Brit council gives Oracle another £10M for professional services amid ERP fallout Troubled Birmingham City Council, which was declared effectively bankrupt last year owing in part to a disastrous Oracle implementation, has awarded the tech giant £10 million ($12.8 million) for additional professional services. In a contract award notice published late last week, the council said the deal - worth £9.987 …
And the sanctions for the mass of council employees and politicos who approved this mess from day one... ?
Meanwhile a rich man sits on one of his yachts urinating himself (not through senility) with laughter at this copper bottom incompetence and clown show that keeps on going.
It would have been cheaper to return to paper, pen and filing cabinet. Maybe harder for fraud too...
And the crux of the issue. It's not an IT failure, or an IT project failure. It's nothing to do with Oracle or any of the consultants.
At the heart of it, this is the same as many big project failures: weak leadership with little desire to tackle sprawling scope and enforce required process change; a team unwilling to change their old habits; and (I'd expect) a gung-ho attitude of "we can do a 2.5yr project in 14mths" from the top which ultimately led to lazy scoping with (likely) poor attendance from those that could actually advise. I'd bet my salary for the next year that there's a stagnant one-way communication culture where information isn't disseminated downwards properly and doesn't go upwards at all so complaints about processes that wouldn't work or weren't fully captured, either fell on deaf ears, or were indistinguishable from the raucous noise of those that simply refused the change.
The rubber-stamped message for CEO and COO everywhere? Again. And again. And again. If your communication and change culture is broken, an ERP project *will* fail. Spectacularly. Highly visibly. It's not "an IT project" so don't for a second think you can get away without having the difficult discussions, rolling your sleeves up and leading the charge in-full. Yes, you can change the ERP, but unless there's a damn good reason (better than "I don't want to tell Janet she can't do it this way any more" or "I don't want to fire/retrain Charles as he's been our Telex guy since 1987") you change your process.
Yelling from the top "just make it happen" style of business. Then having nailed their colours to the mast in the boardroom now consider the project to be career defining for them so everything is thrown at it, sunk-cost-fallacy doesn't count where reputation is at stake! Until it's obvious the project has become an unpolishable turd and some techs and project managers are then required to fall on their swords to save their leader's pernsion contributions.
Judging by the other councils that have issued S114 notices, if a Labour controlled council goes bust, there's at most a minor backlash and the council quickly drifts back to Labour control (eg Croydon) or no backlash and the locals keep voting Labour (Nottingham). If a Conservative council goes bust, then they get kicked out for a good few years (Croydon, Thurrock).
So I will be very surprised if the burghers of Brum elected a non-Labour council in 2026.
Previous Conservative politicians in Birmingham are culpable in this shit-show. It’s not a Labour - Boo-hiss, Conservative - hurrah! Situation .
As we now how grown ups back in UK Central Government, see what come from this oversight … It’s under Angela Rayner’s Ministerial remit…. and not a clown like Michael Gove.
Or a whistle blower. Sadly, The Private Eye doesn't accept encrypted e-mails.
A place I was at had a new director start. He made his mark straight away, ignoring everything was fine, he just wanted his stamp on shit. So he pushed to move to Google. Being on the inside allowed us to watch what was going on, and watch him get away with it and he still is.
He had a business in London before he started, which he on and off was still running. This happened to be a stones through away from new consultants he bought in to push his idea. Internet searches proved he knew them before starting. These consultants started with no tender. They pushed his idea with lies so the powers that be would agree Google was cheaper (it turned out it wasn't but that was ignored). He won awards for internal software that his new Dev Ops department had supposedly created that actually never existed, a back slapping regional awards bollocks, that appeared to be just a way for local companies to futher their grift.
The consultants were allowed to overule inhouse devs that were creating a specific app. The specific app required changes after a bank holiday. Because they never chatted with the inhouse devs this was missed so when they finally finished, the app was useless and promptly broke after a bank holiday. Eventually the consultants were paid to fuck off and the inhouse devs rewrote the app from scratch.
They continue to use Google and were hit with the user price rise making the costs skyrocket a few years back (because they were originally on the cheapest plan).
It wouldn't suprise me if something similar is happening with this council. The councillors can't let it been seen to be a failure, despite it being fucking obvious. Just pisses me off no end how these managers and execs get away with such shit. Get all the money and everyone one below either gets fucked over or ignored when they point out valid suggestions.
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What do other UK councils do? They all exist in the same legal environment with the same job to do for their residents, so presumably there is at least one existing, working, solution already out there.
Separate, but related, thought: Why in heaven's name is there not a standard solution that any and every council in England and Wales can't just adopt?
Maybe the bus taking the decision makers to another "fact finding" trip, in the cold of a British winter, didn't have enough room.
