When ERP projects go bad: Surrey County Council's £30m ditch SAP effort delayed again

Surrey County Council has suffered another delay to the implementation of its protracted and accident prone £30 million ERP project that will, at some point, see it switch systems from SAP to Unit4. The cash-strapped public authority – currently running a £30 million budget deficit – was unable to say how much the further …

[Andy The Hat]

This will be interesting

A system specified in 2017 to be delivered in June 2023 ... I wonder if the 2017 specification had a 5 year lifespan too?

[Halfmad]

Re: This will be interesting

Day one - applying patches to get it up to date.

Day two - finding out that the operating system requirements have changed and we can't update without a new OS first.

[spireite]

Basket case

As someone living in Surrey - Runnymede - I can confirm that they can't be trusted to run a sweet shop.

This does not surprise me in the slightest.

[TimMaher]

Re: Runnymede

At least you live in Surrey.

The county council HQ is still in Kingston, which has been part of London for years.

[Steve Foster]

Re: Runnymede

No, it isn't. It finally returned to Surrey this year when SCC moved into the former Canon offices in Reigate.

IIRC, they sold off the Kingston site for redevelopment.

[Mike 125]

Come on, give them a break

It's called disruption. Move fast and break things. Someone has to push the envelope.

Cutting edge, mind-boggling technology like this always has issues.

It's not like anybody, anywhere on Earth, ever, has even imagined anything, even dimly approaching the complexity and scale of this before.

Not, like, 1000s of times.

It's not like the basic requirements for council IT are pretty much identical across all councils.

So give them a break.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Come on, give them a break

Imagine one system rolled out for all councils, that would ensure interoperability, single sign on, unified interface, portability of data and both workers and customers wouldn't have to train to use different system whenever they move to another council.

Or just having completely different system for each council developed from scratch. Basically each council doing the same research, development in silo and that is potentially over 300 separate projects across England alone. 300 sweet sweet contracts.

Choice is simple.

[ParlezVousFranglais]

Re: Come on, give them a break

Ah but if every council looked the same, sounded the same, learned from each other, and collaborated to achieve the best results and best value for money for their constituents, the "CEO"'s wouldn't be able to justify their footballer salaries

[NeilPost]

Re: Come on, give them a break

You Communist ideology not welcomed here.

Add Universities and NHS Trusts to this shitlist of similar organisations doing about 99% of the same stuff, with similar partners and similar interface requirements where a common shared platform that was somewhere between not shit and merely adequate would be ideal.

See CCTA which was abolished/absorbed into OGC/Cabinet Office that only seems interested in Procurement Frameworks now.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Computer_and_Telecommunications_Agency

You know the creators of ITIL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a tip

Look into Guilford Salesforce.com disastrous implementation - just a tip off :) Surrey is far from unique.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus fucking christ just pay 30 million a year on a few hundred staff to run your accounts payable and receivable entirely with paper. It'll work out cheaper in the long run.

[John H Woods]

You could probably do it with two dozen smart people using off the shelf (maybe even FOSS) software.