back to article UK council selling the farm (and the fire station) to fund ballooning Oracle project

A UK council is set to use up to £25 million ($31 million) from the sale of capital assets such as property to fund an Oracle-based transformation project that has seen expected costs mushroom from £2.6 million to around £40 million ($50 million). West Sussex County Council is taking advantage of the so-called "flexible use of …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oracle

    Wy do these people not realise that as soon "Oracle" is mentioned, their budget will be blown out of the window ?

    It really does seem consistent to me looking at all of these ballooning costs for councils, yet, they still head down the "oracle" route

    1. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Holmes

      Lemmings

      Indeed, and I also fail to understand how no council seems to learn from the mistakes of other councils.

      i.e. this certainly wasn't the first and certainly won't be the last council to get completely and utterly shafted by the Oracle cult.

      it's almost like we could do with some er, in-house IT expertise.

      1. NoneSuch Silver badge
        Stop

        Re: Lemmings

        Idiots. Never go to Oracle. If they say they 40 mil, you know you can do it for 4.

        Oracle and Builders, "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid it's going to cost a little more then we said..."

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Lemmings

        Or, use local smaller business that's not Capita

      3. RegGuy1
        Facepalm

        Re: Lemmings

        Well I used to work for a council, but coz I knew what I was doing I got to double my salary by going to a big US corp (defo NOT Oracle).

        If you pay peanuts you ain't going to get quality staff to stay. But hey, these are only local government workers, and their wages come out of our taxes. So fuck that, cut local government workers wages and see what happens. I don't want to pay more tax ...

        ... oh fuck.

      4. hoola Silver badge

        Re: Lemmings

        Mainly because of the insane procurement rules.

        You cannot use personal experience of the experience of other organisations if they are not referenced.

        As far as building your own solution goes it will take a very assured and supported IT Directory to get that past the finance, procurement & legal teams. It is not as easy as just saying "go cheaper or do it yourself".

        If they did develop their own then direct staffing cost have to be funded and it is highly likely that the way the budgets work, this cannot be done. If they brought in contractors then sadly it is likely the same issue of spiralling costs starts to come into play.

        That said it is not beyond the Government to simply block all tender responses that involve Oracle. That would fix it until happy Larry started the law suits rolling.

        1. Blitheringeejit
          Holmes

          Re: Lemmings

          The thing I don't understand is - why the only two options are Oracle/SAP/Crapita, and build-it-yourself for each council..? Why does in-house have to mean just one council - couldn't some national organisation like, say, the government set up a product development programme for a software system which fulfils local authorities' statutory requirements, is designed with input from all the councils who are going to use it so has enough flexibility to cope with the differences between them, but doesn't include all the cruft which comes with an off-the-shelf solution? Of course it would cost money, but surely better to spend that money on UK developers rather than licensing US/German products? And once delivered, the only cost would be for updates and adding user-requested features - no endless cheques written just to carry on using what we already paid for.

          They could call it "Great British Software"....

          1. JT_3K

            Re: Lemmings

            See every comment I've made on here about the NHS and their software woes. Your query can all be summed up in one run-on sentence:

            "...but these forms need to come off in duplicate with the second one printing on *green* paper, because Janet comes in on Wednesday mornings and uses them to manually plan [UNRELATED PROCESS THAT 94% OF COUNCILS AUTOMATED IN 1992] so *we* need the [UNRELATED-TO-THIS-PROCESS ID NUMBER] as a line item on her green printout, but not on the main one..."

            Additionally, note that they're scared because $NEIGHBOURING COUNCIL$ also has a "Janet" doing this and they tried to change her job in 2003 but the union whipped up such a fuss it made the national press. At least Janet retires in 2028, $NEIGHBOURING$ "Janet" doesn't retire until 2040 and due to job-share regulation, is training Sylwia who won't retire until 2074...

            1. Blitheringeejit
              Go

              Re: Lemmings

              Point taken - but surely this is exactly what we should be learning from, so as to do better next time. It's not a reason to continue implementing broken and LA-bankrupting policies.

              I also think the NHS job is more difficult because it's a faster-moving target - new treatments, new diagnoses, and a lot of "matter of opinion" among medics make it hard. Most local authority functions are more stable and consistent than NHS requirements.

              The same pitfalls that you cite will apply to an off-the-shelf solution - but with insight from those who worked on the NHS project and saw how and why it failed, and with a more functional IT landscape in which to deploy stuff (especially anything web-based), surely it should be possible to do a better job than Oracle/SAP/Crapita at a fraction of the (long-term) cost. It's not about making something perfect - we just need something better and cheaper.

              1. JT_3K

                Re: Lemmings

                We *can* learn from these issues but won't. It's been the same (IMHO) for at least the 20yrs I've seen it.

                It means that non-IT people, often execs and senior managers, need to understand, buy in to, and drive through vision and change. Egos in fiefdoms need to be toned down because "Steve" might be the big fish in a hospital, but needs to toe a line with all the "Steves" in the whole country. It's much easier to beat your chest like a gorilla and use that to tell the teams below you that you're going to bat for them, than it is to do the painful things like process evaluation and changing working profiles.

                Besides, "Steve" doesn't want to change the working profile because the standard metric doesn't play to the strengths of his output - they probably don't show him in as good a light as the way he reports at the moment. There's less wiggle room, less ambiguity and as such he'll be shining a spotlight on how he actually achieves directly compared with every other Steve in the country. It doesn't matter though, Steve only has to bluster and filibuster for six years before he retires and it's not his problem any more, or perhaps two more years before he expects to be promoted and it's someone else to deal with it. Inaction is safe, it's known, whereas change is risky and hard work, and people get fired for change.

                Ultimately at the top of the tree, it's politicians. They would have to stop playing political football and dicking about with "reorganising" (looking at you "PCTs and SHAs" or "GP Led Commissioning"), and start doing the less sexy "headline" bits with more grumpy retorts. But again, if they keep their head down, it's only six months before the NHS lead becomes the Energy Secretary, and then 13 months before they're the Education Secretary, and 3 months before they're punted to Home Secretary...

                1. Blitheringeejit
                  Pint

                  Re: Lemmings

                  I completely accept all your reasoning on why things have failed before - but I don't accept that this rules out any possibility for progress. I don't really know why I don't accept this - the last decade in British politics has been enough to send the most thick-skinned liberal socialist into deep dark well of resigned misanthropy - but is there a possibility that shy. retiring but experienced IT wonks like us might be able to make a difference to how badly IT works for the public sector, if we move out of our comfort-zones and try to do a little lemming-herding?

                  Practical thought - my new MP is 27 going on 12, has just replaced an incumbent Conservative, and must be in need of getting noticed. There are quite a few other new Labour MPs in similar circumstances who will want to make a splash.

                  So - how about coordinating an effort by like-minded commentards to gang up on the new intake of Labour MPs and who might be looking at bit further down the road than the next cabinet job (because they haven't had one yet)? The Great British Software brand (with inevitable Union Flag logo) could be a rallying point.

                  Of course such a project would probably fall foul of Larry Ellison's ability to dictate British public-sector IT policy by entertaining Peter Mandelson to endless yacht-parties - but at least we would have tried. And as it's Friday, I'll buy anyone who wants to get involved one of these ----------------------------------^

                  1. JT_3K

                    Re: Lemmings

                    It's fair, and I accept the two thumbs down above.

                    I'd hazard those commenters haven't suffered the front line of several years in NHS-adjacent IT as I have, where the sheer volume of change-blockers are insane. Yes, the people on the front line do an amazing job, but the refusal of mid-level leaders to push the change required to make 16 hospitals have the same phone system that behaves in the same way was a living nightmare. Furthermore, refusal of the top management at site to even engage, let alone push the mid-levels to force some basic changes was a nightmare.

                    IT can lead the horse to water, make sure the water is clean and accessible and fractionally the cost/maintenance of the old water, reason with the horse as to why it needs to drink and explain the importance to the zoo-keeper. But the horse used to drink in the other corner, the keeper doesn't care the other corner is needed for something else or that all enclosures need to be the same. The zoo manager doesn't want the noise/challenge. The horse simply sits obstinately and refuses with their entire arsenal because change is scary. Before you know it, each horse has an aqueduct to its original corner at huge expense, requiring every other enclosure change to pay attention to each fiefdom.

          2. Armus Squelprom

            Re: Lemmings

            This is exactly what's needed. There are 317 local authorities in England alone, operating in one of 3 modes - District, County or Unitary. For each, the same set of legal duties apply, the same basket of services are provided, and the same staff are employed on the same terms. The business case for a bespoke IT infrastructure is obvious. The Local Government Association could coordinate the creation of a pooled £500m pa budget, with each council contributing pro-rata to their size. For the largest councils, eg Birmingham, it might be £5m pa at worst (compared to their £216m Oracle disaster). £500m would amply fund a first-class development service to create and maintain a bespoke system tailored to the peculiarities of the sector, developed in close consultation with the councils. It would be a huge bargain for the public purse.

