Typewriters live on in New York police department

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/13/new.york.typewriters/index.html

by rufo • 17 years ago

15 14 17 years ago

msluyter• 17 years ago

Mind boggling. And I thought The Wire might have been exaggerating for dramatic effect.

I wonder how these maintenance costs compare to the costs of a typical IT setup? If it's actually cheaper, then it looks like a classic case of being stuck in a local minimum.

Mintz2• 17 years ago

I remember when I first saw an episode of The Wire where they were using typewriters. The computer has become so synonymous with the workplace that I thought their office looked really, really barren without one.

joshfinnie• 17 years ago

I never saw The Wire, but was their office completely void of computers? I can see where some offices would still have typewriters for certain forms (for some reason people here still use typewriters to put addresses on envolopes), but a police station without computers has to be insane!

asciilifeform• 17 years ago

> the costs of a typical IT setup

Excellent point: typewriters do not BSOD, are entirely impervious to malware, and demand only ribbon replacement plus occasional oiling (vs. the Wintel upgrade racket.)

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

But the costs of scanning, indexing and tracking the paper documents is almost certainly greater than that of producing the same documents on computer. I'm guessing your comment is tongue-in-cheek, but anyhoo...

Police cars in many major US cities have laptops in them, along with a private wireless network, allowing them to look up vehicle licenses, outstanding arrest warrants and so forth. While I'm sure this system does not work perfectly and incurs an IT overhead in addition to the installation cost, I imagine the police officers would prefer to keep using them.

If computers are good enough for police officers to use on the road, they are definitely good enough to be used inside the station. When you get down to it, the requirements are not so very different from a specialized CRM system.

Also: Public records show that the city signed a $432,900 contract for typewriter maintenance with Afax Business Machines in 2008

For >$400k/year I think you could put together a very good IT maintenance team.

eli• 17 years ago

"...mainly used for filling out property vouchers..."

It's a pain in the ass to fill out paper forms with a laser printer.

Yeah, sure, they should probably have a new system that just prints the form filled out, but they don't.

JMostert• 17 years ago

There's one argument in there that's semi-sensible: in case of a power outage, it would seem important for the police to be able to continue processing data. Yes, aggregates help, but keeping everyone's desktop computer running isn't as effective as limiting it to critical systems (and extended power outages shouldn't be crippling either). The good old pen and paper will only take you so far, especially with the atrocious handwriting of people these days (accustomed as we are to mashing buttons of all shapes and sizes for communicating).

To use them in the day-to-day business seems foolish, because most of it could be far better handled electronically. But considering the massive amount of paper and toner bureaucracies waste printing out information because the business processes don't evolve along, switching to such a system isn't necessarily an improvement in the short term. And of course there's a very significant initial cost that will be harder to justify to management than just maintaining the old system. Many and unsubtle are the stories of IT systems that are built to replace an existing "analog" process which end up delayed, inefficient, feature-crippled and way over budget. This is the sort of inglorious government-budgeted project that's especially prone to attract overpaid, unmotivated bunglers (no offense to the underpaid, highly-motivated geniuses out there working on such systems :-)

Whether the $0.5-$1M budget is warranted is another matter. The argument that they have a $4B total budget will sooner make people question whether the $4B is entirely needed than reassure them that the typewriters only take up a minuscule fragment of said budget. This also doesn't factor in the very real but hidden cost in terms of time and frustration for the users -- imagine the police department using no computers or typewriters at all, but requiring that all information exchange go through hand-written forms. The ballpen budget might be very small, but personnel costs would balloon.

Now, let me tell you about this voice recognition software I've been working on...

moe• 17 years ago

in case of a power outage, it would seem important for the police to be able to continue processing data.

I'd say "data processing is a very relative term when typewriters and police officers on hunt & peck shift are involved.

If hospitals can survive a power outage then I'm sure someone could find a way to make the police survive through one, too.

bmj• 17 years ago

If hospitals can survive a power outage then I'm sure someone could find a way to make the police survive through one, too.

I assume, however, that they have some sort of power back-up, right? If that's the solution, that would be very cost-prohibitive for multiple precinct houses.

Kadin• 17 years ago

Doesn't really surprise me. I've worked at banks where typewriters were still in use, for filling out certain infrequently-used forms and preparing titles and deeds.

It costs a significant amount of time and money to construct an electronic form and integrate it into the existing automated workflow; if the users only see a form a few times a year, and it changes every year, you might be talking about several thousand dollars per use to computerize that form. There's no way that's cost effective, and it's cheaper and more efficient just to keep a typewriter around.

It's a basic diminishing-returns proposition. In a forms-heavy environment (which I'd imagine a police department is), you get great ROI automating the most commonly-used forms. Then you can breakeven or get some ROI on most of the rest of them. But in almost every situation there's always going to be one or two forms that just aren't worth automating. In some places that means just hand-filling them, but in others that means a typewriter.

A typewriter is a totally acceptable solution to the problem in some cases. It's a bit silly that some people freak out so badly when they see them; if you see a typewriter in a workplace that also has a modern electronic-forms system with automated workflow and everything else, chances are somebody did the analysis and realized that it just doesn't make sense to get rid of the typewriter for the sake of getting rid of the typewriter.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

I see your point as far as getting those forms into a database goes. But how long does it take to make an editable .pdf form for really unusual cases, and just have a database entry for 'special/unusual case y/n|select/view appropriate form'?

gchpaco• 17 years ago

Mark of the true policeman: if technology melts down, they'll still be able to do their paperwork.

Typewriters live on in New York police department

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