The billing system, Project Ocean, was designed in 2003 to replace a 30-year-old custom-built operation that relies on outdated technologies and fails to collect all the revenues it should, according to city officials and records. It has taken two years longer than planned and more than twice as much money as initially projected.

The effort stumbled because of technical complexity, changes in administrators overseeing the rollout and Oracle's inexperience building such a system, according to critics and Philadelphia CIO Dianah Neff. The current talks with Oracle are taking place even as Neff prepares to leave her job Sept. 8 -- before the negotiations are expected to be done.

Neff, who has pushed Philadelphia's municipal WiFi effort and is about to start a WiFi-focused consulting job in another city, said Project Ocean is on hold until the Mayor's Office of Information Services (MOIS) and other city officials can reach "settlement that will put the project back on track." She said the project could be modified or replaced by a "workable solution" can be put in place to protect the city's investment "and deliver a modern utility and collection system within 18 months."

An Oracle spokeswoman said only that the implementation is "still in progress and Oracle believes that the work performed to date conforms with the current agreement." She said the vendor will deliver on its obligations to complete the project.

City Controller Alan Butkovitz said his office is midway into a review of what happened with Oracle and Project Ocean, but it is too soon to specualte on what went wrong. Meanwhile, "anything the city administration does to make sure there's a workable product for its money is commendable and we wouldn't get in the way of that," he said.