            Better still, when financial systems were established in stable and satisfactory working order, the service could move onto other common needs in the sector. HR systems for managing recruitment, training, discipline, annual leave etc. Planning systems, highway maintenance systems, tree inspection systems, etc. From my personal experience, children's social services should be a particular priority - there are multiple commercial CMS systems in use, and they lack interoperability. Every time an involved family moves over a border, the transfer of records, assessments and plans is a struggle.

            This seems so obvious and necessary, I don't know why HM Treasury didn't insist on it during Austerity. We're wasting huge amounts of money by allowing our LAs to be isolated and fleeced one-by-one, instead of banding together and taking control of this.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Oracle

      They also don't seem to have considered pulling the plug. Sunk cost fallacy gone ape.

      1. Peter2

        Re: Oracle

        If you deliver a multi quadrillion Oracle project then you've led an expensive, complex and successful project and can get jobs elseware trying to fix their problems too on a large salary.

        If you pull the plug and implement a working off the shelf solution in a week then the taxpayers will be furious that quadrillions have been wasted, and Oracle will also be furious and blame you for wrecking the project.

      2. PeterM42
        FAIL

        Re: Oracle

        "West Sussex County Council will be hoping its Oracle project achieves the savings it promises."

        It won't.

        £40million buys you a lot of in-house staff and (electronic) card indexes.

    3. Fara82Light

      Re: Oracle

      Is it not in part because councils and even government agencies are not doing the due diligence in advance of signing such contracts? Not many councils will have access to the technical experts essential to giving these sorts of projects a solid foundation.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oracle

        Due diligence with experts is one thing, but you think that anyone could Google "Oracle contract problem" and see what comes up.

        * Purely hypothetically, of course, Mr Oracle lawyer

        1. hoola Silver badge

          Re: Oracle

          Procurement rules and tender evaluations prevent that.

          You can only evaluate the tender on the the information provided and the references.

          The procurement process is designed to stop unsuccessful companies from suing the public body. It is not all the fault of the actual council but the rule the public sector is hamstrung with. Also, and this is a big one, if the private sector did not use every opportunity to rip of the public sector by just fleecing tax payer's money out at every opportunity things would be better. This is never going to change whilst the current rules are in place and the same bunch of parasites are the only organisations that are "qualified" to respond.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Oracle

            True, but that doesn't stop councils informing themselves - if they did, they might not assign any contract! Next you'll be telling me that HR departments only evaluate potential employees based exactly on what's on their CV and don't take protected characteristics like age, gender, sexual orientation, race etc. into account.

      2. UnknownUnknown

        Re: Oracle

        Not many councils will have access to the technical experts essential to giving these sorts of projects a solid foundation…, as they have long been made redundant by Beancounters ‘too old, too expensive’, “not supporters of change” and services outsourced/offshored.

        FTFY.

    4. dfilteau

      Re: Oracle

      Nothing learned from the Postal scandal?

    5. moonpunk

      Re: Oracle

      It just beggars belief. Council after Council keep following the same path of implementing Oracle and then losing their shirt - project budgets go from singular millions to tens of millions. Implementation dates get pushed back years! When are they ever going to learn?

      Best of it is each of these Council's do EXACTLY the same thing - Adult Social Care, Childrens Social Care, Collecting Council Tax Revenue, Refuse Collection, Payroll, Housing, Pension administration, planning, highways.

      I'm all for freedom of choice, capitalism, and the free market economy - but even I'm beginning to think they should be mandated to use one system. Who knows if they all used the same system perhaps they could share information more easily between councils when people move?

      It seems to me that the vendors pushing Oracle solutions are encouraging bespoke custom processes unique to each authority so that they can burn through oodles of cash on bespoke customisations and ensure a steady revenue stream into the future knowing that standard upgrades will need to be carefully (and very expensively) implemented so as not to break the custom processes.

      I guess if you're in that business it's a nice healthy Gravy Train

      1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

        Re: Oracle

        Much as I agree with you there is a simple one word reply - NPfIT

    6. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

      Re: costs mushroom from £2.6 million to around £40 million

      Who the hell writes these procurement contracts?

      If you (i.e. Oracle) can't do it for the price you quote, in the time you quote, you should be contractually on the hook for the excess. That will stop deliberate lowball quotes that are only issued to win a bid, knowing they can balloon the true price once the deal is signed.

      Better still, make it illegal to make such grossly low estimates. with the provider's executives personally, criminally liable for any transgressions.

      Meanwhile, UK councils: take some damned advice on how to define an ITT and how to negotiate the bloody contract, how to set the terms that don't leave you over a barrel down the line. FFS get together with the other councils that also fucked it up, see where you went wrong, then write out 200 times "I won't do that again.".

      1. MatthewSt Silver badge

        Re: costs mushroom from £2.6 million to around £40 million

        The problem is that Oracle can implement what has been asked for, but it turns out the requirements were wrong, or have evolved, so you can either walk away from the contract and not get much of a refund, or you can pay the adjustment fees

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: costs mushroom from £2.6 million to around £40 million

          Let me see,

          They don't have the IT experience to keep things honest including looking at time estimates and telling vendor to do better homework.

          They don't have the IT specialised purchasing teams to avoid the traps set by the vendors

          Back to those missing IT people... they can't 'own' the solution so its gravy for the vendor every time you need a small change

          They probably don't have the project managers / programme managers with the right experience to keep vendor honest (I wonder if they outsourced that too so gamekeeper is the poacher).

          They aren't willing to change how 'x' works because thats how it has worked for 'decades' making it a special bespoke solution.. It's amazing how much you can save by tweaking your process to align more closely to a products way of doing things.

          Fail / Fail / Fail, I bet paying a few, admittedly expensive, experts would have saved them copious time and money

          ....oh, and they chose possibly the most expensive solution provider known Oracle.

          1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

            Re: costs mushroom from £2.6 million to around £40 million

            You missed out - used a consultancy to develop the ITT. Then after selection its found that a simple one line in the ITT expands into a multi page requirement needing expensive changes.

          2. James Anderson Silver badge

            Re: costs mushroom from £2.6 million to around £40 million

            I have said this before , but here we go again.

            Councils are not in a position where they can easily change the way they work to suit an unsuitable software product. Most of what they do is subject to complex regulations set by central government and which they have no control over most of the rest are legal obligations; either they must do it that way or that must NOT do it that way.

      2. hoola Silver badge

        Re: costs mushroom from £2.6 million to around £40 million

        There are reams of documents on procurement rules.

        The suppliers know this and have had very expensive lawyers go through them line by line. It is not the fault of the council as there are provided by government. Essentially their are a number of fixed ways to ITT all using similar processes and constrained by similar rules.

        They cannot just put an advert out, that is not the way it works and these private companies know that.

        I have been on both sides of this process. Whilst working at a council it was just so frustrating that we could not do a proper evaluation based on what we knew. Working for the private sector I see resellers putting on all sorts of extras and margins because it is public sector and they can.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: costs mushroom from £2.6 million to around £40 million

        We see it as a failure. They're openly defining it as a victory- they saved a full million quid of taxpayers' money while negotiating with Oracle.

        With a mindset that allows a massive loss to be seen as a gain because one line-item isn't as bad as it could have been, councils will never even see there's a problem they need to admit to.

        I disagree with making it illegal to provide grossly low estimates, though- the idea of making them actually charge what they said they would is much better.

        Then once there's a proper baseline established they can be dragged through court to defend what was obviously fraud. And by 'they' I mean both Oracle and the council bods who oversaw this process.

    7. batt-geek

      Re: Oracle

      It's the old problem of someone "playing safe"

      It used to be that no-one got fired for "buying ibm" even if said ibm kit was a steaming pile of manure

      just substitute oracle for ibm ....

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    back handers

    Can't be anything else.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: back handers

      Back handers? In an Oracle or SAP ERP project? That's all custom and would set you back another £10m.

  3. Andy 73 Silver badge

    ****ing hell

    Every. Single. Time.

    Lazy maths says that's 40 senior engineers working full time for ten years. What level of incompetence do you have to reach to spend that much money on what is essentially a fancy database?

    If this stuff is needed for national infrastructure, and 317 councils in the UK are all spending stupid amounts to get Oracle (and others) to rehash mild variations of the same solution - why the **** isn't our government (a) bringing the skill in house and (b) providing standard, modular building blocks to encourage councils to follow consistent patterns of work?

    We know Birmingham has spent ten times as much on a similar project. Assuming this fiasco is the "average cost" to a council of providing ERP systems, that's £12 billion being thrown at Oracle over time.

    If you want to know where the black hole in our public finances is - it's between their ****ing ears.

