Spreadsheets are ideal for data. But it is a pity they could not use a generic spreadsheet that will work equally with Libre Office, Google Office, Softmaker Office, ONLYOFFICE, or even good old Gnumeric.

When I was claiming Gift Aid tax rebates for a small charity, I downloaded the appropriate spreadsheet from HMRC. There was one version for Excel and one for Libre Office Calc. Other spreadsheets were unsupported. The problem seems to be the manic desire to incorporate macros within spreadsheets.

Databases are ideal for data. Spreadsheets are ideal for... erm... well... spreading sheet I guess.

You spelt sheet wrong.

Yeah, but there might be kids around.

Or PC* nazis, which are the same intellectual level.

*) not the computer

Seems reasonable to me - better than spaffing 20 billion on a unified web interface that won't be delivered until 2039, and then won't actually support dates past the 32 bit "issue".

Assuming, of course, that there are enough rows for all the data...

https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/05/excel_england_coronavirus_contact_error/

just from memory without re reading your kindly supplied url ,

wasnt that because they were using Excel 1972 or something?

hopefully in their quest to hunt down unsupported software they've pushed the boat out installed office 2017 or similar and now can do more than 256 rows !

good to go!

>wasnt that because they were using Excel 1972 or something?

No it was because they couldn't do the import properly so they ran out of columns

They managed to make a spreadsheet where each entry was a new column !

I always laugh when IT consultants say something along the lines of "We could modernize these 3 simple spreadsheets that don't have any problems, replace them with a bespoke SAP-integrated cloud blockchain solution!".

Cue a project director, 3 months of contract haggling, endless training and the end product is just as shitty as the original .XLSX that at least mere mortals could open without 18x IT helpdesk requests.

Whenever there is an IT project like this, I always ask the group: "if this was your money, would you stick with a simple spreadsheet, or spend £100k replacing the simple thingy with a complicated thingy?

1. Depends how costly a mistake in those spreadsheets is and how likely it is that a mistake is made.

2. If the spreadsheets really are that simple, why do you even need a bespoke SAP integrated cloud blockchain solution which involves 3 months of contract haggling and endless training? Either do it in-house or the requirement has been over specified in the modernisation effort - like adding in blockchain for no readily apparent reason.

3. If the thing you do, question you ask, is as you say, then you aren't an IT consultant (or at least not one from a company that stands to gain from getting the contract to produce the solution). In my experience IT consultants like that are actually from sales.

For all of the obvious foibles of open file exchange, any-user editing, weak input controls and audit trails... One can never underestimate the value of a good spreadsheet!

For the specific problems being addressed here a whopping great ERP system to merge all ERP systems is let's face it, a patent non starter

At least not until we can tell computers to go away and build something on their own - and figure out the often terrible scope and specifications one has to work with.

Presumably this is the "build one to throw away" idea (which is from The Mythical Man Month, well before agile descended upon as the ultimate meaningless buzzword). This argues that you should build a quick-and-dirty prototype for any major system, in order to understand the requirements more fully, then throw it away and build it in a proper robust manner.

However, what they have misunderstood is that you don't build your prototype using a completely different technology (excel) to the one you plan to use to build the application with, as you don't learn anything about how it should be done that way.

Sometimes the "build one to throw away" becomes the "it works, we’ll keep it”. This will be used until it blows up because of problems of scale; lack of (referential) inegrity; not "one source of truth"; etc…

Sometimes??

Most of the time.

I've seen some shocking systems in my time that have sprung up from 'disposable' MVPs that weren't disposed of.

At that point the business is shafted because of stupidity lock-in

My version of Excel doesn't have a download function. I typically use Firefox for that. Is Office following the emacs paradigm? "Everything eventually becomes an email client."

"Everything eventually becomes an email client."

And a web server.

Click on the Data Tab

then "From Web"

enter the url of the file you would like to download

Do stuff in PowerQuery

Click "Close & Load"

then you have downloaded data using Excel

This has the benefit that if your remote datasource is changed, then the changes will update on your spreadsheet.

Er……

“ ; the dashboard or underlying data will not be shared outside government," the letter read.

According to the workbook seen by The Register”

Conclusion - el'reg is part of the government.

That's a nasty thing to say on a Friday.

"The current Excel-based data commission is being used to develop an early pilot of the Dashboard, ahead of moving to a more performant solution over time, in line with agile delivery best practice,"

Who makes this s$&t up???

Proof that Excel can be used for everything...

...it isn't supposed to be used for.

Meanwhile, mine keeps crashing when I try to use it for the things it is supposed to be used for... sigh

And what's MS response? Do they fix the bugs? No, just another diet of ugly pills to make it look like macOS 9 - er, I mean Windows 11...

I have yet to have trouble opening an Excel file in LibreOffice.

It's a great user experience because I don't have Borkzilla's 365Eye watching everything I do while just looking over some numbers.