Or a fact finding mission to Slough (or similar) is just not so attractive?
Just like if a lobbyist offers you a working meeting at some uber-Michelin restaurant and, oh as it is a long way away maybe you must stay over for a "presentation" versus a quick lunch at your local burger joint...
(for those who the usual rules don't apply to).
"Why in heaven's name is there not a standard solution that any and every council in England and Wales can't just adopt?"
Because the posh people in Surrey can't abide to know that they have the same needs as Dave. A 30-something part time labourer who lives in a council flat in Birmingham.
Then you have the councils who think they couldn't possibly be doing the same job or have the same needs as any other council in the country.
"Why in heaven's name is there not a standard solution that any and every council in England and Wales can't just adopt?"
Because it's more profitable to pick them off one at a time.
Getting together to commission a development of a common system would probably be outside their remit and possibly, in consequence, illegal. I wonder if getting together to develop a common, properly tested specification would be OK Probably not feasible as councils of different political persuations would spend their time falling out with each other.
There is a solution built for councils, the Australian company technology one has an ERP OneCouncil solution, it works, it's not cheap, but it's a lot cheaper than the others out there.
With regard to other services (i.e. not ERP, (planning, housing, benefits, elections, etc)) the big firms are already in to deep with massive data extraction fees and the threat of de-supporting should you connect to the database directly (that's if you can even work out the schema after 20+ years of badly managed mergers) there is not really any option but to keep using them... Boooo!
"Separate, but related, thought: Why in heaven's name is there not a standard solution that any and every council in England and Wales can't just adopt?"
Because it would cost about £10m to develop and test, and nobody will throw that sort of money at, and because councils all do things their own way - a standard solution means a standard set of processes, and they won't be voting for that.
Of course, several of these council non-ERP failures are specifically because the councils did find the money to invest tens of millions in shitty, misconceived ideas, as is the case with Nottingham, Thurrock, Woking. Some other councils haven't yet gone bust, but have had similar mis-investment losses that threaten to contribute to an S114 status, such as Bristol.
So they could find the money, but they won't. But since they can't manage an ERP implementation, what would be the chance of them finding the people to build reliable software, and managing the project well? The same might be said of government.
The ERP recently developed for Northampton, Milton Keynes and Cambridge cost £9.7m* to build.
And that is 3 councils (Well, now 4 after Northampton was split up).
A standardised 1, or even 3, would work better.
Give councils the choice of Oracle, SAP, or Agresso - just don't let them build and maintain their own.
*Officially the £9.7m was 'under budget' and it was.
I mean, it was once they tripled the budget to be £9.8m, so they could then declare it 'under budget'
Pretty much true in other countries as well.
https://fortune.com/europe/2024/07/03/german-railway-system-deutsche-bahn-punctuality-national-embarrassment-euro-2024-underinvestment/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64674131
https://www.politico.eu/article/france-and-italy-denounced-by-european-commission-for-overspending/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/18/dutch-parties-vie-for-voters-with-no-faith-in-government-after-string-of-scandals
If you've some ideas for how to change things, the world awaits.
Because each time a council finds it needs a new system, it has to be integrated with
1) whatever other existing systems are already in use.
2) whatever workflows are in use
So perhaps you can design a system that covers 90% of the processes that 90% of the county/unitary councils in England, you'd still have to configure it to work with other 10%
So perhaps you can design a system that connects readily with 90% of software that 90% of the county/unitary councils in England, you'd still have to configure it to work with the other 10%
There are no out of the box solutions for organisations this big and complex which won't need adjustment and fettling to work.
"completely reimplement the software "out-of-the-box"... [this plan] would require significant business change"
I'll say it would require significant change. ERP software is designed to be customised to fit the organisation's existing processes. Asking each council department to change their processes to fit the out-of-the-box install is madness. It sounds like a nice solution until you realise that half of the processes were not planned but forced on them and evolved over years due to annoying reality. I have worked on a large CRM project that management were insistent was to be out-of-the-box, to get it rolled out quick time because essentially all sales departments are the same. That plan lasted until the first users got a look at it and then the project became a bit more 'agile'. I'm sure every council could benefit from reviewing their processes but throwing them all out and starting from scratch with what Oracle thinks is the baseline for all organisations is not a good plan.
Process standardisation?? Not cottage industries.
All councils do the same things- tax, roads, licensing, social care, NHS liaison, libraries environmental health etc and interface to the same suppliers/partners - NHs, Police, contractors. Even in the devolved assemblies.
It’s begging for a single solution/set of standards/api/middleware.
Very few of these things need to be organised at local council level.
The biggest problem is the variety of different services causes the requirements to spiral out of control and the implementation complexity goes up exponentially.
Strip away the majority of these services and run each through standalone focussed service providers and you might have a chance of becoming competent at delivering them.