    1. cyberdemon Silver badge

      Re: ****ing hell

      > why the **** isn't our government (a) bringing the skill in house and (b) providing standard, modular building blocks to encourage councils to follow consistent patterns of work?

      They are trying

      For much, much less than the amount being spaffed on the likes of Oracle, the government could expand its own IT team to supply and maintain software for local councils.

      GDS is far from perfect, but they do have some expertise. Once they've solved the problem for one council, it shouldn't be too hard to replicate it for other councils.

      But then again, i'm sure the local council mob would rather keep government noses out of their business, with all the dodgy deals they've done in the past, and will to do in future. (See Private Eyes ad nauseam)

      1. Andy 73 Silver badge

        Re: ****ing hell

        I read the article. Tried following some of the headline links. Broken link. Broken link. Broken link.

        Making Government Digital doesn't seem to have any serious overlap with providing enterprise resources within government. Most of it seems to be about providing external access to council services. All very laudable, and yes a good problem to solve, but not the problem that is causing councils to spend insane amounts of money with Oracle.

        I note also that this looks a lot like yet another talking shop where thousands of people all trying to do similar work get together to discuss best practises, rather than admitting that you don't need three thousand people to each re-invent the "when are my bins out" page for their specific council.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: ****ing hell

          You don't, but I've also seen multiple councils shackled to a horrible Oracle-based local authority platform that was a horrible pain in the ass for council employees and users, so simply sharing tools can still result in misery, just for more people.

      2. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: ****ing hell

        > They are trying

        That article is dated 2016. We forget much of the problem is down to government in the late 1980s deciding to pull the teeth out of the CCTA and go all laissez-faire and letting the markets decide.

        “Competition” is a misleading slogan, clearly when used by government it actually means: let’s screw things up.

        1. MatthewSt Silver badge

          Re: ****ing hell

          And not only that but every page navigation you do asks you to accept cookies (no matter which option you choose). If only there was a way to store a small amount of information in your browser to remember that selection...

      3. moonpunk

        Re: ****ing hell

        GDS have been trying to standardise IT acrross central and local government for donkeys years! The problem is that each Government department wants to be the trailblazer - the leading light, nobody wants to be a follower.

        It's a bit like the whole Shared Services push, back in the late 2000's in Local Government - everyone wanted to provide a shared service, but nobody wanted to consume a shared service!

        And this is all BEFORE you add polictics into the mix - no Conservative run Local Authority wants to be dictated to by a Labour Government, and the Local Government Act reliably gives them the autonomy not to have to follow what Central Government tells them (to a large degree).

        In some ways I would support a dictatorship - each of the authorities responsible for Social Care (Adult and Childrens) are buying software solutions from a handful of vendors. All with different database schemas, none of them able to talk to each other, none of them (easily) able to share information wtih other agencies - it's why we have issues such as Baby P, because information isn't in a single place, isn't easily share'able, and instead relies on the largely diligent work of human beings working for each ot the agencies (police, health, social care, etc) - who understandably make mistakes.

        Each of those software vendors actively encourage those Local Authorities to customise their solutions to fit antiquated and overly complex processes unique to them, and why wouldn't they? It's how they make their money - on custom implementations via Professional Service fees, and they get a bite of that same cherry every time theres an upgrade. And to ensure that Gravy Train the vendors insist you can't be more than two versions behind in order to maintain support, and then release three versions a year! And who would let their system, responsible for vulnerable children be out of support?

        The irony is none of these authorities are doing anything different to the rest - they're all doing the same things (housing, highways, council tax revenue collection, waste, recycling, social care, payroll, etc) - you could standardise the process and mandate it across the country. It would require legislation change of the Local Government Act, but I reckon it would stop idiots that clearly know nothing about technology, can't run a project, and have no commercial nouse, from p1ssing away tax payers money!

        1. Andy 73 Silver badge

          Re: ****ing hell

          "We can't do it because, as the government, we are incapable of getting the councils that we oversee and pay to deliver services to do what we want"

          Being a technical issue that most voters don't fully understand (except in terms like "The evil <insert party> government is trying to force <insert opposition> council to <insert hyperbolic description of normal change>"), and given the fact that most MPs don't have any experience of managing change themselves... there is absolutely zero priority to sort the mess out.

          I mean, what's a few billion between friends?

        2. LybsterRoy Silver badge

          Re: ****ing hell

          I'm old enough to remember that private companies also used the "but we're different" approach. Yes there are some bits that are different but the vast majority is the same.

          1. Andy 73 Silver badge

            Re: ****ing hell

            Private companies can be as inefficient as they like. We can choose to use them and accept their prices and inefficiencies, or go elsewhere. The same can't be said of our local council.

            And it's worth noting that many thousands of companies have standardised their accounting and billing practices enough to use off the shelf software like Xero, and will happily migrate to other platforms if something usefully better comes along.

    2. PCScreenOnly

      Re: ****ing hell

      For something that gave is ITIL, which is something they all followed, a lot of the issues we hear seem to be down to how they all work.

      Why do they not do the same for coucils and any service.

    3. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Re: ****ing hell

      why the **** isn't our government (a) bringing the skill in house and (b) providing standard, modular building blocks to encourage councils to follow consistent patterns of work?

      Because that would be far too sensible. Or Oracle just spends effectively on lobbying to keep reinventing the wheel. I have no idea exactly what makes Oracle HR so attractive, but I'm fairly sure HR is pretty generic across councils. Find a council that's made HR work and copy it. If there are changes to employment law or payroll, apply those to the module and roll that out to all councils. I hate to think how much councils are indvidually going to be charged to reflect changes to employer NICs. Same should be true for core finance modules because inputs and outputs should be common across all councils.

      But then Oracle, and their consultants make bank reinventing the wheel and if they have any sense, have templates for councils anyway. If they're starting from scratch with every bid, then they're doing it wrong.

    4. Altrux

      Re: ****ing hell

      Spot on - utterly shameful that this keeps happening, again and again. Every council follows the same path, reinventing the same wheel, bunch of hopeless lemmings!

      1. hoola Silver badge

        Re: ****ing hell

        It is easy to say that until you understand exactly the issues they are constrained by.

        Many years ago Belfast City Council developed their own CRM system that was then sold to other councils. It was a strong contender for our procurement but you then have all the issues of ongoing support, longevity etc etc. We did commit and I think it lasted about 4 years before the wheels fell off.

        1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

          Re: ****ing hell

          Isn't that a good argument for a central operation which would have support? Oh an what is the difference between them not supporting it properly and Oracle ripping you off?

  4. Kane
    FAIL

    Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right...

    Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

  5. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

    Burning the furniture to keep warm

    "...when supported by a robust business case..."

    It should be challenged in court to see how robust the business case is. Because, sight unseen, I imagine the case will fall apart. It will certainly never deliver the ongoing savings. And it should be structured as a "loan" that has to be repaid (with interest) from the "savings".

    1. jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid Silver badge

      Re: Burning the furniture to keep warm

      Why can't the council just go back to Oracle and say "too late, not what you said it would cost, give us our taxoayers' money back" and retender?

      I suspect Oracle are the only bidder, leaving the council stuck in a single source trap.

      1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

        Re: Burning the furniture to keep warm

        Because of contracts. So my idea was to make the savings contractual, too. There must be a legally binding agreement to pay back the capital budget this sum over X years. If the savings are real, it shouldn't be a problem.

      2. ChrisElvidge Silver badge

        Re: Burning the furniture to keep warm

        Said before: It doesn't work, we're not paying until it does!

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: Burning the furniture to keep warm

          "It's supplied to the letter of the specification, the fact that it doesn't work and could never work as designed is your problem, not ours"

      3. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Burning the furniture to keep warm

        The problem is that Oracle (or other vendors) deliver exactly what's specified, ontime and under budget

        The bigger issue is that what's specified simply doesn't work and everything past that point is extra costs

        30 years ago I was in the middle of a highly acrimonious saga where exactly this happened - and after 5 years of failures + tens of millions the broken system was replaced with an off-the-shelf system that cost a few thousand dollars and was up & running in a week

        It worked perfectly but the entire operation was sold off shortly afterwards due to all the bad publicity that had accumulated

  6. MrGrumpy

    Groundhog day

    Well, it's Groundhog Day... again...

    Has any Oracle project gone to plan?

    1. PCScreenOnly

      Re: Groundhog day

      Only for Oracle.

      Step 1: Get in

      Step 2: Charge a shit load more to get solution close to walking

      Step 3: Dramatically increase ongoing "Oracle" charges via Auditors

    2. Repne Scasb

      Re: Groundhog day

      All these projects go to Oracle's wealth creation plan.

  7. StewartWhite Bronze badge
    Mushroom

    You weren't there man!

    I see that the Council are adapting the Vietnam War saying of "In order to save the village, we had to destroy the village" to "In order to save all this money we had to sell everyhting we own on Oracle rubbish that will never work".

