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It seems that now the authorities will have to start all over again.
The largest municipality in Europe, the city of Birmingham, in April 2022 replaced its previous ERP system from SAP, which has been used since 1997, with the universal Oracle Fusion platform. This end-to-end Oracle solution integrates finance, payroll, human resources, procurement, supply chain, and customer engagement.
After the implementation of the new platform, the Mayor's Office of Birmingham was unable to prepare auditable financial statements. As a result, it is now planned to re-introduce the "boxed" version of the Oracle product, since the initial improvements and settings disrupted the operation of the bank reconciliation module. In addition, the new system did not allow for the maintenance of an audit trail and the detection of fraud for 18 months.
According to a new audit report by the Audit Reform Lab at the University of Sheffield, the initial cost estimate for the project was £19 million, but it has since risen to £131 million, including re-implementation costs. However, according to experts, real costs will reach 216.5 million pounds by 2026.
The platform was supposed to provide direct economic benefits for the mayor's office, but in the end, expectations were not met. Moreover, due to the inability to control budgets, the mayor's office had to abandon plans to save 69 million pounds in the 2023-2024 financial year.
According to the authors of the report, problems with the implementation of the Oracle system were not reported to elected members of the board and the general public for more than a year - from April 2022 to May 2023. The report calls for a public inquiry into this financial failure, which has effectively brought the municipality to the brink of bankruptcy.
In response to criticism, the leader of the city council, John Cotton, said: of course, the municipality needs to take responsibility for the mistakes made, but they "did not arise in a vacuum." According to him, the reports show a nationwide crisis in local government, caused by 14 years of negligence by the previous conservative government, as well as a significant increase in the needs of society.
But laboratory specialists are still sure that the authorities are belittling the role of Oracle in this situation. In their view, any subsequent investigation should explain why the failure to implement the system was swept up for 13 months – whether it was the result of stubbornness and incompetence, or part of a deliberate blame-shifting strategy.
Source
The largest municipality in Europe, the city of Birmingham, in April 2022 replaced its previous ERP system from SAP, which has been used since 1997, with the universal Oracle Fusion platform. This end-to-end Oracle solution integrates finance, payroll, human resources, procurement, supply chain, and customer engagement.
After the implementation of the new platform, the Mayor's Office of Birmingham was unable to prepare auditable financial statements. As a result, it is now planned to re-introduce the "boxed" version of the Oracle product, since the initial improvements and settings disrupted the operation of the bank reconciliation module. In addition, the new system did not allow for the maintenance of an audit trail and the detection of fraud for 18 months.
According to a new audit report by the Audit Reform Lab at the University of Sheffield, the initial cost estimate for the project was £19 million, but it has since risen to £131 million, including re-implementation costs. However, according to experts, real costs will reach 216.5 million pounds by 2026.
The platform was supposed to provide direct economic benefits for the mayor's office, but in the end, expectations were not met. Moreover, due to the inability to control budgets, the mayor's office had to abandon plans to save 69 million pounds in the 2023-2024 financial year.
According to the authors of the report, problems with the implementation of the Oracle system were not reported to elected members of the board and the general public for more than a year - from April 2022 to May 2023. The report calls for a public inquiry into this financial failure, which has effectively brought the municipality to the brink of bankruptcy.
In response to criticism, the leader of the city council, John Cotton, said: of course, the municipality needs to take responsibility for the mistakes made, but they "did not arise in a vacuum." According to him, the reports show a nationwide crisis in local government, caused by 14 years of negligence by the previous conservative government, as well as a significant increase in the needs of society.
But laboratory specialists are still sure that the authorities are belittling the role of Oracle in this situation. In their view, any subsequent investigation should explain why the failure to implement the system was swept up for 13 months – whether it was the result of stubbornness and incompetence, or part of a deliberate blame-shifting strategy.
Source
