Birmingham set to miss deadline to make Oracle disaster 'safe and compliant'

Birmingham City Council — Europe's largest section authority — stands accused of being a "ship adrift successful nan ocean" aft it grounded to corroborate it could make its troubled Oracle implementation "safe and compliant."

According to auditors, nan replacement for nan council's SAP-based financial strategy has gone truthful severely BCC has not created a financial connection aliases outturn position for nan astir caller financial twelvemonth and cannot supply an up-to-date financial position successful nan existent financial year.

Challenges pinch nan Oracle migration are exacerbating problems pinch nan readying to settee adjacent salary claims which could magnitude to £1 cardinal ($1.21 billion), but which are yet to beryllium resolved. The assembly efficaciously declared itself bankrupt past month.

Auditors Grant Thornton called connected nan assembly to make its Oracle strategy "safe and compliant" by nan extremity of November.

However, nan assembly has now responded by saying it "cannot beryllium confident" of concluding each basal activity by that date.

Debating nan council's response, leader of Liberal Democrat Group Roger Harmer said: "We're effectively, what we're being told [is] that we're a vessel adrift successful nan water and nan fog down, and until we clear nan fog, we really don't cognize precisely wherever we are."

In a assembly gathering precocious past week, Grant Thornton West Midlands nationalist assemblage leader Mark Stocks said nan costs of nan Oracle task had gone up from astir £38 cardinal ($46 million) to a minimum of £100 cardinal ($122 million). Earlier costs estimates were person to £20 million ($24 million).

However, Stocks said that, though significant, costs overruns were not his "core concern."

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"You still do not person a financial reporting strategy that tells you wherever your finances are. Given nan liabilities that you're going to person to salary successful position of adjacent pay, you request to understand what your financial position is. There's an urgency to resolving nan issues astir Oracle.

"You person to get into a authorities wherever you're safe and compliant, and that intends wherever your financial systems are providing you pinch nan accusation that you request without officers having to do workarounds. It's highly important that that safe and compliant shape is reached arsenic soon arsenic you perchance can," he said.

He told nan assembly earlier this period a manual workaround required to move rate required 30 officers for a important period. The aforesaid task required 3 group utilizing nan earlier SAP system, The Register was told by an insider.

Despite its scheme to instrumentality cloud-based Oracle Fusion retired of nan box, nan rollout became heavy limited connected customizations, immoderate of which grounded to activity arsenic expected. In its astir caller advancement study connected rectifying nan Oracle implementation, nan assembly said it was moving pinch Oracle Consulting "to guarantee we present our 'out of nan box' Oracle vision."

However, individuals adjacent to nan implementation person told The Register a "vanilla" Oracle implementation cannot execute each nan functions its heavy customized SAP strategy executed successfully. ®