Birmingham City Council continues to grapple with issues stemming from its Oracle ERP system, impacting its financial operations. A recent council meeting revealed a projected £380m budget deficit and £141m in uncollected business rates. Concerns were raised over the decision to proceed with the Oracle system's launch despite its incompleteness, highlighted by auditor Mark Stocks who noted a lack of ownership over the project. The report emphasized the critical loss of corporate knowledge and an overarching optimism bias which led to significant operational difficulties since the system's adoption in April 2022.
When you look into the budget book, you find that there is a deficit in the budget of £380m over the next three years, but what really concerns me is the effect of Oracle and that we have a deficit of £141m of uncollected business rates - that is equivalent to a 30% increase in council tax.
Nobody took ownership. The information was there to stop this, but all the suppliers said go live. The system wasn't ready when it went live.
There was an optimism bias. It's alarming the extent of the problems now that we've gone live with the Oracle system and how it's impacting financial reporting.
Collection
[
|
...
]