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UN Wastes $3 Million on 30,000 Oracle Licenses Left Unused, Sources Say, As Budget Committee Meets, No Ban Comment

By Matthew Russell Lee

Inner City Press

December 22, 2008

The UN purchased 30,000 licenses from Oracle to a computer program called Seibel, a so-called Customer Relations Management (CRM) system. The contract is for $7.5 million, of which over $3 million have already been paid to Oracle. But the licenses have never been used, according to UN computer system personnel.

These whistleblowers, outraged at the waste and of accountability they say is pervasive, have directed Inner City Press to the documentary evidence of the phantom contract. Click here to view the listing of Oracle's $7,581,607 contract PD/C0025/07; click here to view the UN's intranet's presentation that "implementation is expected to begin in June 2006," which has yet to occur despite the outlay of $3,073,214.

In the UN's online Procurement database, the information about the Seibel purchase from Oracle is substantially less detailed than from other purchases. For other purchases, the specifications of the procurement are online, often dozens of pages. For this purchase from Oracle, there are no online specifications. Click here.

Internal whistleblowers tell Inner City Press that worse than the mis-management that led to the purchase of 30,000 licenses well before they would or even could be used is the cover-up that has occurred afterwards. They also identify as problematic the UN's contracting with EMC Corporation to purchase licenses for a program called Documentum, ostensibly to replace the UN's Official Document System for the UN's "Enterprise Content Management" system, ECM.

Click here for the full story.