Mega city council's Oracle ERP system still not legally safe, compliant... 2 years after rollout
- Reference: 1713355348
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/17/birmingham_city_councils_oracle_erp/
- Source link:
The council has now missed its second deadline to get the system fit for purpose in terms of its legal and statutory obligations, despite going live with the software two years ago. Independent auditors had warned the council about the risks of entering the 2024/2025 financial year — which began on 6 April – in this state.
In a council meeting yesterday, councillor Fred Grindrod, chair of the council's audit committee, called for a public inquiry into the ERP implementation, as well as into the council's failure to understand its equal pay obligations.
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[2]He said , "We need a clear investigation into what happened, what went wrong, and who is responsible. On Oracle: Why was it turned on when [3]so many problems were known ? Why did it take so long to admit there was a problem? Why are we still not safe and compliant? When did we really lose control of the finance ledger?"
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The council leader has also spoken of the need for a public inquiry.
[6]In September last year , the council — the largest local authority in Europe — declared itself in financial distress by publishing a legal Section 114 Notice, saying the £3.4 billion ($4.3 billion) revenue organization is unable to balance its books. It also said it faces a bill of up to £760 million ($954 million) to settle equal pay claims after pay discrimination probes found it was systematically paying female employees less than men in equivalent jobs. That figure has since been disputed.
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In October, [8]the council said it would miss a November deadline to be safe and compliant with its Oracle IT system, a deadline set by external auditors Grant Thornton.
In February 2024, [9]the external auditors reported that the system was still not "safe and compliant" in terms of financial reporting and legal requirements.
At the time, Mark Stocks, Grant Thornton West Midlands public sector leader, told councillors that unless it could be demonstrated that manual workarounds for the Oracle system were safe and compliant for the (then) next financial year [2024/25] starting in April, the audit team would not be able to issue an unqualified audit for that year.
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"Actually having a functioning finance system for 2024/2025, including budgets, is absolutely crucial," he told councillors.
The Register has offered the council the opportunity to explain why it has failed to produce a safe and compliant finance system by the new financial year.
[11]UK county council misses deadline for £7.3M RISE with SAP system launch
[12]Local councils struggle with ill-fitting software despite spending billions with suppliers
[13]RISE with SAP plan fails to hit go-live date in West of England council
[14]City council megaproject to spend millions for manual work Oracle system was meant to do
The council's [15]audit committee also produced a report yesterday claiming it had been kept in the dark about the problems with Oracle.
The report said that since May 2023, when the audit committee was first told about the seriousness of the problems with Oracle, it had consistently tried to seek reassurance about how the council was mitigating the problems arising from the failure.
"Members are of the opinion that they were not being given the full facts," the report said. ®
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[2] https://birmingham.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/870300
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/04/birmingham_city_council_oracle_project/
[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=44Zh-yIPMR7sC2fuBLePEBewAAABA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/05/birmingham_city_council_oracle/
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[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/16/birmingham_set_to_miss_deadline/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/05/oracle_birmingham_chaos/
[10] 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=33Zh-yIPMR7sC2fuBLePEBewAAABA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/gloucestershire_sap_launch_delay/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/05/local_council_tech_struggles/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/15/rise_sap_delay_england/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/28/birmingham_city_council_to_spend/
[15] https://birmingham.cmis.uk.com/Birmingham/Document.ashx?czJKcaeAi5tUFL1DTL2UE4zNRBcoShgo=6fZJCebeyD8w390Xp%2bRv6%2bww8ZCUZODnPemlfDqRoc6Y75JP9zNN5w%3d%3d&rUzwRPf%2bZ3zd4E7Ikn8Lyw%3d%3d=pwRE6AGJFLDNlh225F5QMaQWCtPHwdhUfCZ%2fLUQzgA2uL5jNRG4jdQ%3d%3d&mCTIbCubSFfXsDGW9IXnlg%3d%3d=hFflUdN3100%3d&kCx1AnS9%2fpWZQ40DXFvdEw%3d%3d=hFflUdN3100%3d&uJovDxwdjMPoYv%2bAJvYtyA%3d%3d=ctNJFf55vVA%3d&FgPlIEJYlotS%2bYGoBi5olA%3d%3d=NHdURQburHA%3d&d9Qjj0ag1Pd993jsyOJqFvmyB7X0CSQK=ctNJFf55vVA%3d&WGewmoAfeNR9xqBux0r1Q8Za60lavYmz=ctNJFf55vVA%3d&WGewmoAfeNQ16B2MHuCpMRKZMwaG1PaO=ctNJFf55vVA%3d
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
You seem to be assuming that it's not possible to just successfully implement a new financial system for a large public organisation without then needing to perform _any_ kind of investigation.
