Is that an AI headline ?

It's now been updated to "Mega council officers had no know idea what they were buying ahead of Oracle fiasco" so I'm still not sure

So there is "know" and "no know" but no (unknown) "no"

Know, no, no, know know, no, know, no, no, know, know, no there's no limit - 2 Unlimited.

2 Unlimited spending?

Was wondering about it myself. Looks like it's been fixed now.

For future commenters, the original title was "Mega council officers had know idea what they were buying ahead of Oracle fiasco"

For future commenters, the original title was "Mega council officers had know idea what they were buying ahead of Oracle fiasco"

Thank you for keeping us in the no

The original was definitely a no-no.

As ... someone more than capable of doing 99% of their IT departments jobs

Oh really? And what are the IT departments jobs jobs at a large unitary authority? And if you're so amazing, why don't you work there?

It always amuses me that people who've never worked in the public sector assume the people who do in fact work there are simultaneously useless and get huge amounts of renumeration. If everyone there is so awful and the job is that cushy, why don't you do all you can to get a position there? Clearly the obvious choice, right?

The OP kind of reminds me of the sort of techie who goes in assuming they know everything, implement a solution that they believe is right but leaves the business needing to adapt all of its working practices and procedures in order to be able to use it (and if they complain then they themselves are branded ignorant).

The OP is probably employed in the private sector where performance like Brum council would have resulted in real bankruptcy and job losses, so yes, the OP could probably have done much, much better for a fraction of the price.

Must be a Elon bro.

...leaves the business needing to adapt all of its working practices and procedures

Ah, a bit like SAP told its victims customers when moving to the "cloud".

Because, in my own, lived experience, they don't hire you unless you have exactly the right combination of qualifications and cannot see past their own hiring policies to realise a candidate might far exceed their requirements

A candidate that exceeds requirements can be seen as a risk. If they're over-qualified for a position then there's the worry that they're just looking for something as a stop-gap before moving on to something that's closer to their skillset, and not a long-term proposition.

I've had that!

Cave Rescue Casualty Care trained (that took many months of evenings)

Wilderness First Aid trained (multiple times, each at least a weekend course including on mountains and in caves for the practical elements)

First Aid at Work (when it was still an intensive 4 day course)

First Aid at Work (many times I've done it as an hour after the Wilderness First Aid training - essentially "immediately get someone to ring for an Ambulance and fill in this form/page in the company first aid log.")

But I was not allowed to become a First Aider at my previous 300+ people site.

First Aid in a work situation - rule no. 1 is get someone to ring for an Ambulance.

Then you maintain the casualty in the best possible state until the Ambulance arrives. (Hopefully within the golden hour.)

Wilderness and Cave First Aid is all about the first 6 hours as a Paramedic (or Cave Rescue or Mountain Rescue) is often going to take at least that long to arrive.

Apparently, this knowledge made me unsuitable to be a First Aider at work.

I worked with but not within a council IT department for nearly 20yr. They worked bloody hard for piss poor money often doing weekend cover and midnight shifts for nothing extra but time off in lieu.

Having moved on to the private sector to get a proper wage myself I discovered that my old council employer was about 10yr ahead of the private sector in patch managment and was doing a massively better job with 2 competent blokes than the new business with an entire global department.

A team of 10 and a server room for £1,000,000? Bullshit, unless you’re paying slave labour wages.

We’ve got this travelling go kart show to fund, and Oracle pays Big Money to get some stickers put on some of the go karts. I think part of those funds gets “kicked back” in party tickets that Oracle marketing gets to share around with unsophisticated customers. Any ERP system could be replicated with a database programmed in Microsoft Access (anybody who gets caught using Microsoft Access for anything in business gets fired and whatever project they had put together gets shitcanned). Thus it always has been…

Railroad in USA ran (might still) a car and engine tracking system for their entire system on Access. A disaster in my eyes, but they sold a copy to a Canadian railroad and I did well training their people to use it.

They had a row of techs in their center with big screens with multiple terminals running on them for "data quality", who were very busy lads. Every time anything didn't work IRL the floor manager typed DQ in entire columns and sent them off.

So if the IT department didn't have sufficient Oracle experience to adequately lead on this implementation, who made the decision to procure Oracle? Because my team work off a Microsoft stack, the last thing I'd do is ask them to oversee anything Oracle or anything non-Microsoft to be honest. Because I know what their specialisms are. So why do I think this decision was made by either an Assistant Director or even Director who has no idea about technology whatsoever, probably with statements such as "I should be able to have whatever I want" when challenged?

