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BoM asked to explain ‘what happened here’ after cost of website redesign revealed to be $96.5m
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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This reminds me of when Oregon awarded $300 million to Oracle to build a healthcare marketplace site right after the Affordable Care Act passed. They took the money, built a site that didn't work, and the whole thing was scrapped at the last minute. We wound up using the site that had already been created by the federal government, which is still in use this very day. Also the state is currently in a deficit and wants to add tolls on our highways, increase registration costs for fuel efficient vehicles, and add a per-mile road tax so that the poorest among us can foot the bill for past decisions such as this.
It's all a racket to steal as much money from workers as possible.
Who in fuck would be dumb enough to hire Oracle for anything anymore? They are sustained entirely by their legal department. Have you found literally anyone in the last decade happy with the end result from Oracle?
This was about 15 years ago but I held this same sentiment toward Oracle back then too.
So short story time… Years ago, me, the guy I was dating at the time, his step father and mother are hanging out. She says her company finally decided who to hire to revamp all their internal stuff. (Oprah said something about their blenders and now a small Ohio company couldn’t keep up with demand). I’m a tech nerd. Boyfriend fell out of her. Step father used to work at DEC. we all have our reasons to be interested.
“Yea, we hired some company called Oracle.”
All of us had the exact same reaction. Perfectly in sync. It was not one of approval.
I warned her this will end in lawsuits. I was right, they sued Oracle from what I heard. Oracle lied every step of the way about what they could and would do. They missed every fucking deadline. They tested fuck all. Nothing ever worked the way it was CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED to work. Because Oracle is basically a law firm that contracts tech work out to India.
She no longer works there which is why I can share this story.
it's not an accident...they probably just bribed somebody in the approval process.
I mean, yes, that is bad… but the biennium budget for 2011-2013 was around $60 Billion, which means this project represented about half a percent of the overall budget. The current budget deficit is around $60 Million, but the kicker from 2024 was a record $5.6B in unexpected surplus.
The Oracle debacle is a good representation of why government contracting can be a mess, but I don’t think that project caused such a big long-term financial problem. Putting a toll on the I-5 bridge into/from WA is a massive issue, I agree with you there.