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Birmingham council's 'equal pay' bankruptcy provided cover for Oracle disaster
- zeristor 3y agoI had to mangle the original title a fair bit to fit: “How Birmingham city council’s ‘equal pay’ bankruptcy provided cover for ongoing Oracle IT disaster”
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago1. What exactly is "equal pay" in this context? 2. Is there any IT consultancy that ever does a job right and in budget?
- OJFord 3y ago1. Female/male emoloyees paid the same for equivalent role. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-66730165 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-66730165
- AmericanChopper 3y ago> It heard workers in roles such as teaching assistants and catering staff, had missed out on bonuses given to staff in jobs traditionally done by men, like refuse collectors and street cleaners. Did you read your link before posting your commentary about it?
- OJFord 3y agoWhat problem do you think you're exposing? I said 'equivalent', not 'same', if that's what you mean.
- AmericanChopper 3y agoTeaching assistants and refuse collectors are not “equivalent” roles by any reasonable interpretation of the word.
- OJFord 3y agoPerhaps you would have preferred I said 'of equal value' (though probably someone else would have complained it was subjective) but that is what it means. https://www.acas.org.uk/equal-pay/equal-pay-law https://www.acas.org.uk/equal-pay/equal-pay-law I was only answering what 'equal pay means in this context', and I did so succinctly because I think they already knew just doubted themselves or would be familiar by another name with a hint, take it up with the employment tribunal if you don't like this particular equivalence.
- AmericanChopper 3y agoI’d say it’s better to post what the law actually says. You’re right, people will complain because it quite clearly is subjective nonsense. But sticking with the facts makes for better discussion than trying to cover them up imo.
- pjc50 3y agoThat is the ruling, and they were "equivalent" because they were deemed to be the same "grade"; i.e. a grade 2 teaching assistant and grade 2 refuse collector are equivalent. https://www.anthonycollins.com/insights/news/landmark-ruling-equal-pay/ https://www.anthonycollins.com/insights/news/landmark-ruling... Birmingham City Council v Abdulla and others [2012] UKSC 47. https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/uk/cases/UKSC/2012/47.html https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/uk/cases/UKSC...
- shubb 3y agoSpecifically, Birmingham had hired these jobs at the same pay grade, after formally assessing them to be equivalent. It then paid people hired under the same contract differently with special payments after garbage strikes. If they had hired under a more complex pay grade structure, they would have been fine. This is relevant to tech companies which may use fairly simple level structure.
- hef19898 3y agoMost likely not fine, but a tad trickier to be found out. U say a tad, because job classifications and pay grades are straight forward to do, even in court. In the end, it wouod have been an additional step during litigation.
- everybodyknows 3y ago> garbage strikes So, the garbage workers -- men -- used strikes to extort illegal, privileged pay raises for themselves?
- OJFord 3y agoYou could think of it like they're all doing exactly the same job, and then a union voted to strike, as a result of which only the unionised workers got a bonus, and were kept at the same grade. (Although I'm not really sure what my point is - that the council's lawyers should've (if they didn't) made that argument? - because unlike gender I don't think union membership is a protected characteristic per Equality Act 2010, obviously there are some different rules like you can't fire someone for being a member of a union, but paying someone less because they're not a member of a union seems probably fine? But anyway, as a public body the council has extra requirements for equality, not less, and the intention probably doesn't matter at all.)
- shubb 3y agoCertainly hard to argue the higher wage was set by the market when it was set by strikes rather than the need to fill jobs.
- mannykannot 3y ago
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago1) Basically it was found that jobs done predominantly by mens had bonuses which could more than double basic pay, but not those predominantly done by women. An employment tribunal found in favour of female workers employed by Birmingham city council in 49 different jobs, including lollipop ladies and cleaners, who complained of being excluded from bonuses – worth up to 160% of their basic pay – paid to men. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/apr/28/pay-female-staff-birmingham-council https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/apr/28/pay-female-s... 2) Not usually at that scale - particularly if the decision making/effective management is done by elected officials who may not be there for the whole project and where large project management experience/skills aren't what gets them elected
- fanf2 3y agoIn Britain, councils have a permanent civil service who are responsible for running the council. The elected councillors are responsible for policymaking and oversight.
- Arnt 3y agoTo 2, yes there is, but that's not newsworthy.
- forinti 3y agoYou need very strong technical oversight, something that is often missing when a job is handed out to a contractor. If you don't have that, you should hire it, although I haven't seen anybody offer this kind of service. Maybe that's something that needs to evolve in the IT industry. And, no, Gartner et al. don't count; they are just buzzword pushers.
