We have a piece of software for handling child cases in the public sector in Denmark. It cost around 100 million Danish KR to develop, it’s up for renewal, and

We have a piece of software for handling child cases in the public sector in Denmark. It cost around 100 million Danish KR to develop, it’s up for renewal, and because the old system was build on mainframe tech that nobody wants, it’s up for a do over. The new bid was for something around 120 million DKR. Software is called DUBU if anyone wants to google the exact figures or want to know more. Around 30 municipalities run a record keeping ESDH software called SBSYS. It’s not open source but it’s owned by the muniplacities who hire private companies to maintain and develop the code. A couple of years ago they decided to build a DUBU like module, which cost them around half a million DKR, and it operates so well that it’s managed to replace DUBU without any ill effects in our third largest city. Now, the base of SBSYS provided a nice base to save documents, but I simply can’t imagine what those 119 million are paying for. If you need 119 million to classify and save documents on cases in a database you probably shouldn’t be developing software - yet one of our most prestigious software houses won the contract. Honestly it looks like theft of tax payer money that is possible because the deciding politicians aren’t tech savvy enough to know when they are being ripped off. Especially because it’s likely to be both delayed and have it’s costs increased before it’s implemented, at least if it follows the trend of most our major software projects (including SBSYS). Obviously I can’t be as blunt in my professional life, and I haven’t actually seen the deal and I am speculating, but it just seem off.