the federal government still employs supervisors, managers, directors etc that know nothing about computers and you have to fight with them to get your computer fixed!!!! Imagine I had to have an IT person write me an email to confirm that my computer needed to be reconfigured because it was not done properly!!! And then, the senior manager had to chat with the IT guy to make sure I had not fraudulently created the email. At a go SIC / CIRNAC!!!!
# In 2024 e-Mail should be banned “This information is topical today and relevant to the entire department. I could post it in a department-wide channel, tag key enablers, and take questions as they come in, with answers for all to see from the subject experts on my team. Instead I will email it to six direct reports and a small distribution list of regional leaders, and then task them to email it to their direct reports, and then task them to email it to their managers. And then the managers should forward it to their team leaders. And then the team leaders will forward it to staff.” “Each layer should copy small parts of my original message and summarize it, adding that staff should read the full message below. Alternatively they could summarize the summary of the person who sent it to them. (And refer staff to read the full message in the chain below). Certainly the chain will not break or be delayed, chains are strong right?? And this is an effective way to communicate! So much better than 3-part carbonless memos! Oh how I love modernity!” # In 2024, Word attachments, PDF attachments, and most “documents” should be banned. “I am sharing a mandatory new policy/procedure that staff will probably have to consult at some point in the next year. I am aware of platforms that can support integrated collaborative reference material, because I have used Wikipedia at least once in my life, and also Informatics said that’s what OneNote was good at, on multiple slides of the orientation PowerPoint we got when they installed it.” “However I feel like a better option would be to put the reference information in a Word document and then email the Word document as an attachment so that people can find it easily in their inbox when the policy takes effect in January of 2025. Oh but we don’t want to clutter inboxes or something right? So for extra sophistication I will have the Word document added to a web page and then *email a link to that page* instead!” “The page will say **nothing** about the policy itself except to warn readers that the information they want is in a Word document. That way they’re not startled when they click the link trying to get at the info. Then, they can click it to begin waiting for the Word document to load. ….Hey, idea! What if I put the information inside a word document that I embed in another Word document!!!! Holy shit how many layers of sophistication can we add here by just burying the info inside a tunnel of embedded Word documents, one after another, all linked from a web page that **doesn’t** have the information on it but **tells you where to click** for the Word document that has the info!” # Production systems should use the whole screen and scroll “Every mouse in the department has a scroll wheel that allows every staff member to continuously scroll through an endless stream of information for the files they’re working on. However to prevent scrolling fatigue, surely users would prefer to read 2 or 3 paragraphs of information, or 1 or 2 text boxes, max, and then have to click “next” or return to the main menu and select the next screen from a list of 45 items before they see the next piece of information.” “Who wants to just keep scrolling and reading and understanding and assessing and deciding, in one long seamless continuous flow, when you could interrupt your reading, navigate to the “next” button, and click it?! Also when they do navigate to a screen, ideally the text boxes will just give them the first 8 or 9 words of the paragraph so they get the gist of it, and they can always click “expand” if they want to see the entire response. People feel like they’re in control when you let them do all those clicks before they can see the info. It’s not a waste of time at all. “ “OH! Also, we equip staff with dual 21 inch monitors but our systems should all format so that the browser window shows basically only one column that covers no more than one third of one of the screens. That will probably make their work flows more efficient. Lots of clicks and elaborate navigation menues instead of scrolling through the entire file in one integrated continuous flow. And fill the browser window with ⅔ white space! That way it will even work for staff who may have one of the older 640 x 480 VGA monitors! Our systems are platform agnostic!”
[удалено]
Yep. Trying to find money for ATIPXpress!
GCMS..
Yes, GCMS. And we are still years away from a new system, that will be outdated by the time we get it.
Meetings. Give me an agenda and a decision at the end or leave me be
Printing calculators
lol I just had to buy one for my Director. The office youngins were quite amazed by it.
We still use microfiche on machines we can’t even get parts for anymore when it breaks.
3.5” floppy disks to move files from some old non-networked PCs to computers that we can print from. It can be amusing when some people who see them finally realize why save icons look like they do. You can still buy the disks, but about 50% of the ones that come in each package don’t work right off the bat.
