Villa Park Redevelopment

[Percy McCarthy]

Birmingham City Council won't have anything to do with paying to upgrade the station.

Exactly. Their role is merely as facilitators, and if they’ve got any sense they’ll do everything they can to help, if only to attract the Euros and related tourism.

Even outside that, they’ve got a fully-financed million-strong a year visitor attraction in a deprived inner-city area. They should be doing everything they can to encourage it.

[pauliewalnuts]

It is easy to assume that the council is a disaster in everything they do. Far from it. On the contrary, they're visionary in some of the stuff they've done over the years, and that goes back to Joseph Chamberlain.

The problem is a mixture of bad financial and project management over 10+ years around the IT system and the equal pay claim, but worth pointing out, it's not been a Labour council all that time, they're all guilty.

On top of that, the crushing grind of austerity as London outsourced its spending problems to the provinces has been felt in the biggest council more than most.

I wonder if the Tories have the same approach to, say, Woking council, way smaller budget than Brum, but 1.2bn - ie even more - in the hole, and Tory led.

[paul_e]

It is easy to assume that the council is a disaster in everything they do. Far from it. On the contrary, they're visionary in some of the stuff they've done over the years, and that goes back to Joseph Chamberlain.

The problem is a mixture of bad financial and project management over 10+ years around the IT system and the equal pay claim, but worth pointing out, it's not been a Labour council all that time, they're all guilty.

On top of that, the crushing grind of austerity as London outsourced its spending problems to the provinces has been felt in the biggest council more than most.

I wonder if the Tories have the same approach to, say, Woking council, way smaller budget than Brum, but 1.2bn - ie even more - in the hole, and Tory led.

Thurrock is the worst council in the country by miles, some of their financial decisions have been so poor that it's hard to imagine they were made in good faith, the solar power investments in particular are either corrupt or alarmingly incompetent. It's like the real-life version of the springfield monorail.

[Risso]

Northampton was really bad as well. So bad in fact they created two new councils to replace it.

[brontebilly]

It is easy to assume that the council is a disaster in everything they do. Far from it. On the contrary, they're visionary in some of the stuff they've done over the years, and that goes back to Joseph Chamberlain.

The problem is a mixture of bad financial and project management over 10+ years around the IT system and the equal pay claim, but worth pointing out, it's not been a Labour council all that time, they're all guilty.

On top of that, the crushing grind of austerity as London outsourced its spending problems to the provinces has been felt in the biggest council more than most.

I wonder if the Tories have the same approach to, say, Woking council, way smaller budget than Brum, but 1.2bn - ie even more - in the hole, and Tory led.

As a matter of interest what was the IT Programme that caused such dramas?

[pauliewalnuts]

No idea.

I think it’s a British disease whereby large  organisations bring in consultants / third parties for these projects, but the people in charge at the commissioning organisation have no actual idea of what they are doing.

It’s not just public sector either. A few years ago a friend of mine was on a large project for BT. For about two years he charged them top daily rate and 90% of the time was doing absolutely nothing because they couldn’t make their minds up what they wanted.

Going back 25 years I worked as full time staff at the bbc. I did next to nothing, basically just took on loads of freelance projects I did in work time. The bit I worked in, making content for the OU, had about 20 producers. Some of them had been there 30 years since the OU was founded and basically spent most of their time in the office bar sitting around drinking cheap beer.

They then got rid of most of them (with eye watering redundancy pay offs as they’d been there so long) and there was absolutely no adverse effect on our output.

[paul_e]

Short answer is they were rolling out an oracle based system but failed in almost every aspect of project management so there was huge feature creep, very little stakeholder buy-in and huge revisions in testing that went on for years.

The entire thing is a near perfect example of what not to do at almost every stage. It's not on the level of the NHS rollout but that's about the only worse run project I know of.

[oldhill_avfc]

Should have gone with SAP.

Same old penny pinching tories/lefties/........

