Local governments aren't businesses – so why are they force-fed business software?
- Reference: 1694421072
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/09/11/opinion_piece/
- Source link:
That [1]Oracle's local government ERP project for Birmingham City Council is now in nine-digit overrun and doesn't work is news because of its size and contribution to the council's bankruptcy, not because this has never happened before.
What's going wrong? It's easy to blame Oracle for incompetence. Indeed, a quick search for "Oracle project failure" will spew more examples than mere human minds can grasp. Whether Oracle is uniquely terrible is a moot point. You can repeat the exercise using SAP or any monstrous ERP entity of your choice and get copious reading material. There was a reason Birmingham was trying to move away from SAP after all. Oracle, though, seems to go the extra mile.
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There are failures in the commercial sector, of course, even though they don't often resemble what goes on in the state sector. Yet they can be instructive as wronged enterprises are much freer to go to the law to fix their grievances. What the court filings reveal strongly indicates why Oracle and its soulmates are such a bad fit so often, most especially the complicated, unique challenges of local government. Take this [3]case study of an American payroll outfit called BBSI , which ended up taking Oracle to court, where the correlation between complexity and chaos is amply illustrated.
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Courts are great at lifting the lid on things usually welded tight shut. BBSI runs payroll across multiple US states with a large list of requirements for their unusual business model. Oracle and its consultancy partner KBACE said they could deliver the goods on Oracle's HCM Cloud platform. It was only after the implementation began that they revealed that they couldn't.
According to BBSI, lots of basic functionality was missing from the platform, and what had been sold could not do the job. BBSI let fly the lawyers, claiming fraud, misrepresentation, and a catalog of similar sins, with the [6]case being settled out of court last year – not before revealing a fascinating insight into [7]how Oracle can still make money on failed contracts where the client stops paying.
[8]IT needs more brains, so why is it being such a zombie about getting them?
[9]Last rites for the UK's Online Safety Bill, an idea too stupid to notice it's dead
[10]Goodbye Azure AD, Entra the drag on your time and money
[11]The number's up for 999. And 911. And 000. And 111
The evidence is clear: the less you resemble the model enterprise an ERP solution is designed for, the less likely it is to work. Local governments are never that model enterprise. In fact, they rarely resemble each other. They have to provide a huge range of services without much control over revenue, their metrics of success are as varied as the communities they serve, and they have the huge pudding of legal responsibilities that comes from spending public money. None of this stops the aggressive mis-selling of services by corporate carnivores, and there's a good argument that there should be legal risks to suppliers above the normal contractual safeguards.
We have to stop pretending state entities are businesses that fit business software. They are more complex, less well funded, more prone to change as democratic needs evolve, and much more transparent. ERP architectures are not suited for this: there are other, better models for a viable framework. You're looking at one right now.
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Away from the ERP lens, state systems can look very different. There are shared resources to safeguard and manage, a wide variety of disparate functions that need to talk to each other in dynamic ways, a unique mix of openness and privacy needs, and tons of data management. That describes Birmingham City Council; it also describes a standard PC.
It doesn't matter what mix of hardware, OS, and software any particular PC – or laptop or mobile device – uses, the end result is a commonality of design capable of supporting an infinite mix of functions reliably, cheaply, and flexibly. Resources of memory, storage, CPU, communications, and management all have analogs in public organizations, while commonality of APIs, shared components, and standard development practices ensure a superb ecosystem. Build an equivalent stack as a conceptual framework for local government needs and processes, and the things they all have in common will create a huge market for sustainable services despite no two organizations being the same.
Getting there will be hard. It's a philosophical change of viewpoint that will be in direct conflict with billion-dollar global powerhouses. But freed of commercial secrecy and competitive distrust, state agencies are free to talk to each other and build ideas together – in fact, that's essential. There's a chance of a true revolution that improves the lives of everyone because everyone is touched by local government: motivation enough for a sector that sorely lacks it to attract the talent that matters. And if you doubt that this change of approach would be that consequential, imagine instead how the world would look if Oracle ran your PC. Unthinkable? There's your problem, dear reader. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/05/birmingham_city_council_oracle/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZP7lQJvfLSyJDQIXBpLU0AAAAgQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.henricodolfing.com/2020/03/project-failure-case-study-bbsi-oracle.html
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZP7lQJvfLSyJDQIXBpLU0AAAAgQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZP7lQJvfLSyJDQIXBpLU0AAAAgQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://trellis.law/doc/116864996/case-dismissed-by-court-at-order-to-show-cause-hearing-jul-12-2022-at-10-30-am-pursuant-to-crc-3-1385-notice-sent-by-court
[7] https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/BARRETT-BUSINESS-SERVICES-8528/news/Barrett-Business-Services-Oracle-Customers-Beware-Of-Potential-Legal-Risks-Of-Financing-ERP-Deals-31259602/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/04/column/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/21/opinion_column_monday/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/17/enra_azure_ad_opinion_column/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/03/the_numbers_up_for_999/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/databases&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZP7lQJvfLSyJDQIXBpLU0AAAAgQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: It was only after the implementation began that they revealed that they couldn't.
