...why the GAO seems to come out with several reports a year on "wasteful government IT spending," wonder no more. Check out the tidbit below from the Department of the Interior -- found by me in a FAQ at the DOI website regarding its new enterprise HR system. The bold, underlined effect is my doing:
Q: Why SAP HR software, why not one of the more publicized federal HR software competitors -- PeopleSoft and Oracle?
A: While PeopleSoft and Oracle have nationally known and respected HR software packages, SAP actually has a larger world-wide client base and is the largest producer and distributor of HR software worldwide. In the private sector, many of the country's largest companies use SAP HR software. Up until the FHRIS Project, however, SAP did not have a federalized product. If fully implemented, the FHRIS Project will allow SAP to federalize its HR product while giving Interior access to world-class HR software.
So let me understand this...SAP's competitors have nationally known and respected packages, among them "Oracle Federal HR", with which which I am familiar -- and has been developed for several years in close cooperation with the US federal government and is very well-tailored to US Federal Government needs -- yet Interior chose to use as its platform an ERP package with absolutely NO Federal content, and knew this going in? And since when (except for vital military tools) is the government in the business of allowing itself to be used as a product development guinea pig -- and what's worse, by a foreign corporation, when an American corporation (Oracle is based in Redwood Shores, CA) has a proven product already on the market? If you've ever been involved in technology implementation, you can already see the cost of FHRIS shooting through the roof. Ridonkulous.
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