Previously on different Oracle fiascos: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33739657">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33739657</a> (Edinburgh Uni)<p><a href="https://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2001-02/weekly/5865/8.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2001-02/weekly/5865/8.h...</a> (Cambridge Uni)<p>"Customized ERP" should strike fear into the hearts of anyone interested in public spending accountability. It means the organization's process is somehow non-standard in ways that will require thousands of little changes at gradually increasing cost.<p>It sounds like Birmingham is digging themselves out of the hole by installing basic non-custom Oracle and then just fixing up their processes to match, which is what they should have done in the first place.<p>(Also, why isn't there a standard, prefereably open source, software deck for running UK councils? They're all operating in basically the same legal environment.)