A ceiling tripled without a new tender: Oracle, the VA and article 120

In the contract for the platform you already run, the figure you negotiated is not what you will spend. The one that counts is the ceiling, and the clause that raises it was written into the tender documents on the day you signed: in Italy, drafted properly, it carries no limit of value. That holds for a half-million-euro award and for a public contract worth twenty-seven billion.

A three-day window, seventeen billion

On 11 August 2026, at 12:44 Eastern time, the Technology Acquisition Center of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) published notice 36C10B26R0015. The heading is the thing itself: “Modification P00008 - Addition of Optional Ordering Periods and Ceiling Increase”. Deadline for responses: 14 August, 13:00. Three days and a quarter of an hour.

The notice states the why — work continues “until all VA Medical Centers (VAMCs) and related facilities have fully transitioned to the EHR system” — and the who: “The intended sole source […] is Oracle Health Government Services, Inc.”.

Signed on 18 August, in the federal register FPDS the modification carries contract 36C10B18D5000 — 17 May 2018 — from a base-and-all-options ceiling of USD 9,996,557,385.06 to 26,937,945,069.34. The last date to place orders, 16 May 2028 in the 2018 award, becomes 16 May 2036 in the filed field; the description of the modification instead says 2031.

The object written in 2018

The description filed in 2018 explains why there was no alternative in 2026: the contract covers “THE FULL SCOPE OF SERVICES AND PRODUCTS NECESSARY TO DEPLOY THE DOD EHR SOLUTION IN A MANNER THAT MEETS THE NEEDS OF VA” — the Department of Defense’s own system. The object names a system rather than a function. That it was never competed is a pattern handled separately; what matters here is the ceiling. When the object names the product, every later enlargement is a modification, never a tender.

Where the parties stand

On 2 September the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs held its hearing. Chairman Mike Bost, in opening: “V.A. recently extended its contract with Oracle Health because the original price tag was not enough to complete the rollout”, and then “Time after time, this Committee has learned that V.A.’s first price tag is rarely the last one”.

Oracle was invited and did not attend. At the close the committee passed, by 19 votes to nil, Maxine Dexter’s motion to subpoena Larry Ellison and Mike Sicilia; the subpoenas were served on 14 September. For the minority, Mark Takano: “No corporation is too powerful […] to answer to the American people” — a partisan statement, in a dispute still open. The company’s public position remains its press release of 13 June 2024: the system “will enable VA to standardize workflows, training, and technology management across its facilities using a single enterprise system”. Which is also, by construction, a system you cannot change halfway.

The Italian hook: the option with no cap

On 17 September 2026 TED published notice 640879-2026. Contracting authority: PagoPA S.p.A. The object, word for word: «GARA EUROPEA A PROCEDURA APERTA PER L’AFFIDAMENTO DEL SERVIZIO DI PROCESS MINING TRAMITE IL TOOL CELONIS» (open procedure for a process mining service through the Celonis tool). Contract CIG B2AB0111D3, concluded on 31 October 2024 with Hesplora S.r.l. of Florence. The change is an «estensione dell’importo contrattuale per ulteriori €324.115,00 ai sensi dell’art.120 comma 10, del D.lgs. 36/2023» (a further EUR 324,115 under article 120(10)), justified as a twelve-month extension option running to 31 October 2027.

Nothing here is irregular, which is why the example is useful: open procedure, option foreseen, modification published. But the original award notice — 781186-2024, of 19 December 2024 — recorded EUR 648,230.00 over 24 months, with one explicit line: «Il valore indicato non è comprensivo di opzioni» (the stated value does not include options). The option is worth exactly half that: EUR 972,345 in all, fifty per cent above the number anyone would have read in the tender. Here too the object names the product.

Why the 50% limit does not protect you

Article 120 of the Italian public contracts code (legislative decree 36/2023, in force since 31 December 2024) is cited for the half-value cap. Paragraph 2: «Nei casi di cui al comma 1, lettere b) e c), il contratto può essere modificato solo se l’eventuale aumento di prezzo non ecceda il 50 per cento del valore del contratto iniziale» (under paragraph 1(b) and (c), any price increase may not exceed 50 per cent of the initial value). Those letters cover unforeseen additional works and variations during performance.

Letter (a) is another road. It allows modification without a new procedure «se le modifiche, a prescindere dal loro valore monetario, sono state previste in clausole chiare, precise e inequivocabili dei documenti di gara iniziali, che possono consistere anche in clausole di opzione» (irrespective of monetary value, if provided for in clear, precise and unequivocal clauses of the initial tender documents, including option clauses). Irrespective of monetary value: no cap. The only check left is paragraph 6, which bars as substantial any modification that «estende notevolmente l’ambito di applicazione del contratto» (considerably extends the scope): not a threshold, a judgement formed afterwards.

How far a contract can grow is not settled by the modification: it is settled in the tender documents, years earlier, when nobody is watching.

Three checks, on the contract you already hold

Does the published value include the options? If not, the figure everyone quotes is not the commitment. Does the object name a product or describe a function? An object built on a product name closes the tender upstream. And on the day you stop paying, what remains yours? If the answer runs through an export in a format the supplier decides, the exit is nominal: we read as much in an audit.

Why a closed system

The reason a ceiling can triple with nobody able to object is in the American notice: work continues until the facilities are “fully transitioned to the EHR system”. When the object of the contract is completing a migration onto somebody else’s system there is no intermediate state in which you stop paying: there is a half-migrated hospital.

A closed system reverses that dependency for technical reasons, not ideological ones. The model weights are open and stay yours: kept, inspected, moved to another machine. Data, index and the record of decisions sit in your perimeter, not in the product. What you buy is the function, not residence in an environment. The test is separability: if changing supplier means rebuilding the archive, you had bought a condition, not a service. That is what technological sovereignty means once the slogans are stripped out.

The two axes, applied to this case

Complying. The control we run reads contracts and tender documents and watches three lines: the published value, every option clause with its exercise deadline, and the object — flagging each time it names a product instead of a function, with the dated trail an inspection can be shown, in the logic of the lessons on AI procurement.

Deciding. The same installation holds contracts, tender records, spending registers, business systems and archives in a single operating model, on which AI agents carry out decisions with a human operator in command — for large enterprises, defence, healthcare and the public sector. On premises, or in a dedicated cloud with an Italian data centre staffed by us, always under shared management.

Could you say, for your three largest software contracts, how far the ceiling can grow without a tender? Half an hour with one of our engineers is enough to start.

What we do not know

The American justification is attached in redacted form: we do not know its contents. We do not know what the VA will spend — a ceiling is a cap, not a forecast — nor which of the two filed dates, 2031 or 2036, governs the ordering window. We found no press release on the 2026 modification in Oracle’s newsroom: our search does not prove none exists. In the Italian case we know the instruments, not the reasons. None of the parties was contacted.