> was made by either an Assistant Director or even Director who has no idea about technology whatsoever

But can appreciate "the fine wines and dining that those Oracle chaps provide, I mean those chaps really know an awful lot, I had no idea how that Côtes du Rhône was available as a rosé. If they are this good at subtle things like vintages then they must be really good at all that software stuff."

Based on some bitter first hand experience of public sector procurement, the HR/Finance people would have been in the driving seat and ignored any screams of "Don't buy Oracle" from the IT department.

Probably head of finance, might well have not even invited anyone for IT to chat about the new system if they didn't like the IT people ot thought they might have to share credit. Migtht have been signed by an outgoing manager that couldn't be bothered to read anything. Might not even have been signed, plenty of big council contracts have no actual written contracts.

No need to guess though, it's acessible under FOI, just ask.

Sorry, drifted off there for a second, thought I was reading a BOFH... Directors making decisions...

Officers' understanding of the system was "limited," meaning they relied on external partners to design the solution and manage the program, the report says. At the same time, the Digital and Customer Services directorate's lack of Oracle knowledge meant it struggled to act as an "intelligent customer" and critique the work of systems integrator Evosys or other suppliers.

This is just correctly-implemented government policy since 1980 though, no?

The public sector should not employ specialists - just a few contract managers to get the efficient(!) private sector to do it for them. Worked famously well for RailTrack, which actively spurned engineering expertise and was envisioned purely as a contract-management agency, which was why the manager in charge of the area around Potters Bar didn't understand that the reports of the rails being shagged required immediate and urgent repair, not "that's fine, they're booked for grinding next week".

Most councils are incompetent to some extent, and this is by design - successive descoping and deskilling in favour of centrally-mandated outsourcing or central-government control (which means nothing gets done because there isn't the political bandwidth in Westminster to be making local/regional decisions). And I don't mean this to offend individuals or individual teams - but at an organisational level, these skills are often not as deep as they really ought to be, simply because of the way councils have been pushed to outsource, cut headcount, etc which leaves them at the mercy of the vendors and consultants who advise them on anything outside the core competencies.

It's long past time we devolved power back to councils, skilled them up, burnt the PFIs and got back - if not entirely - to the days of more powerful local authorities (who - let's not forget - built the motorways) who have the power, funding and skills to deliver public services and infrastructure without spending half their time bowing and scraping at the Treasury's doors begging for scraps.

I knew of a Police authority who outsourced their IT. Then outsourced the management of their IT outsourcing contract.

> Officers' understanding of the system was "limited," meaning they relied on external partners to design the solution and manage the program, the report says.

external partners === politically selected experts === experts at being politically selected.

It's long past time we devolved power back to councils, skilled them up, burnt the PFIs and got back - if not entirely - to the days of more powerful local authorities (who - let's not forget - built the motorways)

Motorways were built by the Road Construction Units, staffed by a mix of local and Westminster government employees but run by the Ministry of Transport who set standards and controlled the money.

Personally I've never seen a local authority that could consistently find its own arse with both hands, they tend to be composed of retired or unemployed middle managers who can't bear not being in charge of something, together with some idealistic younger folks who think they can change the world but have no understanding of economic reality.

They sold a hideously expensive system to a customer who clearly didn't understand what they were buying or what they really needed, and (so far!) is costing 5.7 TIMES what was originally quoted, to the point that the customer is going bankrupt. Sounds like "not fit for purpose" to me. Being bankrupt over it, the last creditor to be paid should be Oracle.

What are you, some kind of "engineer" who wants to see things working? That isn't how we Do Business from Austin, Texas: Proud to Be A Cowboy.

I can't help feeling that the ideal solution would have been to have a real consultant on their side. Not somebody who's going to sell them a product, undertake installation, integration, training or anything like that. Just somebody who would, for the duration, provide the in-house expertise they were lacking, act as a devil's advocate. The sort of freelance person that HMRC has been working so hard to drive out of the UK economy

That requires someone who can speak truth to power and an employer that wan't to hear the truth. And unfortunately few employers want that, they'd rather have the consultant that tells them every decision they make is golden than the guy who points out what a crock of shit they have come up with (however politely worded).

After all the council had previously spaffed millions on an SAP ERP system which SAP then declined to support any further and did not provide an upgrade path to thier latest shiny products. Its no wonder that the council went looking for an alternative. Sad that the alternative was rubbish sold by an even worse supplier.

If you license an ERP system you are effectively buying the sample application for a really crap programming language.