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New Zealand's $16B health dept managed finances with single Excel spreadsheet

164 points by indy 2y ago

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
Plot twist: this actually serves as more positive advertising for Microsoft Excel.
- EdwardDiego 2y ago
  Honestly, I'm surprised that they didn't pay a foreign IT company $100 million to for software less functional than a spreadsheet like our government departments usually do.
  - tokyovigilante 2y ago
    Don’t worry, we have definitely also done that.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  How so? Apparently, the conclusion is that Excel is the wrong tool for such tasks, so it should be used less, not more.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    >How so? The healthcare system of a country was run in Excel. Didn't you read the title? > so it should be used less, not more I never said it should be used more, I said the fact that it could be used for that, makes it an impresive achievement for the app.
    - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - spacebanana7 2y ago
      I suppose it's kind of like a billion DAU app using a single SQLite file for their DB. Certainly the wrong tool for the job, but nevertheless impressive for both the technology and the operators if it somehow works.
      - theonewolf 2y ago
        If it creates long term value, is it truly the wrong tool? Perhaps we should re-evaluate how and when we use things when presented with evidence that others are getting massive value out of tools we typically would have been biased against.
        spacebanana7 2y ago
        I think so. Using SQLite for an application of that scale would require lots of additional work around caching and queuing at the very least. Much of that could be reduced by using Postgres or some other database designed for that workflow. Still, if many successful enterprises started SQLite for things of this scale, I should probably reach out to them to see whether there's anything missing from my analysis.
    - ivan_gammel 2y ago
      >The healthcare system of a country was run in Excel. Didn't you read the title? Obviously I have read not just the title, but also the article. >I said the fact that it could be used for that, makes it an impresive achievement for the app You can try to use a fork to dig a tunnel, but it is hardly an impressive achievement of the fork that it can be used this way, neither you could possibly dig anything big with it. It would be an impressive achievement for Excel, if it actually worked, but the article mentions that there were problems with accounting done this way. Excel is a powerful tool that can handle massive amounts of data, no doubt. However its feature set is not enough for this kind of tasks. As @zimpenfish said in another comment in this thread, the problem was both in Excel and in processes. Task-appropriate tools help to build good processes around them.
  - zimpenfish 2y ago
    > Excel is the wrong tool for such tasks From what little information there is in the article, it sounds like lack of process was equally to blame as using Excel. (Not that I would suggest using Excel, personally - I'd go with a small database and a simple web UI but then I'm not a Corporate Consultant looking to charge ££££ per day to faff around for 5 years and then abandon the project.)
    - ivan_gammel 2y ago
      >I'd go with a small database and a simple web UI There's nothing simple in running accounting in a healthcare system with 16B budget. A small database with simple web UI would have the same problems as Excel spreadsheet. The list of requirements for software automation of such thing would be on four digit number of pages scale. It does require a proper ERP.
- Hamuko 2y ago
  This article proves that a) Excel is not the right tool for everything b) people will (over)use Excel even without being advertised to.
bell-cot 2y ago
> The report found “monthly financial reporting usually took 12-15 days to consolidate and five days to analyse.” > It gets worse: Health Minister Simeon Brown last week delivered a speech in which he said HNZ operates “an estimated 6,000 applications and 100 digital networks” – or roughly one application for every 16 staff members. > He also said HNZ’s Senior Leadership Team members “have only just begun weekly in-person meetings, and have continued to operate from different offices, despite the majority living in Auckland and the organization being two and a half years old.” Most work in different buildings. > However the Minister doesn’t have a plan to get off Excel, or fix HNZ’s tech leadership woes. HNZ's Senior Leadership should be reassigned to clearing fatbergs from sewer mains, and some competent grownups brought in. And probably similar, further up in the NZ government. Two and a half years is how long it took for the 1940's USA to go from Pearl Harbor to D-Day.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  It’s not going well. But keep in mind that running down the public sector and privatising it is their aim. Simeon Brown is a terrible choice for minister and takes some pretty shitty positions for someone in his position. Also see ‘the financial black hole’ that ACC was supposedly in when John Key came along. It’s the playbook being played. Don’t look to the US for guidance though, that healthcare system and that political direction is going to be fascinating to look at in two and a half years.
