How poor IT project management failed Birmingham Oracle implementation
While experts have questioned why Birmingham City Council (BCC) chose to modify and adapt a new Oracle system rather than alter its own business processes - a decision that led to a £100m bill for taxpayers - a series of documents seen by Computer Weekly reveal project management failures over a number of years contributed to the IT failure.
These point to a systemic lack of leadership and an unwillingness to address concerns raised by the council’s audit committee, internal experts and people directly involved in the project.
In September 2023, BCC issued a Section 114 notice, effectively declaring the council bankrupt. The Centre for Governance and Scrutiny was commissioned to investigate what went wrong.
In Birmingham City Council’s audit report of April 2024, councillor Fred Grindrod, who until recently chaired the council’s audit committee, described the Oracle system as “the all-encompassing problem” that underlies BCC’s current woes.
He said the audit committee was misled. Citing correspondence with the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny, after its November 2023 Governance stabilisation plan report into the council’s problems, Grindrod said he was told that the audit committee could “credibly assert” that it had been misled by senior officers.
