Posted on 07/23/2002 5:53:55 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Edited on 04/12/2004 5:41:05 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
SACRAMENTO (AP) - California has canceled its $95 million computer contract with Oracle Corp., state officials announced Tuesday.
Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the Department of General Services and the Department of Finance have been trying to negotiate a way out of the deal since May. The announcement means the state is relieved of further financial obligations, including all interest and fees.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
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While you're probably right (and I'm not in a position to disagree), I suspect that the real reason that California changed its mind is either financial or political. The state government is broke financially, and apparently morally as well. Either they could not afford Oracle's product or they were upset that Oracle wouldn't cut the state some serious slack.
Dan Walters: Florez fired as Audit Committee chairman for doing job too well
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Dueling analyses of Oracle contract
Competing analyses of the value of California's controversial $95 million no-bid software contract with the Oracle Corp. have one thing in common: They aren't based on any valid survey of how much state employees will actually use the database software, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee heard Wednesday. State Auditor Elaine Howle, whose scathing assessment of the year-old deal triggered the committee's inquiry, and former state Auditor Kurt Sjoberg, whom Oracle's lawyers hired to prepare ...
Published Thursday, June 6, 2002 - ca
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Five weeks after he was suspended with pay for his role in California's computer software scandal, Department of Information Technology Director Elias Cortez was fired Monday. Cortez labeled as "totally inaccurate" the testimony of his deputy director, Kim Heartley-Humphrey, that she tried to warn him about the Oracle deal's potential pitfalls. And Keene, who was fired the day Cortez was suspended -- May 2 -- testified that he thought Cortez and his department verified the claims.
Published Tuesday, June 11, 2002 - tech
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Like Nixon with Watergate, Davis focused on money
The scandal is not just the Oracle contract, a $95 million fiasco greased through the Davis administration and accompanied by a $25,000 contribution to Davis' re-election from an unsavory lobbyist. The scandal is that Oracle peeled back a "pay to play" nexus that potentially ties Davis administration policy decisions to providing him with campaign cash. Rightly or wrongly, lobbyists and others hired to achieve policy goals for their clients act on the assumption that their clients must ...
Published Sunday, June 30, 2002 - OpEd
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Oracle scandal shuts the doors at agency
The Oracle computer software scandal claimed another casualty Friday when the Department of Information Technology bowed out of state government, closing its doors for the last time. "The attention and the Oracle debacle are 99 percent of the reason the department is sunsetting." Gov. Gray Davis' administration is scrambling to devise a temporary replacement for the department, which was charged with overseeing information technology projects in state government.
Published Saturday, June 29, 2002 - california
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Ravi Mehta, the former Oracle Corp. lobbyist, last week took the Fifth, refusing to spell out to a legislative investigative committee his role in greasing Oracle's software contract through the Davis administration last year. In a Jan. 5 e-mail to his clients at Oracle, Mehta spelled out how the company should deal with skepticism in the Legislature about the contract. When it came out that Mehta had delivered a $25,000 contribution for Gov. Gray Davis to Arun Baheti, the governor's ...
Published Sunday, June 16, 2002 - editorials
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Former Oracle Corp. lobbyist Ravi Mehta backed out of his promise to testify before a legislative committee Wednesday amid new disclosures about the tactics he used to influence state officials on the company's behalf. In the e-mail, sent in January to Oracle official Robert Hoffman, Mehta also suggested the company make an array of campaign contributions to other legislators, offering a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of how one lobbyist connected campaign support to policy-making. Also ...
Published Thursday, June 13, 2002 - tech
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Dan Walters: Computers and contracts -- Two pitfalls for politicos who cut corners
Memo to future California governors, or Gray Davis, if he wins a second term: Pay very close attention to anything involving contracts and computers, and if it's some kind of computer contract, start fingering your worry beads. About 90 percent of Davis' headaches involve computers and/or contracts, a prime example being the $95 million Oracle software contract that his underlings signed last year under suspicious conditions. Were Oracle an isolated incident involving either computers or ...
Published Friday, June 7, 2002 - walters
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The fallout from the state's probe into its no-bid software contract with the Oracle Corp. spread to a second computer project Wednesday, forcing the resignation of another top computer adviser to Gov. Gray Davis. The Democratic governor accepted the resignation of Vin Patel, who as director of executive information systems played a key role in Davis' effort to elevate state government's presence on the Internet. Davis recently appointed law professor Clark Kelso as interim director of that ...
Published Thursday, May 30, 2002 - ca
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Oracle probe's leader dives in
The timing of the state's Oracle software contract debacle couldn't have been better for Dean Florez. An ambitious politician who intends to run for statewide office, Florez called for legislative hearings and insisted that top-level Davis administration officials and state bureaucrats testify about their role in the Oracle deal. He also made the unusual demand for internal documents from the Governor's Office related to the Oracle contract -- paperwork that was handed over to Florez's ...
Published Sunday, May 26, 2002 - tech
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