- newsclues 2y ago
  Good intentions without a good plan and leadership to execute? Or invent bureaucratic incompetence?
- EdwardDiego 2y ago
  Don't accept anything Simeon Brown says without a healthy dose of skepticism, he's talking shit up for political reasons, like some people in the USA are doing right now. And if you do choose to accept it as unvarnished truth, welp, that's an ideological choice, not a rational choice. The current government would dearly like to bring in more private providers to our healthcare systems, so are following the classic neoliberal playbook. 1) Underfund public services 2) Point out how poorly they're performing 3) Bring in private companies to do it "more efficiently" 4) Pay them the money that you refused to pay the public service. And then some more. 5) Private companies make bank 6) Services further worsen. 7) But hey, shareholder value was great. If you want an example of this, just research the history of our railway system. Or, you know, the last National government when the Minister of Health directed funding for surgery from the public system to the private system. And then resigned to become the CEO of a private healthcare company. Which is why when NZ comes in the top 3 of "least corrupt" countries, I painfully point out that we're in the top 3 of _perceived to be_ least corrupt countries. Once again, The debacle that was NZRail -> TranzRail -> Toll -> KiwiRail is illustrative. Toll, an Australian company, ran down our rail network even harder than TranzRail did, and then forced the government to buy it off them at a massive premium by threatening to just shutter our entire rail system. And we gave fucking knighthoods to the two merchant bankers who advised the government to sell NZ Rail... _and then bought it_ in a consortium with an American company which asset stripped it and then chose not to maintain the railway lines because it provided them a significant tax write-off in it the US on accounts of depreciation or similar. And of course, Sir Fay and Sir Richwhite now reside in overseas tax havens, although IIRC one of them still owns an entire island here. Oh, and the NZ government had to pay for the release of one of their children when they were detained driving through Iran for their Instagram account about how everyone is kind. Ah, neoliberalism. (As you can tell, I have some strong feelings on this. Because I lived through it. Was it all bad? No. It gave us one of the most efficient agricultural sectors in the world. Was it mostly bad? Well, inequality surged upwards in conjunction with neoliberal policies. So, yes.)
alpaca128 2y ago
> The spreadsheet-using agency is Health New Zealand (HNZ) which was established in 2022 to replace 20 district health boards in the expectation it would be more cost-effective and deliver more consistent services. Austria did the same with their national health insurance, to reduce costs and organisational overhead. It massively increased costs and organisational overhead.
- _ink_ 2y ago
  Interesting, as a German annoyed by having 100+ insurances I always thought Austria is doing the right thing. Do you have a link for that? I am interested in understanding why the costs increased.
  - alpaca128 2y ago
    https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000137202435/krankenversicherung-erwartet-zusaetzliches-budgetloch-von-jaehrlich111-millionen-euro-ab-2023?ref=rss https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000137202435/krankenversic... tl;dr: they promised savings of one billion Euros but it instead cost over 200 million.
    - _ink_ 2y ago
      Ok, the costs saving was promised by the populists Kurz and Strache. No further questions. Thanks for the link, tho! I am not saying Germany should merge all insurances into one, but I still think 100+ is one order of magnitude too much.
      - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
        Doesn't 100+ insurances mean more competition leading to better prices? OR so I'm told capitalism works.
        _ink_ 2y ago
        I am only talking about the statutory health insurance providers not the private ones. For the private ones you might be correct. The statutory ones, they have a catalogue of services, which they are required to pay for. While there are some minor differences between the providers, they all offer the same benefits essentially.
aquir 2y ago
Not surprised...I am implementing ERP system for 20 years now and Excel is the most popular ERP system :( Related story when NHS England copied-pasted stuff for COVID stats but most of the data got lost because they are using an old version and there was a 65k line limit...