Observers might wonder why the team, supposedly the leaders of Whitehall's thrust towards digital modernisation, is using spreadsheets to share data, as well as preferring a method (download) whereby multiple copies of data may be created – making them inconsistent and insecure if shared via email.

well 7 billion will only get you so far ....

is when I've been called into some autopsy meeting because something bad has happened due to a mistake made in an administrative task based around Excel spreadsheets. Actually, that's not the thing that makes me cry... the thing is when I've spent a month or more converting that administrative process into a database backed web app with auditing, sanity checking, roll-back features, immutable backup to the cloud offsite, user input warnings, multi-user capability, record-locking etc, importing all the historic data kept in the excel spreadsheets, checking it, fixing it, double checking it, getting someone else to triple check it, testing it, getting the most IT illiterate I can think of to test it for UI/UX quality, THEN taking something I think is finally a complete package that would work well even if it became the final version because of the way these things tend to work out, presenting it to the administration team as a beta for feedback and further refinement etc. (I think they call it AGILE now, but it's really how I've always worked), and getting back comments that it's absolutely brilliant but lacking only one thing - the ability to filter the data and export it as an Excel file.

And then I spend the next week crying into my teacup as I tack on my pre-built Excel export interface code and tweak it to match the application, knowing full well that all they're going to do is open the exported file in Excel and start adding new data to it instead of using the web app because that's the way they've always done it and that's the process they are familiar with no matter how closely I've tried to match the Web Application to the way I've observed the process being done. I know from experience that even if I create the export file as read-only and password locked, they'll demand the password to unlock it and make it read/write.

Actually, re-reading that, I'm being unfair to my wonderful colleagues in the administration team.

They usually ask for the ability to filter and export as Excel because they often have to communicate their activities to other administration teams in the wider organisation, and they only seem to use Excel judging by the over-elaborate, Macro-laden, looks-like-shit "Applications" that come from there.

The conversation usually goes something like... "Your summary looks great, but can you supply those figures as an Excel file instead of a PDF please? Makes it easier to transfer it into a spreadsheet when we produce the summary figures for the end-of-year report."

I said "Applications" earlier... because I don't know the word for what they actually are. "Web Apps" are just websites with additional interactivity and functionality like a traditional application... what I see from Central are "Excel files with additional interactivity and functionality"... and I don't know what to call these "Excel-based data capture arrangements"... "Excrements" perhaps?

Davinson is also hoping to launch a "tool" to track legacy applications in detail.

This'll be a filtered column on her spreadsheet.

maybe it'll even change the colour of some of the cells.

I wonder how much more than £1,000 a day the consultant was charged at, and supplied by one on the usual suspects, no doubt, for

inventing this bit of nonsense. Probably the only It-related tool she/he even knows.

If they produce their written report in landscape format, i.e. it's just a printout of a Powerpoint, then you probably have your answer.

scammers are going to have a field day

From :HMGovernment.co.ru

To:Victim

Please open and complete this excel file detailing your legacy systems.

Please not do mind it scanning your system for errors , or the increace in network traffic as we use your computer as a spam relay

Please pass this file along to your friends/colleges as HMGovernmnet would wish for a full survay

!!! RANT ALERT !!!

It is unfair to consider the absence of a clear plan for dealing with 'legacy' IT equipment and systems a major failing, (and no, not because this government doesn't have any clear plan about anything), but because this is horrendously complicated. Any overarching 'clear plan' would be so simplistic as to be virtually meaningless, and any detailed plan so complicated that it would be incomprehensible to anyone without a first in Systems Engineering and a PhD in advanced cleverness from the university of clever.

It would have to deal both with innumerable PCs on versions of Windows all the way back to XP, the Cobol system that only 'old Ron' knows how to maintain, but is essential to keep the boiler running in a building that cannot be updated because it is grade 1 listed. It would have to cope with the ICL, Unisys, Amdahl and Prime computing systems used in seriously underground, former mines, oh and the Lotus Notes implementations still in use*, and, of course the outsourced systems that EDS runs on behalf of the department or agency and won't even tell you which site it is in because that was not in the original contract and they'll need a meeting of all the top brass to decide how much to charge for that information (and the meeting will cost you US$10,000 just to arrange, even though the customer won't be there).

So I don't actually blame anyone for not having a clear plan, because a lot of the time any government (Con or Lab) has had a clear plan about major IT infrastructure changes we've seen headlines all over the place about cost overruns, mission creep and failure. It is actually not a simple task, and like quantum mechanics, anyone who says they understand it, doesn't.**

!!! END RANT ALERT !!!

*I honestly have no idea if any of this is actually current, but I bet some of it is.

** R. P Feynman: "Anyone who says he understands quantum mechanics, does not understand quantum mechanics."

"The current Excel-based data commission is being used to develop an early pilot of the Dashboard, ahead of moving to a more performant solution over time, in line with agile delivery best practice," he said.

"The Dashboard metrics have been developed in collaboration with the cross-government Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) community."

Anyone for a game of [1]buzzword bingo ?

[1] https://dilbert.com/strip/1994-02-22