  8. Ball boy Silver badge

    And in future years?

    As per the article, you can only sell off the building stock once. Unused property now but, next time, they'll be forced into selling the buildings they still use & lease their use back from a third party - a Council can't exactly relocate to a cheaper part of the UK. Such deals might release capital but they come at the expense of an increase to annual costs. This uplift has to be reflected in Council rates.

    In subsequent years, what happens when there's no more building stock to flog off? These long-term lease payments still need to be met but new services and fees will have to be paid for. T'Council's properly over the barrel now: suppliers know it and price accordingly; everything has to be leased because there's less capital available; there's no income from buildings rental because you've now flogged it all off. Predictably, a significant uplift to rates is the only solution. That's okay though: it'll be a problem for a *future* administration to solve so it doesn't matter. /sarcasm

    1. rg287 Silver badge

      Re: And in future years?

      The problem with neoliberalism is that you eventually run out of public assets to sell. Margaret Thatcher, probably.

      This "flexible use of capital receipts scheme" is such standard Tory/neolib bollocks, not that NuLab were any better - and Starmer isn't rushing to stop them. In principle yes, if you were to sell a couple of old office units or beautiful - but costly - Victorian buildings with the intent of consolidating departments into a new, more energy efficient building with lower running costs (and the infrastructure to permit home/hybrid working where appropriate), then I could see that would be a good thing to do. Get new premises that cost less to run, are potentially more comfortable in summer/winter and are laid out in a way that supports modern work practices, offer better accommodation for public spaces, help desks, clinics, etc.

      But to sell capital assets to pay for a software package that is going to last, what - 10, 20 years? Insanity.

      West Sussex County Council is taking advantage of the so-called "flexible use of capital receipts scheme" introduced in 2016 by the UK government to allow councils to use money from the sale of assets such as land, offices, and housing to fund projects that result in ongoing revenue savings.

      It would make sense to mortgage them, providing upfront cash for a project, which then pays down the debt in operational savings. And in 20 years when it needs replacing, you can remortgage the same property again!

      But this wholesale asset-stripping of councils has left the "bloated" public sector cut to the bone - and quite inefficient, since they tend to end up renting premises and buying in services in perpetuity. They can just about squeeze in a bit of OpEx, but never any CapEx. Standard Boots Theory. Only the MoD have managed to swing the other way, with their nationalisation of Sheffield Forgemasters, and the repurchase of the Married Quarters Estate, realising that it's generally cheaper (over the asset lifetime) to own rather than rent.

      We all know this - it's why we aspire to build equity through mortgages instead of renting our homes forever.

      Notable Tories also know this - JCB don't rent their factories from a property developer. They build and own their sites, because it's cheaper over their lifetime. But apparently the public sector works in a parallel universe where we have all been convinced (by whom‽) that it's cheaper to let the "efficient" private sector build it and then lease it back forever.

      1. Andy 73 Silver badge

        Re: And in future years?

        Given this is a problem with councils across the country, trying to blame Tories and neoliberalism (really?!) risks missing the point that it's the unelected officers who are repeating this problem time and time again.

        Regardless of who is in power, if incompetence leads to an insane bill and contractual obligation, then desperate measures will be taken - whether it's selling off the silver or increasing tax to unsustainable levels.

        You can argue it's the colour of their rosettes that has caused the problem, but since none of the other rosette wearers demonstrate any understanding of IT, or offer a better practise to avoid these problems, it would be a mistake to think that we just have to vote for a different lot to fix things.

        Getting the right diagnosis is key to saving the patient.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: And in future years?

          But it looks so cool in the comments to label something neo-

          1. rg287 Silver badge

            Re: And in future years?

            But it looks so cool in the comments to label something neo-

            1. Ad hominems aren't a real argument and say more about you than me. FO.

            2. Neoliberalism is a perfectly decent and well understood word to describe the prevailing economic doctrine in the United Kingdom since Thatcher.

            The Adam Smith Institute (of Tufton Street, *spits*) openly describe themselves as neoliberal. Thatcher was deeply influenced by ASI reporting, and neither Major, NuLab nor the Conservative governments of 2010-2024 have significantly departed from it's - thoroughly discredited - teachings of "deregulate and the markets will look after themselves".

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: And in future years?

              Ironically Adam Smith himself would take a dim view of neoliberalism ( something devised in Austria in the 1950s with the primary aim of keeping the communists out ) as it is practised.

              He was very clear on the need for governments to regulate company bosses who would otherwise conspire together to form cartels and monopolies.

              1. rg287 Silver badge

                Re: And in future years?

                He was very clear on the need for governments to regulate company bosses who would otherwise conspire together to form cartels and monopolies.

                Oh absolutely. It was the ultimate irony of the ASI - I don't think they've read Smith themselves. He also discussed the relationship between landlords and tenants, observing that farm landlords are unlikely to improve their land/holdings unless they think they can charge a higher rent for it, whilst tenants will not spend their money to improve another's land. This divergence of interests results in lower productivity per acre - an early form of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Yet somehow the ASI came to the conclusion that renting hospitals in perpetuity from private landlords is really good value for the taxpayer.

                Likewise, Thatcher declared that she was deeply influenced by Friedrich Hayek - reading "Road to Serfdom" at university and being quite affected by it. She can't have read it very hard because right at the start in chapter 3 he explicitly says he is not arguing for laissez-faire free markets, but against Soviet-style central planning. He fully recognised that free markets are fragile and require government protection against monopolies and cartels.

                "The functioning of competition not only requires adequate organisation of certain institutions like money, markets and channels of information - some of which can never be adequately be provided by private enterprise - but it depends above all on the existence of an appropriate legal system, a legal system designed to both preserve clmpetition and to make it operate as beneficially as possible." - Road to Serfdom, p28

                It is deeply ironic therefore that during the 1980s, Reagan and Thatcher proceeded to embed various "self-regulating" private monopolies and duopolies within the US and British economies, mostly related to the Military-Industrial complex on grounds of efficiency, but which set the stage for weak anti-trust enforcement from the 90s onwards and the sort of behaviour we see in industry today.

              2. Alan Brown Silver badge

                Re: And in future years?

                He was also very clear that there is no such thing as unlimited growth and that business has an obligation to ensure the proper welfare of its employees

                All three of these things are items that the average self-professed Smithite will disavow if you bring them up

            2. Andy 73 Silver badge

              Re: And in future years?

              Nothing in Neoliberalism suggests that councils should **** money up the wall on poorly conceived and even worse implemented projects, or that they should continue to pursue those projects until they have racked up debts beyond any the council is capable of maintaining.

              Nor does neoliberalism suggest that the answer to an insane and unnecessary debt is to sell off assets at random.

              So yes, economics in the western world are approximately neoliberal (except when they aren't), but that neither describes the action of this council, nor does it mean that anything going wrong is "because neoliberalism".

              It's like suggesting that this failure is "because Caucasians".

              1. rg287 Silver badge

                Re: And in future years?

                If that's what you've taken from my ramblings, then I can only conclude that your misunderstanding is willful at this point. Back under your bridge.

                Neoliberalism did not result in a council picking Oracle - although it did lead to the lax anti-trust environment in which Oracle's shonky business practices could thrive.

                40 years of neoliberal government policy have led to a place where councils have been asset-stripped and cut to the bone (because contingency reserves are so wasteful! Who wants those?). After all, if councils owned a few thousand council houses, it'd be trivial to mortgage against them and raise this cash - but they don't, and they can't. It's all in the hands of private social housing providers from whom the council then rents them back in perpetuity, which is apparently more "efficient". Don't mind the mold (see also: MoD Married Quarters Estate).

                40 years of neoliberal policy has led to the situation where governments impose minimum statutory duties on a council but deny them either the funding or the revenue powers to deliver those services.

                The idea that a council should sell capital assets to bail themselves out of a hole instead of central government stepping in, sacking a few people and sorting them out is inherently neoliberal. As was the abolition of the Audit Commission. As was the imposition by central government that they sell their assets in the first place.

                This is the crux of 40 years of neoliberalism:

                * Robust local authorities providing vital services were required to sell their assets.

                * Government then looked at the resulting cash reserves and said "oh well, you're rich - you don't need money from us any more".

                * Government cuts central grants to unsustainable levels.

                * Local authorities run down their cash reserves, don't get enough from central government and have no property to borrow against when they need to invest, renew or overcome a contingency.

                * Government questions why more councils have gone S114 in the past 5 years than the preceeding 30... must be the councillors!