Oh right. I'll get my coat.
As an El Reg greybeard in Brum
I can suggest that one reason for this might be hiring practices that seemed to reject applicants I know who could have done the job on their heads.
Obviously now we are where we are they (a) can't afford the real skills and (b) daren't let anyone competent near this who could trace things back.
Recoup costs?
At what point does total failure to pride the outlined specs result in the return of funs paid for said off effective system.
Maybe with interest for the time wasted and problems caused.
Re: Recoup costs?
They have already asked this question to the chap who was hired as an Oracle advisor. They said the Oracle system could be made to work.This advisor, along with the other "experts", are costing us all real money here.
And to call for a public inquiry, costing more money, will do nothing to sort it out.
The current system does not work . It has been demonstrated to perform as such. Kill it, sack the people involved in it's implementation and specification planning, and start again. That has to be the cheaper way of getting it done.
But of course, it's public money, so either way it's going to cost us money.
Re: Recoup costs?
I would imagine you could buy a large number of double-entry ledgers and hundreds of FTE years of clerking for the amount expended to date.
Re: Recoup costs?
The problem with that is they did a massive pivot in terms of spec mid contract. I bet the Oracle people were laughing all the way to their paradise islands on hearing that news!
Sunk Cost fallacy
There is a danger of the “sunk cost fallacy” being applied “Oh well, we’ve already spent £100 million so we had better go ahead and spend another £100 million…”
Realistically what's Plan B?
Where do they go from here ? - time's moved on, a lot of financial transactions have taken place. Stand the old system back up and re-key all the missing data (if that's even possible/feasible) or jump to something else and start from scratch (but with what data, you've already apparently stuffed all the current transactions and that can't be trusted).
There's no clear path to safety that I can see apart from "make the %$^% thing work".
As soon as they went live with the dead parrot, they were well and truly "joined to another object by an incline plane wrapped helically around an axis".
Re: Realistically what's Plan B?
The problem is that THIS IS the Plan B!
Plan A was to implement Oracle with no customisation. They found they couldn't do that, so they decided to customise the product.
Isn't this a job for AI ?
Or rather can we put a call out to all those peddling "AI" like there is no tomorrow and then use the subsequent tumbleweed to shut the fuckers up once and for all ?
You would have thought that Google, or MS would be chomping at the bit to show off the power of AI. Well the power to do something other than fleece the easily fleeced.
Where have I heard all this before?
Oh, yes, at Aldwych House.
Pen(cil) and paper
Wouldn't it be cheaper for them to dump the computers and go back to good old pen(cil) and paper?
At least they have to get more employees, which is a Good Thing TM to reduce unemployment. Alternatively, they can re-employ the consultants as pen(cil) and paper pushers employees, at a severely reduced pay, of course.
So, from the reports it's sound like one major clusterf... after another and did they just go live. Surely somebody not dipping their fingers in to the public purse, stood abck and said maybe we do this in tranches, see what issues we hit and fix them first, like any sane and professional project manager would insist on, funny how this would have saved a lot of grief and probably millions of pounds?
Once you get a financial system working, you need to perform a no-blame investigation to uncover the truth of what happened.
Once that's out, then you can start looking to apportion blame. Trying to uncover what happened with the aim of finding someone to blame will only result in finding a convenient scape-goat. It won't come close to finding the truth.