But local councillors like all elected officials are only interested in Empire building. Why would you admit that it would be better value for money to get out of the game when instead you can hold out the begging bowl demanding more funding.
"few of these things need to be organised at local council level." ?
Local government is complex. Some councils cover everything in their area. Some councils cover "higher" areas like highways, education but planning streetlights etc are at the district level.
Councils outsource many functions already such as light maintenance, payroll, waste collection.. And there are big providers such Norse Group (which came out of Norfolk County Council) running functions for other councils in UK but these are all commercial partnerships which need managing and the interactions between them need managing (eg highways maintenance affecting bin collections)
Is Larry just not interested in the reputational damage to his company brand? Would he care if his America’s Cup yacht (or F1 team) suddenly stopped because some process didn’t work in the way the racers wanted? Or some interface to some other system didn’t work? I guess he would. So why not some council that’s having a crap time and would likely never use anything Oracle ever again? Perhaps send in some senior techies in as troubleshooters either for requirements or implementation or both? Hmm?
That's pretty much the way SAP used to do it. The goal is to retain compatibility with future versions without having to apply all the mods to the new version (which might break it if it's architecture has undergone significant redesign).
Although Oracle was replacing a heavily bespoked SAP implementation.
Apparently without any major documentation of what that bespoking was.
Genius plan*
*And by "Genius plan" I do mean F**king retarded.
This is what happens when people know they won’t be held accountable.
Councils need auditing regarding who is in senior roles in the organisation because this is now a country wide problem.
Billions of pounds of taxpayers money is being squandered by people who will never be sacked for bad decisions.
It’s beyond a joke.
Since we are now free of EU regulations on competition for public sector contracts, and have a Westminster gummint which is powerful enough to drive through whatever it likes ... how about having a bash at mandating a standard spec for how UK councils need to operate, and financing a bespoke software system to deliver precisely that spec via a new dedicated and publicly-funded provider - without using any of the big commercial platforms?
I know, I know - public sector IT projects always go wrong. But that's largely because the development / customisation is not public sector at all - and the local council wonks who commission them have no idea how to write a specification, because that requires a high level of technical skill which is way above their paygrade.
Local councils may all think they want a different thing, and Dr S is quite correct that Oracle and SAP are anxious to "help" them develop that thing - but I always thought that the USP of SAP/Oracle is that they are global-scope systems with specialists who can implement localisation. That makes them a great fit for Global Multinational (& Lunar) Solutions Inc, who need to run HR systems (and dodge taxes) in 25 different jurisdictions, but a lousy fit for North Scruttockshire Borough Council. OTOH the latter's requirements are pretty much exactly the same as those of South Scruttockshire Borough Council, so it makes sense for them to share the cost of developing and using the same system. It's axiomatic that those who use off-the-shelf systems (whether customised or not) only use a tiny portion of their functionality, but still have to pay for all the functionality they aren't using. Bespoke, ground-up design can often deliver bettter value.
So a UK-based development program could develop a UK-specific software spec for UK councils, as mandated by the UK government, and get that spec implemented by setting up a non-profit (but still very well financed) software developer to build the thing from scratch - ideally using only FOSS for its backend so with no licencing overhead (apart from all the users being welded to Windows / MS Office, which from my own experience appears to be insurmountable whatever the cost). It would have to be done in an Agile sort of way, because even with a mandated spec the goalposts will be mobile - but at least that won't involve negotiating new contracts with billionaire-owned software houses based abroad, as it does at the moment.
And who knows - if that works out, perhaps the same organisation could do something similar for parts of the NHS, the MOD, and all the other IT moneypits into which we keep pouring massive amounts of tax dollars and getting sh*t that doesn't work in return.
" It would have to be done in an Agile sort of way, because even with a mandated spec the goalposts will be mobile"
Well, actually, a possible future benefit could be had by insisting that any changes to the spec (such as new legislation) could only come into effect once they had been demonstrated (ie, implemented and tested) on the system. That would ensure that the legal language was both unambiguous and consistent with existing law.
Also, if the idea catches on that new laws ought to be unambiguous and consistent with existing law, and implemented and tested before taking effect, it could be applied to other areas.
I'm sure this is their model. Sell an ELA, half deliver the platform, customer gives up, instead of walking away the customer comes back and throws more money at Oracle. Customer hopefully get a platform and realises the technology isn't fit for purpose, massively out of date and then they have to throw more
Where have all the competent people disappeared to in the UK? Everytime I come to read news about the UK (am a Brit , I no longer live there) all I ever read about is stuff that would make the national news in the renowned country I'm living seem dull in comparison. Who are these knobs in top jobs who know nothing about what they do? But who cares, it's not their money is it? It's certainly not mine, thank goodness.
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