                <shocked pikachu face>

                Add that in to Government increasingly centralising responsibility for strategic works (e.g. most of our motorways were built by County Councils - to a national plan, but locally delivered, back when CCs had in-house works departments and the power/funds to commission private contractors for major civils), it's unsurprising that the local councils are now bad at project management - they've been deliberately deskilled by central government policy. It's also unsurprising that we have declining local infrastructure - central government hasn't got the bandwidth for deciding if a town should have better buses or a new dual carriageway. Works take decades to come to fruit, whereas devolving that power to local authorities allowed relatively rapid local delivery (c.f. excellent S-Bahn provision in German cities - delivered by powerful state Lander who have a personal interest in local infrastructure being good, versus woeful state of DB national railways - undelivered by an indifferent Bundestag with many other issues domestic and international fighting for their attention).

                1. Andy 73 Silver badge

                  Re: And in future years?

                  It's a lazy defense to throw trolling accusations around, but there you go.

                  What I got from your ramblings (your word) was that you have (deliberately or otherwise) confused correlation and causation.

                  Obviously you see this as a political issue, and I put up the objection that the moment we go down that path, we stop trying to solve the actual problem and distract ourselves endlessly with trying to select the right person/political group/economic theory for the job.

                  And it's ridiculous to blame an economic theory - of any kind - for this mess, when nearly all economic theories, including neoliberalism, would decry the extraordinary waste of resources on display. None of your "results of neoliberalism" are required or optimal behaviours for neoliberal theory. All of them can however be linked back to a series of governments led by ministers with extremely short term views, little industry experience and a fear of public opinion - and advised by a civil service with extremely poor institutional knowledge of large scale project planning.

                  1. rg287 Silver badge

                    Re: And in future years?

                    Ah, I think I see where we are at cross purposes.

                    You are confusing my discussion of neoliberalism with the council's decision to pick Oracle. I am not pinning that procurement decision to neoliberalism!

                    We all agree that picking Oracle was a bad move. Fine. Bad IT decision. Move on (although, it's 40 years of neolib economics and lack of anti-trust enforcement that puts Oracle where it is today... so yeah. Fuck Ellison, but also fuck the politicians who haven't regulated him back into his box).

                    My argument (which a majority of commentards seem to agree with) is that the fact the council are now selling assets and in poverty because of one f-ing IT procurement gone wrong is absolutely an outcome of neoliberal economic policies, which has left public services in an untenably fragile state.

                    ===============

                    Obviously you see this as a political issue, and I put up the objection that the moment we go down that path, we stop trying to solve the actual problem and distract ourselves endlessly with trying to select the right person/political group/economic theory for the job.

                    Of course I do. Because it is. The root cause of the council picking Oracle is idiocy. The root cause of them suffering major financial insecurity because of a single IT procurement issue is a political issue. If it was just them, it might be local incompetence - but every local authority in the land now has a perilous lack of contingency. They're all falling over. This drives to the heart of 40 years of cross-party government policy, although in particular post-2010 austerity, which broke the camel's back.

                    I am proposing we go down this path precisely to solve the actual problem - which is one of de-skilled, bankrupt local authorities up and down the country. That we fund them appropriately to competently deliver the services they are obliged to provide (and can cope with the odd fuck-up or contingency - like every business has to), and that we sideline those voices (such as Bloody Stupid Johnson) who hate devolution and call for centralisation of power. To reverse that and move slightly - though not entirely - back towards the more powerful councils of the 1960s and 1970s who have the ability to get stuff done (like the motorways, or big sanitation projects). We'd have never got rebuilt after WWII if we'd been waiting on Westminster to deliver it...

        2. rg287 Silver badge

          Re: And in future years?

          Given this is a problem with councils across the country, trying to blame Tories and neoliberalism (really?!) risks missing the point that it's the unelected officers who are repeating this problem time and time again.

          It's really weird how no council declared S114 (effective bankruptcy) for like, 20 years and then 5 years into Tory austerity, councils up and down the country started going bump... total coincidence. We obviously managed to elect a bunch of incompetents all at once, nationally into every local authority (but not Westminster, apparently!).

          Perhaps... just perhaps, and I'm sticking my neck out here, telling councils "we're cutting your budgets to below that required to deliver statutory obligations, and we want you to sell your property and be entrepreneruial to make up the difference. Also, Eric's closing down the Audit Commission that advises you on the risk-profile of investments, best of luck!"

          At the end of the day, it's not down to the local parties - we've seen Councils of all colours go down (Conservative controlled Northants CC being the first). It's down to successive neoliberal governments (there has been very little difference in the economic doctrines of Labour or Conservatives since Thatcher - Blair's embrace of neolib economics was why Thatcher described "Tony Blair and New Labour" as her greatest achievement).

          Now, of course in this case, picking Oracle is incompetence. But the idea that selling capital assets is the right way forward, and that it shouldn't simply trigger involvement of central government to sort out (and avoid endangering the council's future solvency and ability to invest in other services) is farcical. The council should simply not be allowed to swap buildings for software like this, and that's on government. They've set up the funding structure that forces councils to manage their assets in this fashion.

          And this 40-year doctrine of selling the silver to fund OpEx has left us where we are now - piffling investment in national infrastructure, no national industrial strategy, failed transport policy (which has only been brought to a head by Covid mercifully putting the franchises out their misery once and for all, or else Labour would probably still be rearranging the deckchairs), along with local authorities unable to balance budgets under an impossible dark triad of "You must deliver statutory services, but we won't give you enough money from government to deliver them, and we won't give you the revenue power to raise it yourself."

          As if this is ever going to end well.

          1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

            Re: Councils declaring themselves Bankrupt

            Is a way to get around the limits imposed by Westminster on Council Tax Increases. Stay deep in debt and 5% is all you get.

            Go broke and the sky is the limit. I read somewhere that one council is proposing a 25% increase next April.

            Blairs big push for PFI projects to get them off the Government books is coming home to roost in the next couple of years. I fully expect the UK to go TITSUP and run out of money. It does not look good people.

            1. rg287 Silver badge

              Re: Councils declaring themselves Bankrupt

              Is a way to get around the limits imposed by Westminster on Council Tax Increases. Stay deep in debt and 5% is all you get.

              Go broke and the sky is the limit. I read somewhere that one council is proposing a 25% increase next April.

              Weird how they never did that in the 90s or 2000s though. Only since 2010...

              Blairs big push for PFI projects to get them off the Government books is coming home to roost in the next couple of years. I fully expect the UK to go TITSUP and run out of money. It does not look good people.

              The UK cannot physically run out of money. Not in the way Greece did. It's structurally impossible. However, I quite agree that PFI is now coming crumbling down. The question is whether there will actually be a tipping point (as COVID did for the rail franchises that forced them back to the Operator of Last Resort - the Government, or as multiple fatal derailments did for RailTrack), or whether they'll keep them limping on. Several London NHS Trusts are drowning under the weight of PFI on hospitals that should be bought-and-paid-for.

              It's not clear what will be necessary for the government to rip up the contracts and nationalise these assets. The MoD could claim national security for Sheffield Forgemasters, but things like the NHS can be kept limping along indefinitely without some catalyst that forces their hand.

              1. Alan Brown Silver badge

                Re: Councils declaring themselves Bankrupt

                "things like the NHS can be kept limping along indefinitely without some catalyst that forces their hand."

                H5N1 may prove to be what Covid wasn't (a repeat of 1918-23). The number of cases in people and livestock is snowballing and so far it's had a 25%+ fataility rate when jumping the species barrier.

                Right now it's only one mutation tick off being transmissible between people and the way nature is constantly tossing dice it's only a matter of time before it throws a Yahtzee

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: And in future years?

          You miss the point, it was the Tories / neo libs that enabled councils to sell off assets to cover the constant shortfall in central government funding.

          And guess which party's mates are the ones clamouring to buy the undervalued prime assets....

          It's almost as if.they'd worked out a way to force the sale of public assets at knock down prices.

        4. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: And in future years?

          "Missing the point that it's the unelected officers who are repeating this problem time and time again."

          The problem is that councils don't have sufficient IT expertise and more worryingly, whenever anyone acquires such expertise they leave for vastly better pay elsewhere

          There's a hostile culture to doing things right, fostered by a mentality amongst management of "Why can't we just do this on a few Windows PCs?"

          Hostility to making changes to the (arcane) way things are done can often be addressed by finding a way to push those individuals into retirement

      2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

        Re: And in future years?

        "...and quite inefficient, since they tend to end up renting premises..."

        In defence of the public sector, there's a lot of this is the private sector, too; especially amongst leverage buyouts. They sell off properties the business owns for a quick hit of cash and then rent it back. A short term hit for the shareholders/debtholders/bosses. Morrisons has been doing this. (Is Asda?)

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: And in future years?

      > Council can't exactly relocate to a cheaper part of the UK.

      Well that is effectively what has happened in Northamptonshire: sell town centre offices and relocate to some remote villlage elsewhere in the county. Plus move the back office functions to some “business park” and share them with other councils.