[simboy]

If you want computer roll out incompetence you should ask the Ministry of Justice about "Common Platform". it is not particularly common - as it does not link all "stakeholders" into the system - it is slow and clunky, often difficult to access and cumbersome for use leading to delays in courts and has led to a number of experienced staff resigning over it's implementation, one going from a legal adviser of 25 years experience to be a court usher.

I sat on a national committee where this topic would be discussed most months, the MoJ would tell us it was all going hunky dory,  ... I sat on that committee from 2013 to 2022.

Guess what? Still not operating properly, even today. 
 

[pauliewalnuts]

Surely the worst roll out of public sector IT is the Post Office system that wound up putting innocent people in prison.

[The Edge]

Short answer is they were rolling out an oracle based system but failed in almost every aspect of project management so there was huge feature creep, very little stakeholder buy-in and huge revisions in testing that went on for years.

The entire thing is a near perfect example of what not to do at almost every stage. It's not on the level of the NHS rollout but that's about the only worse run project I know of.

I work in the NHS and BCC is my local council. My nickname is lucky.

[pauliewalnuts]

Should have gone with SAP.

Same old penny pinching tories/lefties/........

No matter how much more SAP would have cost, if they'd done it in Salesforce, it would have cost more.

I've never come across a product that requires the constant throwing of ever increasing money more than Salesforce. No wonder Marc Benioff is so rich.

They also have a sales network which is freakishly devoted to the company, like a cross between drug reps pushing Oxycontin and a cult.

I hate that product.

[Sexual Ealing]

Should have gone with SAP.

Same old penny pinching tories/lefties/........

No matter how much more SAP would have cost, if they'd done it in Salesforce, it would have cost more.

I've never come across a product that requires the constant throwing of ever increasing money more than Salesforce. No wonder Marc Benioff is so rich.

They also have a sales network which is freakishly devoted to the company, like a cross between drug reps pushing Oxycontin and a cult.

I hate that product.

It's also really shit to use.

[OCD]

No idea.

I think it’s a British disease whereby large  organisations bring in consultants / third parties for these projects, but the people in charge at the commissioning organisation have no actual idea of what they are doing.

It’s not just public sector either. A few years ago a friend of mine was on a large project for BT. For about two years he charged them top daily rate and 90% of the time was doing absolutely nothing because they couldn’t make their minds up what they wanted.

Going back 25 years I worked as full time staff at the bbc. I did next to nothing, basically just took on loads of freelance projects I did in work time. The bit I worked in, making content for the OU, had about 20 producers. Some of them had been there 30 years since the OU was founded and basically spent most of their time in the office bar sitting around drinking cheap beer.

They then got rid of most of them (with eye watering redundancy pay offs as they’d been there so long) and there was absolutely no adverse effect on our output.

Seeing this through my Dad atm. He's a consultant working at SSE. He's just left Severn Trent because they had nothing for him and he got bored. SSE have got a big project but they haven't got their ducks in a row, so again he's got bored and is probably going to apply to move to a different project within SSE.

Incidentally, my Dad was involved in a £20bn IT with the NHS and he said back then that it was a waste of money. There's so much waste in the economy.

As for public spending, I wonder about checks and balances. The inefficiency is mind boggling and if some of it is questionably corrupt, then there needs to be some oversight on local councils to make sure public money is being used responsibly.

[Risso]

Should have gone with SAP.

Same old penny pinching tories/lefties/........

No matter how much more SAP would have cost, if they'd done it in Salesforce, it would have cost more.

I've never come across a product that requires the constant throwing of ever increasing money more than Salesforce. No wonder Marc Benioff is so rich.

They also have a sales network which is freakishly devoted to the company, like a cross between drug reps pushing Oxycontin and a cult.

I hate that product.

One of my daughter's friends is the head of sales for EMEA (whatever that actually means) for Salesforce. A slimier, bigger wanker you will never meet.