Mr. ISSA. The Clinton Administration used Lotus Notes, right?

Ms. PAYTON. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. Lotus Notes no longer exists, right? It is no longer supported.

Ms. PAYTON. It is no longer supported. Some groups may still use it, but it is no longer supported.

Mr. ISSA. I wouldn't want to do business with somebody still using Lotus Notes or still using wooden wagon wheels. If I understand correctly, though, certainly I checked with the House of Representatives, we can no longer support it for members who want to stay on it.

Mr. ISSA. Okay. So here we have a situation where the Clinton Administration is on a platform that has to be phased out. Simply, they lost the war of who is going to supply emails. A period of time goes on in which Yes, we are dealing, to Dr. Weinstein's concern, with getting good archives, but we are also dealing with the fact that I can't play my Betamax tapes any more, either, and I can't seem to find anybody who has a Betamax player any more.

Let me be clear here. Lotus Notes is anything but dead. Lotus Notes is an active, vibrant messaging technology with many strengths far in excess of Outlook and Exchange. To characterize Lotus Notes as either wooden wagon wheel technology or Betamax tapes is so far off from the technical and commercial reality as to be ludicrous.

And here's where it gets dangerous. If you think Lotus Notes is an obsolete technology, then migrating off of it, even in a build-up to war, might make sense. But when you realize that Notes is anything but obsolete, then you must ask deeper questions, like why did a migration occur at such a critical time, or did the White House IT staff know so little about messaging technology to make such a mischaracterization?

Update: Since this article was originally published last week in OutlookPower, I've been getting a constant stream of questions from Lotus fans about what IBM is doing about this situation. I've been told I can tell you "IBM's government affairs operation has taken action on this testimony." 'Nuff said.

Crazy costs and looking for love in all the wrong places
Finally, I'll hit on some other crazy comments coming out of the hearings. First, Payton provided the Committee with estimated costs for data recovery. I understand that our government likes to spend like a drunken sailor on leave, but Payton's claims for recovery costs are off the chart. For example, she said that doing a single "component" restore from a "disaster recovery backup" is $50K.

She's saying it costs $50,000 simply to load a backup tape and recover some files. That's just plain silly. We're talking about mounting a tape or a disk and running a program. You can buy an IT guy for nearly a year for $50,000. But if it takes that IT guy a full year to run one restore, that's a dude you need to fire.

Also from the Wildly Exaggerated Claims Department, Payton said it would cost $500,000 to buy the servers to do the restores. That's quite off the mark.