      What has been interesting is that for this to work, projects have to have purchase orders, now clients get paid within the month rather than having to scrabble round project sponsors to get signatures only to discover the budget has been spent on something else…

      However, despite all this the still Conservatives controlled councils are overspending…

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: And in future years?

        I think Kirklees would refute any suggestion that they are Conservative controlled.

        The real problem is that none of them are effectively controlled by anybody.

    3. hoola Silver badge

      Re: And in future years?

      There is huge pressure at the moment for all councils to sell every asset they own to plug holes in finances.

      In general public have no concept of reserves or the services a council has to provide. Their only direct interaction is their bins being emptied. The outcome of this (not helped by the media and large numbers of posts on Social Media" is that all councils are:

      Incompetent

      Waste money on everything (because anything they don't directly use is not valid expenditure)

      All staff are utter wasters and should be sacked immediately

      All staff have some magical "gold plated pension" where they get huge sums for no contribution or years worked

      Let the private sector do everything instead, it will be better, cheaper, more efficient.........

      Now the last is been proved wrong on pretty much every occasion when something has been outsourced.

      If you go and sell all your assets then they are gone for ever. They will never get them back. I suppose in some cases they may on land or buildings but only at insane expense.

      1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

        Re: And in future years?

        I think outsourcing the bins proved a win for out council - especially when lorry drivers were in short supply and the contractor had to meet their contracted services levels.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    New council taxes planned

    Air, Rain, Sunshine, Wind. (Snow is free if it stays frozen)

    Concessions available for the elderly and those who can hold their breath.

  10. m4r35n357 Silver badge

    Jail them

    and jail Ellison

    1. Ramblings

      Re: Jail them

      I really don't get how fraud on this scale isn't treated as such, I'll be writing to my MP about the govt investigating Oracle.

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        Re: Jail them

        Oracle are just the supplier. Investigate the incompetence of the council, their tender process, and the consultants they pay to advise them.

  11. Rich 2 Silver badge

    A better plan….

    ….would be to use the extra cash to keep whoever is responsible for this blinding incompetence at his majesty’s pleasure.

    Whether that be people at the council, their consultants (there HAS to be some consultants) or people at Oracle (obviously guilty).

    What a shit show

  12. Lee D Silver badge

    West Sussex population: 885,048

    £40m.

    That's £45 per-person (not counting ongoing costs) to ... do what? A HR and finance system.

    I think they need to implement a much simpler finance system called "not spending money on junk" as well as a long-term strategy called "identify whoever suggested Oracle and make sure they are sacked".

    And it's SaaS... the ongoing costs are going to be stupendous.

    If only there were existing well-established and proven HR and/or finance systems in use across the world.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's worse than you think. WSCC have 6,000 core staff, and 21,000 employed by schools. Being generous I'll assume the school staff are on the council's systems although I don't know that.

      £40m/27,000 = £1,500 per employee served.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Why does every council even need their own IT when they're all essentially doing the same thing? Either run core systems at the national level that all councils can use for a fixed per head annual fee, or club together with neighbouring councils to operate regional shared services at much lower per capita cost.

      1. Lee D Silver badge

        But then you can't possibly profit by being a politician who's a shareholder/adviser of a consultancy that acts as a middleman to a dozen contractors that you force them to use and scrape out the profits to their max based on other's ignorance and take your 20%.

      2. Not Yb Bronze badge

        Perhaps there are too many people voting with the belief that "central government can't do anything right"?

    3. IceC0ld
      Joke

      SAGE words indeed

      but sadly, the council are SAP's

      sorry, not sorry

  13. heyrick Silver badge

    Exactly when is central government going to step in...

    ...and rein in this shit?

    That's how many teachers? How many teaching assistants? How many SEND placements? How many potholes fixed?

    Fucking unbelievable waste of money.

    I'd start by blacklisting Oracle, then fire everybody who signed off on changes to the original spec, and the ones responsible for the clearly inadequate original spec. If heads don't roll, councils across the country will continue pissing taxpayer cash into the pockets of, predominately,one company.

    I'm actually surprised that some shouty mob like the Daily Mail isn't on top of this already...

    1. m4r35n357 Silver badge

      Re: Exactly when is central government going to step in...

      You have to say their name three times . . .

      1. Fr. Ted Crilly Silver badge

        Re: Exactly when is central government going to step in...

        Footmch, Footmch, Footmch...

        That orght'a do it...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Exactly when is central government going to step in...

      "That's how many teachers? How many teaching assistants? How many SEND placements? How many potholes fixed?"

      Teachers, £43k a year average salary. £40m = 930

      Teaching assistants £21k a year average. £40m = 1,904

      SEND placement, £61k a year average, £40m = 655

      Pothole average repair cost, £70, £40m = 571,400

      However, a £40m screwup in an authority that spends £2.2bn a year would seem pretty modest. It's also pretty modest compared to the SAP screwup that cost my last private sector employer around £800m.

      Many people get outraged by public sector waste, that ignores a couple of things: (1) Shit goes wrong just as regularly in the private sector, it's just better hidden, and (2) after years of voting for Conservative politicians who have routinely cut per capita budgets in real terms as well as public sector staff salaries, people are getting the outcomes they voted for.

      1. heyrick Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Exactly when is central government going to step in...

        "Shit goes wrong just as regularly in the private sector, it's just better hidden"

        Ah, but the thing here is the origin of the money. In the private sector, a big screw up could sink the company (so they try not to have that happen).

        Here, it's a lot of taxpayer money they're wasting which means (especially given as how numerous councils put up the charges as much as they can each year) that they probably don't have much impetus to keep costs down in the same way that a private company would. After all, sell off something or put the rates up (or both) and that'll do it...

        Thank you very much for doing the maths on what £40M would pay for otherwise. See icon.

    3. rg287 Silver badge

      Re: Exactly when is central government going to step in...

      councils across the country will continue pissing taxpayer cash into the pockets of, predominately,one company.

      Microsoft?

      I read a startling statistic from some Euro group the other day that reckons European nations - in aggregate (public and private sector) - send €100/mo per worker to the US in "business overheads". This seems a lot until you start totting up M365/Google Workspace subscriptions, then Windows desktop and server licenses (or Red Hat licensing/support), cost of SAP or other business software, and then buying other cloudy services from Azure/AWS/Google.

      Obviously people have a hoice to go with Canonical/SUSE locally. But for things like 365 it's quite remarkable that there isn't a mainstream European competitor - although that will maybe come as the Germans seem interested in ditching ze Americans on regulatory grounds. Someone needs to do something with Collabora to get an easy-to-use hosted productivity package going - mail, document editing and storage that provides a viable European alternative to 365/Workspace for small businesses who don't want to stitch together Nextcloud/Collabora/mail on their own.

  14. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dear Oh Dear Oh Dear........

    When we START with observations about ORACLE.......we are MISSING THE POINT!

    (1) Do the people who let contracts actually KNOW and DOCUMENT what business process the software is going to support?

    (2) Does the "request for proposal" actually define the DOCUMENTED business process?

    (3) Does the "request for proposal" actually legally bind every submission to accept the "business process" AS PART OF THE EVENTUAL CONTRACT?

    If the answers to these three questions is "No"................

    ................then the the people of Birmingham and West Sussex will get some unknown (and probably unworkable) "solution"..........

    Ha....."solution"........another weasel word from the consultancy dictionary du jour!!!!

  16. Tron Silver badge

    This keeps happening.

    Even the halfwits we have in government should have flagged this as a known issue by now and acted to prevent if from happening over and over again.

    The SAGE committee are so busy fussing over China that they just ignore stuff like this that causes real damage to peoples' lives.

    Ultimately, everyone in a position of power in the UK is likely to be incompetent, corrupt or both. So expect more of the same.

    And this very expensive contract - how long will it last before the whole thing has to be redone as the tech or OS or a part of it is being EOL'd?

    1. Like a badger

      Re: This keeps happening.

      SAGE have a remit to support COBR decision making. Until you can get a COBR meeting called to examine £40m here, £100m there overspends SAGE can't look at it.

      And in a world where Hinkley Point is £28bn over budget, HS2 is probably £35bn over budget, Lower Thames Crossing is looking like it'll be £4bn over budget, I think you'll struggle to get COBR processes invoked just because local government can't find their own arse with both hands.

    2. the spectacularly refined chap Silver badge

      Re: This keeps happening.

      SAGE are the science advisory group to central government. I would hope they wouldn't waste their time with IT and financial auditing in local government.

  17. Martin Saunders

    Meanwhile.. Applying to be a unitary

    West Sussex, along with Brighton and Hove, and East Sussex, have put in their request to the government to become a single unitary authority:

    https://www.westsussex.gov.uk/news/sussex-councils-agree-to-submit-expression-of-interest-on-devolution/

    So whatever requirement they thought they had as West might very well change, a lot, in a few months time....

