Marc L. Songini

The state of New York is being threatened with a federal lawsuit for failing to comply with the Help America Vote Act, which requires actions such as the development of statewide voter-registration databases and the installation of e-voting systems or other voting machines that are handicapped-accessible.n

As Oracle Corp. works to create its Fusion best-of-breed application suite, it should make sure rival IBM's hardware and software are an integral part of the road map, according to a survey of former PeopleSoft Inc. users.

State and local election officials, looking to meet federal voting regulations, are buying electronic voting gear despite a lack of best practices guidance and money.

Oracle Corp. President Charles Phillips laid out the welcome mat Thursday to the users his company will soon inherit from CRM software vendor Siebel Systems Inc., assuring them lifetime support for their applications and the benefits of integration with his company's back-end software.

The government of Ontario next month will take control of a controversial 3-year-old welfare payment system that critics say is still underperforming and failing to deliver a return on investment. The Social Delivery Model Technology (SDMT) system was custom-written by Accenture Ltd. to modernize and improve business processes at the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services (CSS).

The refusal to purchase specialized voting machines that comply with handicap-access laws has put a Florida county in the cross hairs of the state's attorney general and handicap-rights groups. On June 29, the Volusia County Council voted 4-3 against authorizing the purchase of 210 touch-screen systems from Diebold Election Systems. According to Florida state law, all counties were obliged to have at least one state-certified touch-screen machine in place by July 1. The Diebold systems meet the handicap-access requirement because they also house devices that enable blind voters to receive verbal prompts to help them vote.

What once looked to be a marquee deployment of hosted CRM software at Cisco Systems Inc. is now the subject of a damning report from a research firm that says the project has stalled. In a note published on June 22, analysts from JMP Securities LLC suggested that a deployment of CRM software from San Francisco-based Salesforce.com Inc. had been temporarily delayed.

Three of the larger Oracle Corp. user communities this week announced that they are banding together to launch a single education and technology sharing event next year.The organizations are the Chicago-based International Oracle Users Group (IOUG), which is composed primarily of database users; the Atlanta-based Oracle Applications Users Group; and the Lexington, Ky.-based Quest International Users Group, made up of the onetime PeopleSoft Inc. and J.D. Edwards & Co. users Oracle inherited after its buyout of PeopleSoft in January.