Justice Department Joins Fraud Lawsuit Against Oracle 100
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by
Soulskill
from the just-tell-them-it-was-for-national-security dept.
from the just-tell-them-it-was-for-national-security dept.
suraj.sun writes with news that the US Department of Justice has joined a lawsuit alleging Oracle of overcharging the federal government for its software products. Quoting:
"In a nutshell, the lawsuit argues that Oracle's government customers — a wide array of agencies, including the State Department, the Energy Department, and the Justice Department itself — got deals 'far inferior' to those the enterprise software giant gave to its commercial clients. The allegations stem from a software deal between Oracle and the federal General Services Administration that the Justice Department says involved 'hundreds of millions of dollars in sales' and that ran from 1998 to 2006. Under the contract, Oracle was required to inform the GSA when commercial discounts improved and to offer those same discounts to government buyers. Oracle misrepresented its true commercial sales practices and thus defrauded the US, the lawsuit contends.
Re:Gov looking to save money? (Score:1, Interesting)
If our tax dollars are to be spent, they should be spent wisely. The idea that you can sell goods and services to the government at inflated prices needs to stop. Part of the problem is the government itself not doing their homework until after the fact. The other part is that everyone knows you can screw the government over. So naturally, crap like this happens.
I am a tax watchdog for the county I live in. I study government tax dollar expenditures for tons of different things ranging from website upgrades/design to large arts centers run by third party management companies. Now, I am all for keeping taxes low and thus expenditures for changes, upgrades, and the running of money making enterprises low. I think that government entities should be working hard to do that but what I don't believe is that corporations are required to make their bidding lower to the government because they aren't as capable as private entities to ensure their contracts are reasonable.
Let's take the website and arts center management for example. A simple city website redesign is going to cost my hometown nearly $80,000 because they don't know any better. They seriously feel that this is a fair price and have been saving up for 10 years to cover the costs. For the changes they want and based on the costs incurred by surrounding cities (other government entities which happily provided me with their own costs!) it would appear that they are being charged at least by $20,000 more than the other cities who have recently underwent change and probably another $10,000 on top of that.
As for the arts center, several other government agencies have utilized the management company that another local city is using. All of those other outfits have been running at unacceptable losses for more than five years and now guess what? The city adjacent to mine is as well. Why did the city management and councils allow these things to happen?
Simple: because they're not able to make sound business decisions on their own and the real world sucks. Do I think that private companies should be able to take advantage of anyone who is stupid enough not to do their homework? Yup. That's how businesses make money.
Let's stop this happy fucking horseshit world we have suddenly found ourselves in where it's someone else's fault that the government got overcharged. Either hire competent people to oversee the bidding on expenditures such as these and allow those people the freedom to make tough choices to save money or suffer the consequences. Stop meddling in private business because you are inept when it comes to dealing in the real world.
Government wants to pretend its like the private world in so many ways, especially at reelection time, but then it goes off and does something like this. And they wonder why they get taken advantage of. Ugh.
Re:It may be a bit ambiguous.... (Score:2, Interesting)
"most favored" != "favorite"
The generally accepted meaning of someone being "most favored" is that they are receiving the most favorable terms available.