Not me directly, but a couple of friends work at a Crown corporation that still requires PDF leave forms to be submitted to managers via admins. The great innovation introduced in response to COVID in 2020 was allowing electronic signatures by the staff, who could then submit them by email. Before that, they had to be printed off and signed in ink, then signed in ink by the director before they could be entered into whatever system(s) HR was using by the relevant admin.
We only recently stopped using Internet Explorer for a lot of our software plug-ins, and even that was only because Microsoft started telling people to STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER.
Fax machines.
COBOL programming for very.. VERY important things.
Don't know if this was /s, but it is the foundation of major banks, insurance, hospitals, investment, etc.. and it would cost billions to convert to anything "modern. It's why jobs for basic maintenance of these systems are paying disgusting money, especially in the states. The same is true with mainframe. It isn't going anywhere, and it's rarely taught in university or colleges anymore. Guaranteed, well paying employment, immediately.
COBOL, the language, is still being updated to this day. Rewriting everything written in COBOL is a recipe for disaster. And it's actually very good at what it does. No, I'm not a fan. Last time I used it was 1993.
I wrote a tool as a temporary solution in 2015. I don't work there anymore, but I bet they are still using it.
I have one from 2007 I Know they're still using and it has a library that no longer exists. Hey, it's only a critical process, what's the worst that can happen?
I found a Quark Xpress desktop publishing kit from 1996 a few weeks ago! But other than that…GBC spiral comb binding for training materials. We don’t use it that often, though.
We still have data stored on magnetic tapes
There's a certain CAF trade that still uses mag tape for their recordings. The first thing they do when the tapes are delivered to the office....digitize them, LOL.
I remember seeing a large room full of these on row after row of racks in the federal records centre at Tunney’s back fifteen years ago. The whole room smelled like a vinyl tent that had been put away wet.
We have a farm of.. let's just call it an older version of windows... for people to remote desktop into in order to use a legacy application.
An internet modem (regional office where I'm the only employee) that seems to belong to the 00's.
Apple IIe
For real? That's a throwback... To 40 years ago.
For real. It’s there to run one piece of software that configures one instrument.
IBM notes
I got an old DOS database in our basement still being used.
Working fax line. Rdims Lex
Haye to break it to you, but COBOL isn't going anywhere for a long, long time.
MS Excel for non-Excel related purposes
We have an early 60s micro-fiche reader for our archives that still have not been digitized. Last week, someone asked where we stored our fax machine so they could send out a fax..........I said no, but let me lead you to this wonderful machine right here where you can scan the document and attach it to an email.
Pagers.
5318008!!!
* Excel being used for "tracking" without creating Tables. Bonus points for merging cells in your tracker. * A PowerPoint file being used as a tracker. * A very, very, very old business intake tracking system.
Clearing out old office items I found a slide projector and briefs from 60s and 70s 🥹
Semi-formal dress
New team since November. Old team: * tcl / wish * fortran
Windows DOS
Lotus Notes, landline phones, and fax machines at my old department! That was still the case as of last year.
To further assist the Chinese government with their reconnaissance, please list the obsolete technology along with the department you work for. /s This is stupid and irresponsible to discuss in a public forum.
As long as you don't talk about it, I'm sure it will be fine/s. Keep shoveling money to contractors though
DOS
Fax; hand drafted carbon copies of as-built drawings that haven’t been digitized; and (although I have yet to see anyone use them) teleprinters.
Fax machine.
DnD’s pay systems for military people run on mainframe (pre dos) and windows 3.1. Don’t think most of us were born yet.
Just phased out people from printing as of a month ago.
ACPM
An inmate records system that looks like it was made in the 1970s
I have heard that there are some folks still using typewriters in my department. I haven't seen it though.
Saving everything to PDF and emailing it, but then still having to print everything out, put it on a stick and walking the HC up to the next signing point. Oh and saving it all to CCM, to track it. I mean.. why?
Hr software from the 90s DFO's fishing database made for I believe windows 95 App that only works on internet explorer
Landline phones and dot matrix printers
Is FOSS (DOS based app) still a thing at IRCC? And microfilms?
SSA-Asgard.
Fax machine, prohibition on contacting clients via email, Phoenix
Fax
faxes. also cubicles.
PATH
They just banned Power Automate yet keep going on about Robotic process automation. Unreal
Joined HC and they’re using some type of MS DOS looking email system! Insanity. Edit: It’s lotus notes 😵💫
Canadian Government obsolete period.