Wednesday, March 12, 2003

California Leads the Way How do you like this?  First, California's CIO loses his job over what they're calling the Oracle debacle and now, the LA Times reports that a central system involving PeopleSoft being developed for the California State Universit;y system is $200 million over budget.  The system has exceeded projected costs by over $200 million.  We had a similar experience here with the University of Utah except on a MUCH smaller scale.  The Auditor's report suggests that no reasonable feasability study was done or business case made.  That is incredible for a $662 million project.  You've definitely got to be careful on these big projects or this is exactly what will happen.  And now we have Oregon's state bond rating being downgraded again. 2:58:44 PM    comment []

Online Government Purchasing My monitor died last night.  I have been through three monitors in the last year or so, probably because I have been using old monitors discarded by others in the office when they get a new PC.  So, I decided to use the State's contract with CDW/G.  It was a great purchasing experience.  I had used CDW/G once before (last year) so they still had my customer data (shipping, billing, etc.)  In about two minutes, I was able to scan through all the options and purchase a nice Viewsonic monitor for the excellent state contract price.  I checked with ITS to make sure they had now issues with the Viewsonic and placed the order.  It should ship today.  An increasing proportion of our State procurement is done online.  For example, the State has a contract for industrial supplies and equipment that can all be purchased online.  Well over 70% of our office supplies are purchased online as well.  I hope that other state employees have the same excellent experience that I had this morning. 8:54:13 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.