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The only thing Oracle are able to transform is the size of their invoice

    More LGov negligence , however, there's always "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." which failing councils seem to rely on to escape responsibility.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This should be interesting, WSCC had agreed to go down the devolution route with Brighton and Hove, They do IT in house, and has a highly Oracle hostile attitude.

    1. Bebu sa Ware
      Coat

      A future "who me?"

      Brighton and Hove, They do IT in house, and has a highly Oracle hostile attitude.

      And while our regomised hero, Simon was showing the Oracle pre sales engineer the view from the twelfth floor the poor chap accidentally fell through the window. As Simon again explained to the attending constabulary "I really don't understand how this keeps happening."

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Zen

    Going to be a bit vague here for professional reasons - although I don't work at or for Birmingham or WSCC, but I have a bit of Local Government experience in this field....

    From recent experiences,

    50% of the issue is senior management writing a specification where they don't know understand what they are specifying (and not speaking to people who might have a clue)

    30% of the issue is management not understanding that SaaS can't be bent to the bizarre working practices that have built up in the LA over the years, and that you have to review and adopt the software providers best practices to get the best from the system (irrespective of it being Oracle, SAP etc)

    15% of the issue is sales people promising senior managers the world, and making promises that the system can't technically deliver

    5% is down to local authorities employing project managers who couldn't manage their way out of a wet paper bag, with a hole in it, and big arrows pointing to the exit

    (Hopefully that adds up to 100%!)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Zen

      I'd suggest there's at least an additional 20% that's down to a near total absence of any large change project experience, and absence of proper PMO, and an absence of effective risk management in any council. So that's not about the quality of the PMs, it's the absence of the broader processes and capabilities to oversee and deliver large scale, high risk changes.

      We're already at 120%, so overspending before we've event started.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Zen

        Ah, but they can do a pretty PowerPoint presentation....

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Zen

      You do have a fairly inbuilt problem with 'decent'* PMs won't get out of bed for less than 60k PA, which is significanlty more than top tier LA executives get paid**. Pay peanuts, yada yada.

      *Of course one has to wonder if the ability to drive a GANTT chart and an obseesion with post-its is worth 60k.

      **It's already hard enough to get the locals to cough up for road maintenence and the adult social care to make sure they don't get stabbed by an unmanaged psyhcotic case.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Zen

      You have to jam some percentage of the blame onto the system integrator (DXC and then Infosys in this case). They will make, or usually break, an ERP implementation project.

  21. dfilteau

    A glimpse of sanity, perchance?

    IT guy here: Why is this council going it alone? Why don't the collective councils agree on a solution that will meet the collective needs and can be adapted to each valid special use case? I'm sure there's enough commonality among disparate councils to (again) collectively design, develop, and deploy additional use cases that other councils would find useful. To do this, packages like Oracle's offerings are not flexible enough to provide this functionality.

    For pity's sake, they should be opening up their possible solutions to more than just a claimed do-it-all package. Get the requirements, develop an RFI (Request For Information) or, if the specs and requirements are complete enough, issue an RFP (Request For Proposals) and see who responds and what their proposed solution is.

    And finally (insert applause), when has an Oracle product EVER delivered the capabilities promised, on time and on budget? Bueller? Bueller?

    Thought so.

    FLAME ON!!!!

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
      IT Angle

      Re: A glimpse of sanity, perchance?

      "IT guy here"

      I hate to break it to you: we're all IT guys and gals here...

      1. dfilteau

        Re: A glimpse of sanity, perchance?

        I assumed that this was not the case, based on the variety of tone and content in the comments.

  22. DS999 Silver badge

    Maybe they should have a review of the project first

    To determine how the cost went up by almost 15x above original estimates? Whoever is in charge should have been fired long ago.

    What happens if they've sold everything they have to sell, and that cost increases again - perhaps by only a "mere" 25%? Good luck coming up with another £10 million when you've already sold every asset on the books.

    In the past when they've needed to acquire property, like somewhere to build a new fire station, they've probably relied on the proceeds from sales of old property they no longer need. Or maybe the location where they closed a school makes a perfect spot to build a new fire station so they don't have to sell or acquire anything.

    But now that they've sold everything, where are they going to come up with the money for buying property? They'll go to the taxpayers of course. I guess a vote to approve a bond requiring a property tax increase is easier to swallow if its for a new fire station rather than to pay for what is obviously a wildly mismanaged IT project.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Guaranteed moneymaker...

    ... volunteer for the upcoming plutonium dump!

  24. JamesTGrant Bronze badge

    This is outrageous - it’s the government literally stealing wealth from its people. IMO It should be illegal for a government agency to be able to autonomously sell a publicly owned asset to pay a privately owned contract.

    Forget growth - how about we stop giving away our collective wealth to billionaire owned corporations (usually not U.K. based).

  25. IGotOut Silver badge

    I'll give a slightly different perspective...

    ...I can't give specifics as people that know me reading it will know who I am.

    This is not just public sector issue, it a large entity issue.

    It's not just Oracle, it's a management/ project management issue.

    I will give my example.

    The in house it team in the area concerned we're not at any point informed or encouraged in discussion "due to our negative attitude to the existing core product roll out" (which itself failed to deliver on half the promises, one of which I warned them about from day one, which ended up costing £70,000 to correct, but I digress). So managers, consultants from the core product team, and a third party all huddled together over a 6 months to come up with super shiny. A replacement for the old system which I was an expert in.

    They bought £500,000 worth of shiny of the 3rd party and then spent 3 months trying to get it to work. They all squabbled about who's fault it was because it couldn't do XYZ, vendor A had said it could, vendor B said out of spec. It was still going when i walked out.

    In the meantime I'd used a trial bit if software, that would cost £1000 / annum and a spare server we had. Whacked up a webpage to spit out the info required and bingo. Job done.

    All the teams rolled it out by stealth as a "test", as it did exactly what they wanted.

    Then the trial was coming to an end. I asked for the £1000 to purchase the software.

    Nothing

    Getting closer to expiry date.

    Nothing.

    1 day to go

    Nothing.

    Expiry date came.

    Software closed down all hell broke loose as they were no blind.

    Somehow it's my fault.

    Next day I didn't get out of bed and never went back.

    Don't know if fixed or not. I doubt it, as nothing was documented, as far as I was concerned it was a trial.

    Tldr

    Blame the management teams and the sales consultants, for not having fucking clue what the staff and end users actually need or want.

    1. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: I'll give a slightly different perspective...

      Been there :(

      Large Entities will give anything to not change their arcane/bizarre/(possibly corrupt) current working practices. And the salespeople from Oracle et al are highly adept at telling a customer exactly what they want to hear... Change nothing, our product is completely, nay infinitely customisable, for a small fee princely sum blank cheque. We will accommodate whatever dodgy system you have!

      So naturally anyone who comes along and proposes something sensible will get sidelined. If they implement it on the side, then everyone non-manglement will love it, even lower-manglement will pretend to love it but will do nothing to support it. Upper manglement will actively poison it to get their way.

      I now avoid working for Large Entities wherever possible.

  26. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

    i360

    Not an Intel processor, but more financial drain for West Sussex residents, this time in Brighton and Hove.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwypjyyng7w

    Councils do like costly errections. Along the coast, Portsmouth's Spinnaker Tower cost those council taxpayers extra...

    1. Bebu sa Ware
      Coat

      Re: i360

      I-360 is also a US immigration and naturalization service form to apply for the status of someone who Trump would likely want to put on plane to Colombia or wherever.

  27. IceC0ld

    bit of a dichotomy here - only just :o)

    costs mushroom from £2.6 million to around £40 million ($50 million) / so we start HERE

    to fund projects that result in ongoing revenue savings / and SOMEHOW they are still saying revenue reduction ........

  28. Hans 1
    FAIL

    No comment

    > "This was not required as the Council’s commercial team led the discussions, which resulted in a saving of [circa] £1m over the extension term when compared against renewals on existing terms,"

  29. RyszrdG

    Despite a formidable track record of disasters the Oracle dinosaur keeps on trundling on like some giant brontosaurus in the swamp. In my experience most customers fail to grasp the sheer size and complexity of implementing these highly integrated systems and the impact and cost of the inevitable slew of late design variations that are 'essential' for some department or user no-one had previously heard of or considered. Government and local authorities are even worse as they inevitably bake volatile legislation into their data model and embedded process despite advice to contrary. The real killer - long implementation cycles that invite complex and expensive change before achieving any measurable operational benefit from a successful deployment. You can make a lot of money on these projects but eventually the damage to your self esteem can be terminal - just like the project outcome.

  30. Zippy´s Sausage Factory
    Facepalm

    Regarding the Oracle contract extension worth £2.377m, the council did not get third-party support in negotiating with Oracle.

    Hold on, I think I see the problem...