Quite often the issue with cloud services from the big ERP providers is that they do provide the goods and the services but they are just not fit for purpose. Then the wrangling gets into whether that was required by contract anyway. At its most simple you might specify that there is a payroll module that can process payroll for a large organisation to the satisfaction of UK law and the needs of the business. However, there will be lots of wrinkles in the reality of this in the public sector, eg hourly paid staff who aren't on contract, volunteers who need expenses, etc etc. This is a simple example, but what happens is that the the product does payroll, the service delivers the capability, but it doesn't meet the needs and that is for litigation. However, when you are a (say) a local government organisation or a university (which have similar experiences with ERPs - take a look at Edinburgh, Nottingham and Manchester) you dont have global networks of lawyers at your disposal and you dont have a hundred of thousands in cash to fight the case, even if you do its taxpayers money which taxpayers dont like being spent on anything that doesn't directly benefit them. Oracle or SAP on the other hand, do have the money and lots of specialists in this area. so they nearly always win.
Re: It was only after the implementation began that they revealed that they couldn't.
We all wish it could be that simple. Most likely, Oracle provided exactly what was defined in the contract, and the problem is that what was defined in the contract is not what the customer actually needed.
The problem here, in turn, is that the customer is unlikely to be proficient at defining requirements, while the people who are actually good at that are (1) not proficient in the customer's domain, and, worse, (2) on the side of the seller.
This is a recipe for disaster. There is ample room for miscommunication, and that room is basically an enemy killbox. The contractual requirements will be too vague or outright bullshit, providing little grip for the customer's lawyers; the marketing people will reassure the customer - verbally and informally - that everything is exactly what they want; and there is nobody on the customer's side who has the skills to sniff the bullshit.
I'm not sure how this could be prevented. An idea could be for the customer to hire a third party whose job is specifically to do requirements analysis. This would be a consultant who is good at figuring out what customers actually want and turn that into requirements, at explaining that to the seller in such a way that they actually understand the requirements, and at expressing requirements in a contractually binding fashion.
None of those skills are actually easy, so this would be expensive. Though nowhere near as expensive as finding out a whole slew of additional requirements only after deployment. You would be able to know that such a figure is good if the sales team suddenly goes quiet and starts sweating when the consultant enters the room.
Re: It was only after the implementation began that they revealed that they couldn't.
Having worked with central and local government (UK and Europe) I'd say that they aren't more complex than private enterprises but they are a lot less well organised. Fixing that feels like running through treacle and while there is opposition from some of the workforce the majority of the "treacle" comes from politicians, either through constant meddling or wild swings in requirements, or lack of budgets (things abandoned partly finished)... the list goes on.
Installing any software against that background is a recipe for failure... but I would also add that I've seen many projects fail when software has been bought and the "business" insist on working as they always have and make IT create a spaghetti of customisations. In my opinion, you either accept that you're going to have to work the way the software expects with minimal customisation or you're better off writing your own software to do exactly what the business wants.
Would you believe a double glazing salesman?
Oracle et al is what they do when they need better commission rates.
+ local govs and their ilk have a really bad habit of "kitchen sinking" their specs, much to the aforementioned sales wallah's glee as it lets obfuscation and misinterpretation flourish like weeds on a path.
First of all how did Oracle get to keep the database when the US paid for its development.. yes im talking all th way back to th ebeginning of Oracle.
Kickbacks. It's always kickbacks.
I live in Brum. In the enterprise space they aren't doing anything that needs the nation-supporting grunt that Oracle claim to be.
But they managed to spunk £10 million on a bespoke CMS system that a team of 10 could have delivered from any number of FOSS options.
But what would you expect from a bunch of cowboys who send out both parts of their "2 part secret code" in the same letter ? Every year I raise this, and ever year for the past 10 years I have been told "no one has ever mentioned it before".
I'm no fan of Oracle, but I don't see why a council's needs for an ERP system differ hugely from those of a commercial enterprise. Brum's needs don't differ from those of a chain store more than those of a chain store differ from a construction contractor. Because accountancy rules are the same for all (debits still go in the column nearest the window).
Large commercial organisations are equally capable of screwing things up, but the difference is that when they do, heads (OK deputy heads) will roll. This never happens in government.
Your experience with government and commercial enterprises is the polar opposite of mine.
It was only after the implementation began that they revealed that they couldn't.
Shouldn't the contract state, that if vendor is unable to provide the goods/services, vendor will not be paid, and op top of that will have to pay compensation for wasting everyone's time?
What are all the lawyers for, when this sort of thing isn't handled properly?