- sparsely 3y agoGartner et al. need to be seen as trendy and at the forefront of each industry they are in, so as you say there is never a trend they won't jump on. I suspect there is some value in actually talking to their analysts to work out which products actually work well, and which failed implementations are really due to client problems, but their written reports aren't much more than a list of the biggest players in each sector.
- hugh-avherald 3y ago> In response to the points made in this article, Birmingham city council said: “The implementation of Oracle has been the subject of extensive discussion in the public domain.” Well, all is forgiven.
- LVB 3y agoMy state of Oregon paid Oracle something like $250M for a healthcare system that never materialized. The lawsuit that followed was settled for $100M, but most of that was “free” Oracle licenses and no less than $60M of customer support.
- Drakim 3y agoI don't understand why any human being on planet earth would ever hire Oracle at this point, it's like asking for trouble.
- doctor_eval 3y agoIt’s like paying for trouble.
- fy20 3y agoActually it's the opposite. I worked for an NGO half a decade ago, and they wanted to add 2FA authentication to their login system used by ~400 staff. I created a quick demo using Google Authenticator in less than a week. However the director of IT didn't like this solution. He insisted we use RSA keys and hire IBM to build a solution using that - I think the original estimate was a few million $ and it would take six months or so for their team (of basically new graduates) to build. I asked my boss why the director was pushing so much for IBM to build it: He told me that if we build it, and it doesn't work, then the director has to take the blame. If IBM build it, and it doesn't work, then IBM take the blame.
- sgift 3y agoSame reason why it took companies very long until they were ready to accept OSS. "But who can we sue if something doesn't work?" - at the end of the day it's always about someone being responsible. And if people can make sure that that someone is not them they will often take that option.
- doctor_eval 3y ago
- lhomdee 3y ago> None of the in-year deficit cited in the section 114 notice relates to the settlement of new equal pay claims. And none of the £149 million of cuts to services relate to any deficit created by equal pay settlements. Instead, the council’s spiralling deficit, estimated at more than £300 million, appears to relate to the disastrous launch of the Oracle IT system that went live in April 2022. Originally budgeted at £40 million, the latest report by the head of financial planning to the cabinet on February 27 2024 showed that the Oracle finance and human resources system has now run to an astonishing £131 million. <end> In short Birmingham Council claimed that equal pay settlements are the reason for the bankruptcy, but the investigation shows that an Oracle IT implementation which has overrun its budget is to blame. The nefariousness is not just mismanaging the project, but casting blame on a scheme that’s supposed to correct more past wrongs. It’s turtles all the way down.
- dandare 3y agoFrustratingly the article makes no effort to explain what they mean by equal pay liability. The same goes for something called "savings delivery rate" that supposedly dropped form 91% to 70%. And the mentioned "£131 million" for the Oracle finance and human resources system, is that annual or lifetime?
- fweimer 3y agoClicking around a bit leads to this: “ The 2012 settlement followed a landmark court ruling which found hundreds of mostly female employees working in roles such as teaching assistants, cleaners and catering staff missed out on bonuses which were given to staff in traditionally male-dominated roles such as refuse collectors and street cleaners. ” https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-66042403 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-66042403 These £131 million are likely just for the initial implementation, given that the number grew rather quickly in recent times: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-66042403 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-66042403
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tomatocracy 3y agoThe "landmark" part of the 2012 court case was actually about how far claims could effectively be backdated, not the "equal value" part of the claims (which as I understand it was relatively straightforward because the council effectively admitted they were equal value by applying a common grading scale for all employees from what I understand). The UK supreme court judgment in question is here: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2012-0008-judgment.pdf https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2012-0008-judgme...
- pjc50 3y agoThe Oracle number is, I think "one off". But some of that number also appears to be "intended savings that could not be made". The savings delivery rate .. is something of a work of fiction, but if you build a new accounting system sold as being able to give greater insight and reduce costs, and it does not in fact reduce costs, or even work properly, that obliterates the hypothetical "savings" that were intended.
- mikelitoris 3y agoLol I have never heard of a single happy customer of Oracle. How do they stay in business? Is it just about finding new people to scam every year?
- automatic6131 3y ago>How do they stay in business? Oracle's main line of competency is not providing good software services. They are in fact, specialists of acquiring government contracts.