    West Sussex County Council will be hoping its Oracle project achieves the savings it promises.

    Yeah, good luck with that.

  31. s. pam
    WTF?

    Oracle contract tool anyone?

    Heh, looks like Bad Red has made a tool for it! https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18727_01/doc.121/e13464/T241038T241043.htm

    It’s got a typical ghastly UI which has features to enable overruns!

    You just can’t make this shit up!!

  32. ScottishYorkshireMan

    Perhaps, its just a case that

    someone or for that matter, a few.

    Hold shares in Oracle, somewhere. Maybe a pension, maybe actively.

    Usually find that the reason that government (central or local) does or doesn't do something is down to someone being on the gravy train.

    After all, Streeting took £175k from Private Healthcare, so I guess there is something in this. (https://www.thenational.scot/news/24250557.wes-streeting-takes-175k-donors-linked-private-health-firms/)

    Corruption seems to be a human trait, not a political one. Too busy fucking each other over to do the right thing.

    Upvote, downvote. Whatever.

  33. NewThought

    National "Council Computer System"

    I have studied the bankruptcy of Birmingham in detail, and have firmly concluded that the council that, in the 19th century, was run by the great Joseph Chamberlain, is now run by a hopelessly incompetent team. How we attract quality people into local politics again I don't know - but I'll give you the solution to getting a good computer system:

    1. Build a national "Council Computer System" that all councils must use

    2. Avoid using Oracle at all costs: instead, use as much open source software as possible (and contribute back to this software with good commits that improve it)

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: National "Council Computer System"

      "now run by a hopelessly incompetent team"

      This is what happens to ALL bureaucracies. The Colonial Office had its greatest number of staff at the point in time where there were no more colonies to administer - just before the entire department's responsibilities were folded into the Foreign Office and 90% of them were laid off

      About the only proven method of fixing organisational bloat, mission creep and encroaching incompetence is to scrap the entire thing and start over. Attempts to tinker with a running organisation (regardless of how badly it's running) invariably make things worse

      There are strong arguments for breaking housing, welfare, education, fire and police away from councils and putting them under dedicated regional/national organisations. Amongst other things it ensures that lower decile income councils don't end up being starved of critical resources in a nasty positive feedback loop

      Funnily enough that's how several countries do it and they almost always work far better than council based models for the simple reason that the administrative and management overhead scales linearly at worst when the organisation is dedicated to a function over a large geographical area

      1. batfink

        Re: National "Council Computer System"

        Sort of like how it’s done in Australia then.

        When I moved to the UK I was dumbstruck at the extent of responsibilities of local councils. I can see how it has grown up over the centuries but seriously it’s time now to move into the Century of the Fruitbat. Get a grip.

  34. 0laf Silver badge

    Old school

    With those number they'd be better to go back to paper and employ some workers. controversial maybe.

  35. old_n_grey

    An observation or several

    First, an admission. For the 21 years prior to my retirement, I worked for three system integrators implementing Oracle ERP.

    1) The comments here put the criticism/blame for this clusterf*ck at Oracle's door. However, what isn't clear is who provided the original cost estimate. In my experience, it was the SI (often me personally) who did the resource requirements and added the licence/support costs provided by Oracle. Was this the case here? Or did Oracle do all of the pre-sale? At the very least, I would suggest that even if Oracle were the prime contractor, they would have to work with the SI to get to the final cost/timescale. And back in the day of Oracle Consulting, if a project needed their skills, we'd either poach the right person, suggest that person became a contractor, or as a last resort we'd have to cost in the Oracle bodies.

    2) However, I did work on one project where all of the pre--sale was handled by Oracle and the SI I worked at did the implementation. That did cause the odd problem where Oracle promised simple functionality that did not exist in any shape or form. Plus this functionality was to solve some incredibly complex requirements. Needless to say, the client really didn't take kindly to being told that Oracle had lied and it would be an expensive mini-project. It even went to arbitration, which the client lost thus further souring relations (the project was eventually canned by the client). So thanks Oracle.

    3) Continuing the theme, I was horrified to be part of a demo when the Oracle used a mix of the existing character based software, with the about to be released graphical UI, plus screenshots of a future release.

    4) Back to the council - I note that one of he council's documents said: "The council has an implementation partner and a data migration partner alongside Oracle" Many hands make chaos!

    5) The project is now on its third SI partner. Never a sign of well thought out set of requirements.

    6) The suggestion that all councils could use a single system makes perfect sense, except having been involved in several public sector bids/projects I've found that they all think they are unique.

    7) Just about every client I have ever known has at some point said: "I know that is what we asked for in the requirements but that isn't want we really wanted. Can't you just change it for free?"

    8) I've been retired for eight years but back when I was working, Oracle ERP was never a great fit for public sector.

    9) That said, back in 1998 I implemented Oracle ERP for a leading UK university. They still use it, albeit it has obviously been updated.

    10) Sometimes a potential client cuts back their initial requirements to hit a particular capital budget with the intention of using change requests. i.e. via the P & L, to get what they really want. One of my employers fell foul of one potential client. The initial bid was maybe £3-£4 million. There was a day when all the hopefuls on the shortlist popped over to Rome to give a presentation. That evening my manager was given the nod that we'd be awarded the contract. The second day was to give the Best And Final Offer based on what had been learned from the previous day. My manager, and her manager, decided that as we were in prime position, we'd include everything that the organisation actually wanted. Our BAFO went to £15 million and, surprise surprise, we didn't get the contract.

    OK, I've bored myself. I'll stop

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: An observation or several

      "Our BAFO went to £15 million and, surprise surprise, we didn't get the contract."

      That's called "dodging a bullet" - there are a lot of customers who are simply more trouble than they're worth - You're better off being the White Knights rolling in to save the clusterfuckage installed by someone else than trying to make a badly specified project work - and the reputational damage associated with cost blowouts is vastly more expensive than any actual income derived

  36. BillGatesOfHell

    Ransomware

    I worked as a mere minion at a very, very big place back in the day that had oracle databases (it still is and and still does). When the company was testing upgrading client PCs from Win 98/NT to XP, the oracle client software after installing fine would not work anymore popping up some dlll error when connecting. Oracle's answer was upgrade the software on each client at £5k per seat. While the other regional centre's IT staff and head office were eating prawn sandwiches and having meetings about what couldn't be done about it, I discovered after a couple of weeks of persistant hacking, that just deleting the offending dll made the client software run fine thus saving around £5 million nationally. I gained hero status with managing directors and above, but IT project management etc developed quite a distain for me afterwards due to making them look like the numbnuts that they truely were. IMO, anybody with an ounce of common sense should treat all things Oracle as ransomware, especially if you are spending somebody elses money on it.

  37. fred_flinstone

    A story as old as time itself

    Tis very simple.

    To keep to the budget you have to use the software AS SUPPLIED.

    If however you think your <insert organisation type> is ‘special’ and you absolutely ‘must’ have that function (and that function, oh and that function) modified to your specific requirement (because it is completely inconceivable that you would provide the same services as every other council in the country), then watch out, coz now Oracle (or to be fair, any one of a million other vendors) has you on the hook, like a dealer hooks a junkie.

    And, like that junkie, you will keep changing and changing and changing the software.

    And now, you are not on the hook for 2.6 mil, but 40 mil, and counting, and you are selling the family jewels, and the community football pitch is now a housing estate, and the bins are being collected every 6 months.

    1. Tim99 Silver badge

      Re: A story as old as time itself

      I have written management systems for laboratories - they worked. I have managed the installation of specialist off-the-shelf systems - They usually required the organization to change their practices to fit the new system; this was sometimes expensive, but worked.

      What almost never works is taking an off-the-shelf system and asking for/making changes - That might work for a period, but 5 years down the track the supplier has changed the base system, and your changes will not work. The supplier will either tell you that they are not supported, or hold you to ransom to make the changes.

      If you go with an in-house system, the initial developers must be encouraged to stay on for several years until a (largish) pool of in-house staff understand the system, and can expand it and support it as required. Ongoing staff development is required, and the staff will need to be well paid to avoid them being poached. As far as a supplier is concerned, poaching has the advantage of removing knowledge; leaving the organization helpless, and entirely dependent on the supplier.

      I have used, developed for, and installed Oracle from V4. Sometime about V7, I started using and installing MS SQL Server which was fine for many projects. I pulled the pin on Oracle before V11. We used Postgres for a while before I retired. After consulting at a couple of proposed Oracle projects, I vowed I would never go back, the politics was invariably toxic and most of the senior people were either complete arseholes, or entirely out of their depth.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unbelievable

    Honestly, if it wasn't bad enough that our MPs couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery, it seems our councillors do not have the intelligence to understand the systems they order and hence get taken advantage of by the likes of Oracle. Renowned for over charging.

    For **** sake, just piss away more tax payers money why don't you!

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