British Army does not Excel at spreadsheets: Soldiers' newly announced promotions are revoked after sorting snafu
- Reference: 1596810607
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/08/07/army_promotion_excel_snafu/
- Source link:
A screenshot of an internal email sent around the Royal Logistics Corps (RLC) and [1]posted on Facebook revealed the snafu, which The Register has been told happened after someone in the RLC personnel management branch incorrectly sorted a spreadsheet of successful and unsuccessful promotion candidates.
"Regrettably, the RLC LCpl – Cpl 2020 Board results published at 0900 Thursday 6th August 2020 contains errors with the selection. The board results have been withdrawn from the MS Web until this has been rectified," said the email, which was posted on the ever-popular Fill Your Boots UK page for "military banter".
"This was due to a clerical error compiling the board scores. CSS [Combat Support Services] RLC Boarding team are working to perform a 100 per cent check of the board results and look to re-issue the results tomorrow however this currently looks to have affected the LSS (Logistical Supply Specialists), DTTO (driver tank transporter operators) trades and those selected to become Instructors," it continued.
Unhappily for those junior Non-Commissioned Officers who thought they had taken the next step up the career ladder, the email went on to spell out what this meant:
This will result in soldiers who have already been informed of their selection now being informed they were not successful. Conversely, some soldiers who have been informed they were not successful will have been successful.
In the understatement of the summer, the email's author added: "This is a far from ideal situation and I am looking to add in steps to the process to ensure that this does not happen going forward."
Lance Corporal (LCpl) is the first non-commissioned supervisory rank in the Army. Corporal (Cpl) is the next step up the ladder. Like the civilian world, promotion brings pay rises and increased job prospects – including as an instructor in basic training depots.
Alfie Usher, operator of Fill Your Boots UK and associated insurance website Forces Compare, told El Reg : "They only clocked it after they informed all the blokes, as they released the results."
In a reference that will be understood by those who have experienced the joys of military small arms [2]classroom instruction , he added: "Career firing – career firing – career stops!"
An Army spokesman told The Register : "We apologise sincerely for the error that was made in the publication of some promotion board results. The mistake was noticed quickly and steps taken to rectify it as soon as possible. We are contacting those directly affected by this error to apologise for the mistake. Lessons will be learned from this incident to ensure similar mistakes do not occur again."
Proving that there's no new form of computer-enabled cock-up, back in 2003 a Canadian electricity generation firm made [3]a similar Excel error that cost it $23m once somebody realised the nature of the copy-and-paste error. Be careful with your spreadsheets out there. ®
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[1] https://www.facebook.com/Fillyourbootsuk/photos/a.305417299972340/946238062556924/?type=1&theater
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd_BITx5iUA
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2003/06/19/excel_snafu_costs_firm_24m/
[4] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Perhaps the person
Ahem. No. Whoever made that error should be promoted, and sent to be the British representative at the brand-new Canadian Armed Forces base on Baffin Island, a base set up just to park idiots from various armed forces of the Commonwealth and possibly allies. Britain would have one on South Georgia Island, and Australia one somewhere near New Guinea. The US would put theirs in the Mojave. Or possibly Montana. Every now and again they should exchange a few personnel.
Re: Perhaps the person
No, do not send them to Montana. We have plenty already. We used to have Thule AFB in Greenland (sorry about Pres. Trump's faux pas there my Greenland comrades) that we sent the truly inept. Again, sorry Greenland.
We used to entice the exceptionally ignorant ones with the promise of a willing lass behind every tree on Thule. Apparently there is a notable lack of trees on said base.
Re: Perhaps the person
>who made the cock-up should be demoted to office cleaner
Or maybe they should get corporal punishment...
There's no point linking to a site that requires logging in to view
Especially one as odious as Facebook.
I sympathize
I have yet to get a spreadsheet to sort properly. There's usually an objection to the number of cells selected, or to some of them being merged, without actually pointing out to me what the solution is or which cells are a problem. My usual fix is to copy and paste the data into Word, which still understands sorting.
Re: I sympathize
I copy and paste into a WSL window, where sorting is definitely understood. Also sometimes the only way to format dates.
Beer Friday
Canadian electricity generation firm made a similar Excel error that cost it $23m once somebody realised the nature of the copy-and-paste error.
That might explain why Beer Friday at TransAlta as being every two weeks (Yes they treated us to a beer every other Friday in the Canteen) 9 years later.
Training
So how many people here have had training in any MS Office products?
Re: Training
Not enough, though this is a global issue. Like the renaming of genes like SEPT1 and MARCH1 because not enough scientists noticed the automagic conversion to dates.
I don't want to link the paywalled Nature article, but this [1]2016 paper is funny enough.
"
The problem of Excel software (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, USA) inadvertently converting gene symbols to dates and floating-point numbers was originally described in 2004 [1]. For example, gene symbols such as SEPT2 (Septin 2) and MARCH1 [Membrane-Associated Ring Finger (C3HC4) 1, E3 Ubiquitin Protein Ligase] are converted by default to ‘2-Sep’ and ‘1-Mar’, respectively. Furthermore, RIKEN identifiers were described to be automatically converted to floating point numbers (i.e. from accession ‘2310009E13’ to ‘2.31E+13’).
"
[1] https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7
Re: Training
Yeah. That. Totally not the program's fault, right? That not everybody uses excel, and maybe those who used the abbreviation first used something else (even a flat ASCII file) does of course not come to mind. I have not had to use excel until recently (you cannot do real statistics with excel, one should use a proper data analysis tool / programming language), so I am only now fighting with those brain dead auto convert things. Doesn't help that some data I'm dealing with follows formatting rules from the 70s, and those predate excel. By a lot.
(and yes, I usually use other programs, but manglement likes their excel sheets - so for real work I care sweet Få)
Was Rank stored in Column E?
If so, the Fifth Column is to blame.
"To err is human, to really fcuk things up requires a computer".
This may be old, but it's still true.
Excel users == skiddies?
HUGO have given up the fight on naive use of Excel. There are many pitfalls for average users.
https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/06/excel_gene_names/
Perhaps the person
who made the cock-up should be demoted to office cleaner? They might excel at that.