Posts by Roberto Panacek

Hope it's called GCOS...

...as that will take me back to my Bull DPS7000 mainframe days where I first started in IT. What goes around comes around. The heady days of UFAS, GAC, JCL and TDS. Bring it on.

seesm like a good deal to me

The public sector in Scotland has already invested substantially in Oracle and this new deal offers all public sector bodies as much database and associated management tools as they can use for the next 4 years. At the end of the 4 yr period the licences are declared and then pass in perpetuity to each public sector body. The deal only went ahead in the first place because there is already a significant estate in existence.

A lot of the Oracle use in the public sector relates to vendor solutions running on an Oracle databases e.g. Council X buys a housing system from vendor Y and the underlying technology is Oracle. By centralising support into a single deal like this, the Scottish Government will reduce the maintenance cost that Council X pays to vendor Y as a portion of that maintenance cost paid by Council X to Vendor Y goes to Oracle.

Also, there is a move in Government in Scotland to share public services and this deal could be important. If Council X wishes to share its new Oracle based housing system with Council W, it will now be able to do so without having to upgrade its database to a full rights licence. This has been a barrier to sharing systems in the past and it has now gone away. Replicate htis across the whole of the public sector in Scotland and I think you'll find this is a pretty astute move.

none of them get it

It's the systematic use of public money i.e. our money for private gain that rankles the most.

Sir John Butterfill made hundreds of thousands of pounds in capital gains tax using money he got from the taxpayer. He also claimed for refurbishing the servants' (oops, I mean staff) wing of his house. Dear old Michael Connarty bought some furniture with taxpayers money and then sold it to Jim Devine who paid for it with taxpayers money. Now all of that might be strictly within the rules but here's what one Harriet Harman said regarding the almost forgotten Fred Goodwin's pension deal

"...it might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it is not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that is where the government steps in."

We need thes people sacked now. Standing down at the next election and pocketing 100k for the privilege along with whatever money can be milked from the sale of whatever assets have been bought from the public purse in the interim is not acceptable in this particular court of public opinion.