Pissup, brewery.

There's plenty of breweries in Brum.

They're not alone.

Regardless of how they've been using it, it should be possible to get financial reports for the use that was made. My concern would be that in similar circumstances there's often a lot of pressure on staff to demonstrate the project is, if not entirely successful, making progress and to feed data, even erroneous or incomplete data, into the system as an excuse for ticking off a milestone. A deadline from the auditors should hopefully at least force a confirmation of whether reliable data actually exists.

"A deadline from the auditors should hopefully at least force a confirmation of whether reliable data actually exists."

It would only be possible to confirm whether the data's reliable if they know what it should say.

We don't write software to fit any particular purpose. We rewrite people to fit the software.

Why not get rid of those pesky humans? Eliminate the people and write software to fit the software. That is automation as intended by our software overlord.

And use some AI. That software can wear soft where soft wears software.

not Oracle but hey ho... both are as bad as each other and will such your org dry before you know it.

Only after they'd been given a raspberry though.

It amazes me how frequently these migration programmes fail -- as if they're viewed as purely tech exercises with zero business continuity planning.

And sent in their best staff to make sure their software works well for the customer.

Then again that's wishful thinking.

Naturally, Brum Council/UK Government would have to pay through the nose for such expertise.

Oracle don't do owt for nowt.

I do feel like this is the beginning of a process of splitting up Birmingham City Council in to smaller ones. Something that is long overdue.

Never let a good crises go to waste.

With any luck Kirklees will follow.

Kirklees isn't very big anyway. Not sure that splitting it up would make it any better, nor how it would be split up given that it only has one large (over 100k population) town within it.

@Wolfetone

How would you suggest splitting Birmingham up?

I'm assuming you live local.

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/file/9810/new_wards_map_2018

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/download/2295/ward_factsheet

(For those who do not know Birmingham, see icon in terms of the likely fallout).

I think, realistically, do it NEWS. North Birmingham, East Birmingham, West Birmingham & South. Obviously it can't be straight down the middle, it'd have to straddle ward boundaries.

Or we could just surrender wards to neighbouring councils. I'm sure Solihull would love to add Tyseley to West Soihull like they do with North Solihull's Chelmsley Wood.

But the council wearing the fact it's Europe's largest council isn't a good thing! It's too big to serve residents properly.

Why would straddling ward boundaries be an issue? Wards are things created *within* council boundaries, not things that are used to build council boundaries.

So four new contracts for Oracle?

And new contracts for employees with four different employers?

Sounds lovely. For consultants. Perhaps best left until the current situation is remedied or at least fully known?

"It's too big to serve residents properly."

Remember the present issues are H&R and IT related. Outrageous incompetence yes, but not automatically linked to failure to serve residents.

PS: I gather that Sheffield council may have similar H&R liabilities (BBC news)

"I'm sure Solihull would love to add Tyseley to West Soihull like they do with North Solihull's Chelmsley Wood."

I presume you're not a local if you think Conservative Solihull council would wlecome thirty plus thousand Labour voting Brummies? And as far as true Solihullites are concerned, "North Solihull" is a maze of grim social housing overlooking the M6 and mostly built by Birmingham that they'd rather not be associated with, and had forced upon them by a Labour government re-organisation of local government in 1974. When you drive through Chelmsley Wood (as North Solihull is properly named), it's a case of locking the doors, flooring the accelerator, and telling one of the kids to get in the rear gun turret, check the belt feeds, flick the safeties to "off" and follow the free-fire protocol.

I don't live locally, but I guess it would be along the same lines as how London and Manchester are split up.

As I'm not local, I don't have any proposals for the specific names and borders for the new councils, but they don't all need to be the same size, and the names will likely be based on neightborhood names and the towns that make up what is now Birmingham.

It is the largest lower-tier local authority in Europe, so it is probably too big. There is already the West Midlands Combined Authority which isn't much bigger than Birmingham, it would remain as the upper-tier local authority, but maybe it would be restructured to be more like Greater London or Greater Manchester.

"There is already the West Midlands Combined Authority which isn't much bigger than Birmingham"

2.9m population versus 1.1m. What's an extra 1.8m people between friends?

(Well actually an ex pat Londoner).

Also an IT wonk with 35 years experience.

Take if from me, this ain't never gonna happen.

I strongly dislike using the word impossible as a synonym for "just too hard" but in this case, even with infinite resources, it couldn't be done.

You have no idea how shit Birmingham's IT is beneath all this.

Europe's biggest council? Greater London is bigger than Brum shirley?

Birmingham is the the largest lower-tier local authority. The largest lower-tier local authority in London is Croydon with a population of 390k.

The largest upper tier local authority in Europe is Île-de-France (Paris and surrounding region).

The largest sub-national division in Europe is England.

Each London Borough has its own council - while there is a mayor and London assembly stuck on top of that borough structure, there isn't a London Council, as such.

(and Shirley sends her regards)

(and not my downvote, by the way)

When I was working in the fiscal officer's office in an Ohio county, the Human Services (Welfare) department decided to install Oracle to maintain its case files, financials, personnel records and what not. Several years later when I retired, the system still could not talk to our payroll or financial systems, which meant two things, First, none of that department's bills or people could get paid without our office creating a multitude of patch files. Usually every payday. Second, dozens of coders got their basic Oracle training at the county's expense and then went on to work for private industries plus our IT staff was guaranteed employment. And since the state had paid for the system, with federal money, the department was stuck with it.