Birmingham City Council Delays Fix to Disastrous Oracle System Once More

Can you really inflate a software contract by 10x and get away with it? I’m in the wrong line of business, my customers would immediately fire me if I tried that. Who is the project manager/contract administrator that is just OKing the change orders? Grow a backbone and say ‘You were already awarded a contract, you need to deliver it within the budget you allocated’.

Oracle was awarded the contract for my state’s (Minnesota) procurement website. It’s the absolute worst website I’ve ever been forced to use. I really hope the state forbids Oracle from bidding on state software contracts in the future, it’s a total mess. I like doing business with the state as they have lots of money, but I’ve passed on RFPs just due to how terrible the platform where we submit our bids is.

Also, Oracle Gradebeam is the absolute worst construction project management software I’ve ever been forced to use, I haven’t seen it in the wild for a few years as thankfully most of my customers use Procore, which is quite good.

Birmingham city council is a case study in why Oracle will succeed. People far, far too incompetent to procure and run a system, and design sane business processes to run in that system. Just, free money forever for Oracle, organisations like that.

Having worked on half a dozen government projects backed by Oracle databases, this really seems to be Oracle's entire business model: ship the shittiest product on earth, years late and oodles over budget. I've yet to witness something they make being better than a free alternative. Their sales department must be something of legend.