- doctor_eval 3y agoI did a proposal for a very large city council in Australia some years ago. We were a little upstart company with an idea that fitted nicely with councils priorities. Long story short, they loved the proposal but they were quite clear that unless we “partnered” with a company like IBM, we had no chance. The reasoning I was given was that they needed a company that was big enough to be able to accept liability for failure. In other words, someone they could theoretically sue. It was one of the most depressing meetings I’ve ever attended.
- phonon 3y agoDid you show them your company's Errors & Omissions (E&O)/Professional Liability policy? If your limits are high enough, some customers would find that acceptable.
- doctor_eval 3y agoHaha, no, they were quite explicit that we had to partner with a brand name. It was entirely political. Probably good that we didn’t get it, in hindsight.
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y agoIt’s really only us tech nerds who actually see through the scam. When you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re spending other people’s money, the greater the cost and complexity the greater your accomplishment looks.
- graemep 3y agoThe of the news I have read about this before has mentioned Oracle, so the real news is the attempt to deflect blame. What has been missing from much coverage of it has been any mention of the cause. What the multiple failures show is that there was pervasive bad management, not a failure in one area.
- stuaxo 3y agoNot coming clean and using the cover they did is pretty slippery behaviour, unfortunately it fits right into the worst kind of behaviour people expect from local politics. It also fits right into the agenda of certain right wing papers who were happy to publish the story, I bet they don't give the same prominence to the fact this is an Oracle problem.
- p_l 3y agoNote that pushing it on 'equal pay' settlements also covered up for the senior executives who were responsible for Oracle issues.
- maxehmookau 3y agoIt's also often forgotten that local government in the UK has two income streams: * Council Tax, which is based on the value of your home. * Government funding, which makes up the vast majority of the income. The latter has seen a cut of £800m in the last 13 years. Birmingham has been set up to fail by a government run by the other political party. The same area is also covered by the West Midlands Combined Authority, which is headed by an elected Conservative mayor. Somehow, his organisation has tons of cash to do all sorts of nice projects (like campaigning to rebuild a wonky pub) but doesn't have any tax raising powers (something they're very proud of). Where is that money coming from? Why is it not being used to bailout the council instead of forcing 20% tax rises on residents along with shutting public services. Birmingham has been left out to dry by political opponents. Nothing more, nothing less.
- switch007 3y agoPedantic point but they have more streams than that, but the grant is certainly the largest and the council tax definitely notable.
- brigandish 3y agoWhy should a failing organisation, that knew cuts were coming and still went ahead with this disastrous project (among many others) and broke the law (a law implemented by the same side of government) that consequently cost them a huge barrel of cash, be bailed out? Let them fail, make cuts, make government smaller because it fails just like this again and again.
- bananapub 3y agofor context, tthe actual reason Birmingham Council is fucked is the same reason that nearly every council in Britain is fucked: the deliberate policy choice by central (what every other country calls "federal") government to de-fund councils and cause them to slash things for 14 years and now start collapsing. funding from central government is now at 40% below 2010 levels: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/local-government-funding-england https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/local-go...
- Symbiote 3y agoOnly the small number of countries that are a federation of states/provinces call their highest level of government "federal". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation
- brigandish 3y agoLike all levels of government, they spend too much on things they don't need to, inevitably. Blaming too little or too much money when these organisation have many millions and sometimes billions available (certainly in the long term) is to miss the point entirely. They waste what they have through poor implementation. That's the story here.
- bananapub 3y agothis is an extremely dumb take, kudos.
- ngcc_hk 3y agoEasy to blame something you sort of "understanding" than something you did not?
- captaincaveman 3y agoPwC and KPMG were appointed to help rectify problems with the system earlier this year, while the council had previously employed EY on the implementation. I'm sure those three bandits lined their pockets nicely!
- bastard_op 3y agoHas anyone ever heard of an Oracle project that has ever ended well? After 25 years in IT consulting all over the US in different businesses, Oracle is never NOT a 4 letter world, where projects involving them always over-promise, under-deliver, and project costs end up some 3-10x any initial projection. Particularly any ERP, CRM, now EMR in hospitals as well since acquiring Cerner. Anyone that does use them only do as a necessary evil of some dubious or shady circumstances, otherwise Oracle is a term almost universally reviled and hated amongst end users and organization leadership alike.
- anotheruser13 3y ago30 years ago, when I was a grad student, Oracle was just a relational database rather than the bloated, unwieldy mess it is today Disclaimer: n=1.