Oracle's repeated public sector failures prove a different approach is needed
Local governments aren’t businesses – so why are they force-fed business software? - Oracle’s repeated public sector failures prove a different approach is needed::Oracle’s repeated public sector failures prove a different approach is needed
In my field, the way I’ve seen Oracle contracts rationalized is the same way IBM contracts are rationalized… they’re stupid expensive, usually under deliver, but they’re the biggest names. When the project goes south, the buyer can tell their superiors “well we hired IBM, and they’re the best, so what else could I have done?” It’s a form of of CYA.
Oracle is well known for putting out an extremely expensive product that competitors implement better. It boggles my mind anyone chooses them rather than doing their best to put as many miles between them and the Oralce rep as possible.
There’s multiple companies that run this “database with a barely usable UI” as a service model, and they’re all somehow huge. They all get into the customers with some sort of sales blitz by promising the world, and then by the time you go to implement everything requires millions of dollars worth of customization. Then they wind up referring you to their “gold partners” who only charge you a half million to implement the two screens or whatever you need.
There’s SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, and I’m sure more.
Early mover advantage, and understanding how the public sector works…that is to say slowly. You sell a 10-year contract and it’s going to take them that long to train a user. Public sector employees don’t get enough exposure to technology and just try to survive learning how to use the awful tools they’re given, which is long outdated. The pain points creates a negative reinforcement to change, use and process improvement, all which could drive adoption of new software.
Much like Apple, I despise Oracle but you have to acknowledge the absolute corner they have on lucrative, long-term sucker organizations. A 20-year-old with a few friends and a few months could create something more usable than PeopleSoft.
I think it’s basically tech Scientology at this point
People get indoctrinated as oracle people and then they go around actively advocating for it to other easily manipulated people that don’t know better and take as much money as possible from them.
I mean… the headline is basically wrong. There are plenty of purpose-built tools for public administration, often configured and supported by the same big players (e.g. IBM). I’ve worked with several of them.
But I think the article hints at the real problem:
They are more complex, less well funded, more prone to change as democratic needs evolve
Governments have requirements, often legislative in origin, that making no f*cking sense and that are incredibly tricky to model in software, because they’re written by legislators who have a poor understanding of automation and how to write clear prose. And those requirements change with the stroke of a pen. Keeping up with them means the constant attention of a large team of software developers.
By contrast, most commercial enterprises can pivot to line their processes up with whatever the industry common practice is. Governments rarely have that freedom.
This statement seems incredibly naive to me:
Build an equivalent stack as a conceptual framework for local government needs and processes, and the things they all have in common will create a huge market for sustainable services despite no two organizations being the same.
The entire reason that governments go to companies like Oracle and SAP for help is that building, maintaining, and changing bespoke applications, and the full stacks to support bespoke applications, in a way that is compliant with government-grade change management is incredibly expensive. The entire selling point of tailoring a commercial ERP system is that it should nominally do a pretty good job of handling “the things they all have in common” at least as well as anything you build yourself. The projects still fail because accomodating the stuff that IS different ends up being a bespoke software project all of its own, and because things that appeared to be “in common” turn out to require bespoke configuration, because the government bean-counters didn’t tell you about a bunch of the nitpicky requirements up front.
The prosaically simple explanation for these failures is that companies like Oracle over-promise, but they do that because almost ANY contractor has to over-promise and under-price to get a government contract.
Source: I work for a company like Oracle, and I work on projects for regional governments.
In Australia they are businesses. They have CEOs, they have their own ABN (Australian Business Number), etc. Not only that, police do also, as do Child Support, and more. In fact, the state of Queensland (QLD) is an entity registered in the United States. Or, so according to the document that was floating around a few years back. Interesting stuff indeed. Edit: Brigalow Corporation for anyone interested in researching it.
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In my field, the way I’ve seen Oracle contracts rationalized is the same way IBM contracts are rationalized… they’re stupid expensive, usually under deliver, but they’re the biggest names. When the project goes south, the buyer can tell their superiors “well we hired IBM, and they’re the best, so what else could I have done?” It’s a form of of CYA.
Oracle is well known for putting out an extremely expensive product that competitors implement better. It boggles my mind anyone chooses them rather than doing their best to put as many miles between them and the Oralce rep as possible.
There’s multiple companies that run this “database with a barely usable UI” as a service model, and they’re all somehow huge. They all get into the customers with some sort of sales blitz by promising the world, and then by the time you go to implement everything requires millions of dollars worth of customization. Then they wind up referring you to their “gold partners” who only charge you a half million to implement the two screens or whatever you need.
There’s SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, and I’m sure more.
Why do people buy this garbage?
Inertia. Is. A. Bitch.
Early mover advantage, and understanding how the public sector works…that is to say slowly. You sell a 10-year contract and it’s going to take them that long to train a user. Public sector employees don’t get enough exposure to technology and just try to survive learning how to use the awful tools they’re given, which is long outdated. The pain points creates a negative reinforcement to change, use and process improvement, all which could drive adoption of new software.
Much like Apple, I despise Oracle but you have to acknowledge the absolute corner they have on lucrative, long-term sucker organizations. A 20-year-old with a few friends and a few months could create something more usable than PeopleSoft.
I think it’s basically tech Scientology at this point
People get indoctrinated as oracle people and then they go around actively advocating for it to other easily manipulated people that don’t know better and take as much money as possible from them.
Oh yeah and they sue ｅｖｅｒｙｏｎｅ
I mean… the headline is basically wrong. There are plenty of purpose-built tools for public administration, often configured and supported by the same big players (e.g. IBM). I’ve worked with several of them.
But I think the article hints at the real problem:
Governments have requirements, often legislative in origin, that making no f*cking sense and that are incredibly tricky to model in software, because they’re written by legislators who have a poor understanding of automation and how to write clear prose. And those requirements change with the stroke of a pen. Keeping up with them means the constant attention of a large team of software developers.
By contrast, most commercial enterprises can pivot to line their processes up with whatever the industry common practice is. Governments rarely have that freedom.
This statement seems incredibly naive to me:
The entire reason that governments go to companies like Oracle and SAP for help is that building, maintaining, and changing bespoke applications, and the full stacks to support bespoke applications, in a way that is compliant with government-grade change management is incredibly expensive. The entire selling point of tailoring a commercial ERP system is that it should nominally do a pretty good job of handling “the things they all have in common” at least as well as anything you build yourself. The projects still fail because accomodating the stuff that IS different ends up being a bespoke software project all of its own, and because things that appeared to be “in common” turn out to require bespoke configuration, because the government bean-counters didn’t tell you about a bunch of the nitpicky requirements up front.
The prosaically simple explanation for these failures is that companies like Oracle over-promise, but they do that because almost ANY contractor has to over-promise and under-price to get a government contract.
Source: I work for a company like Oracle, and I work on projects for regional governments.
In Australia they are businesses. They have CEOs, they have their own ABN (Australian Business Number), etc. Not only that, police do also, as do Child Support, and more. In fact, the state of Queensland (QLD) is an entity registered in the United States. Or, so according to the document that was floating around a few years back. Interesting stuff indeed. Edit: Brigalow Corporation for anyone interested in researching it.