Technology

59427 readers

4177 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

226

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 (www.theregister.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

less well funded

They don't have to be. Legislators can, you know, funding the fucking departments that need it. But that's an entirely different subject...

By contrast, most commercial enterprises can pivot to line their processes up with whatever the industry common practice is.

Not always. Sometimes it's pivoting to whatever is making them the most money. Or eating their own dog food to prove their product, even if that product sucks.

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.

Yes, it is incredibly expensive, and sometimes these huge corporations think they can just do it the same way they did it with State X and hope that State Y can just map terms. And then they crash and burn hard because they don't understand that state laws are different, and sometimes you have to put in effort and time and money to actually get a working product. Corpos want to put in the least amount of work and money to get as much profit as possible from governments, and some of them have been burned so badly by that mentality that they look for better solutions. Often, there's not any great solutions and their infrastructure suffers.

the government bean-counters didn’t tell you about a bunch of the nitpicky requirements up front

Have you even seen a government RFP? They tell you. Every. Single. Requirement. In detail, in triplicate, in sometimes unreasonable or unrealistic terms, under 800+ pages that a team of experts need to pour over and that's before there's even any sort of contract negotiation that requires the team of lawyers.

Source: I work for a company that comes in after companies like Oracle have fucked up so royally that governments are begging for a quality product

[–] iegod@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I work with government agencies from multiple countries (n/a and EU) and their requirements are not as good as you're selling.

load more comments (1 replies)