http://www.insidebayarea.com/breaking-news/ci_27479308/police-union-demands-audit-oakland-technology...

The police union probably has ulterior motives, but fine for shining light again on what appears to be SNAFU for local government IT in the US. How much of this can be attributed to vendor lock-in and how much could it be mitigated with more coordination across government entities? It's a long-term project, but then so is rollout and fixing the proprietary systems in question (from Oracle in this case) -- very long term:

"The system used to always break down," said Councilman Larry Reid, who opposed the original Oracle contract in 1998. "To this date, I don't know why we've used it other than that we've spent so much money on it over the years."

I wonder if it was originally a PeopleSoft system, which Oracle later acquired. I remember reading an expose in SF Weekly 15 years ago http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/the-peoplesofttouch/Content?oid=2140295 about the SF school district's many-year ordeal with making a PeopleSoft implementaiton they had spent $$$ on to work at all, remember reading that with some joy, mostly because software was getting some investigative journalism treatment. A couple sort of followups http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/the-software-that-wouldnt-die/Content?oid=2141696  http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/misplaced-priorities-101/Content?oid=2145374 ... I wish someone would do a long-term followup story.

Oh, the thing that really made me remember that SF Weekly story was a quote in its sidebar http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/the-peoplesoft-touch/Content?oid=2140301 about ERP software: 

"They sell you on a completed house, you know, with a nice lawn, planter boxes, and all that," says Joe Moriarty, of Claremont's Kerry Consulting Group, a firm that investigates technology purchases. "What they actually sell you is a tool set and a load of lumber.