The Computer Ate My Budget
from the or-did-it-just-eat-Tacoma-Washington... dept
What is it with large, government computer systems and their inability to actually work? Last month we wrote about problems with an expensive SAP computer system the Federal Technology Service had installed that was causing people to cry by having such user friendly features as making the simple "save" feature take 15 steps. Now, the city of Tacoma, Washington is admitting that their $51 million SAP implementation has made it impossible for them to do a budget. One of the reasons the city spent so much on this fancy new computer system was to have more accurate data for budget forecasts. However, it turns out that SAP doesn't actually have a budget module, so they've been trying to kludge stuff together. Right now, that means that the city can't actually figure out how much money they'll have at the end of the year, or how much they're likely to bring in. Computer glitches certainly happen, but you have to wonder why the city would agree to switch on the system that couldn't do some of the most basic features it was supposed to.
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Software selection committees
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Grammar alert
"how much money they'll at the end of the year"
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Re: Grammar alert
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non-technical owner
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Re: non-technical owner
Money gets spent on who has the best sales job...just sending a checklist of requirements doesn't help because 1) MANY sales people will simply say its available and really not know or care and 2) shmooze the higher ups with freebies, gifts and lunches to get the nod...
The end result is a higher up bringing a package to their tech department and commanding "here...make this work, its supposed to do 1,2 and 3" and if it doesn't, its the tech dept that gets blamed, not the CEO nor the salesman nor the vendor.
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