- ode 2y ago
  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988
olavgg 2y ago
I've seen several multi billions companies running big processes in Excel. No automation, just put more human workers on the spreadsheets. I understand the decision though, because investing in a IT system is so friggin expensive, require 10x more people and there is a huge lack of talent to deliver something on time, that works, and actually saves money.
- consp 2y ago
  I highly doubt the assessment that it would take 10x more people. If you let a consultancy do it, sure. Any normal medium sized IT company no. The problem with the assessment is invested time, since the invested manhours and failures over all the years of dodgy excel sheets is simply unmeasurable.
  - semi-extrinsic 2y ago
    The typical problem is that the organisation simply does not have the competence at the correct level to actually order the correct thing from the medium-sized IT company. In the past, the organisation has probably tried (maybe even several times) to replace the Excel mess with an IT system, only to receive something that costs them a lot of money and solves the wrong problem..
    - netsharc 2y ago
      Interesting gap in the market there, someone who can solve that can probably make a lot of money. With the help of AI, of course! /s I guess the solution is to have an intermediary that can be the in-between, but don't have them be from the IT systems supplier, because they'll bone you (including promising you everything you want without checking with their developers if any of it is possible; with a good 3rd party they'd be able to ask the devs if it's possible and to see a proof-of-concept).
    - olavgg 2y ago
      I have seen projects being implemented in SAP, by 20 people, that a single junior software developer could do better solo in the same time frame.
datadeft 2y ago
The amount of issues I have seen in the last ~20 years caused by "off by one" type of errors in Excel is insane. Few examples: - incorrect schedule for the electricity grid for an entire country - incorrect assessment of an airport use for an airline (causing few millions USD loss in revenue) - incorrect financial position assessment for a mine (resulting incorrect deciosion to optimize the wrong business process, not sure about how much they lost) Making illegal states unrepresentable is a concept that benefits programming langues and business processes alike.
- jessekv 2y ago
  IMO unit tests are roughly the software equivalent of double-entry bookkeeping.
  - jbaber 2y ago
    This is a very good analogy. I will steal it.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Don't forget Reinhart-Rogoff, which ties into the other thread on academic fraud/nonreproduction, and arguably did huge amounts of economic damage: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- rco8786 2y ago
  Imagine how many errors occurred before we had digital spreadsheet technology. That said, I’ve always thought there was a product that sits somewhere in between Excel and full blown custom software that provides some of the controls we need while still being and build able by someone with low/average technical skills
  - netsharc 2y ago
slovenskykanak 2y ago
They did not want to go with "premature abstraction"
- rubenvanwyk 2y ago
  This is hilarious.
kleiba 2y ago
Excerpt from the actual review document (Health NZ Financial Management Review, [0]): Notably, one major issue was through a significant reliance on the use of an Excel file to manage the consolidated financials of the organisation. This spreadsheet was the primary data file used by HNZ to manage its financial performance. It consolidated files from each district into a single spreadsheet, and key reports, such as the monthly finance report, were produced from it. The use of an Excel spreadsheet file to track and report financial performance for a $28bn expenditure organisation raises significant concerns, particularly when other more appropriate systems are present on the IT landscape. This Excel file is flawed in that: • Financial information was often 'hard-coded,' making it difficult to trace to the source or have updated data flow through. • Errors such as incorrectly releasing accruals or double-up releases were not picked up until following periods. • Changes to prior periods and FTE errors in district financial reporting Excel submissions, would not flow through to consolidated file. • The spreadsheet can be easy to manipulate information as there is limited tracking to source information where information is not flowing directly from accounting systems. • It is highly prone to human error, such as accidental typing of a number or omission of a zero. -- [0] https://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/HNZ-Financial-Review-Report.pdf https://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/HNZ-Financial-...
- Springtime 2y ago
  These same bullet points and half the first paragraph are quoted in the OP article fwiw.
  - kleiba 2y ago
    I think the important part that's not clearly portrayed in the OP article is that the "one Excel file" is actually not a single file used across the whole organisation, but rather a sort of master overview file that "consolidated files from each district into a single spreadsheet". I don't think that fact is made very clear in the OP article.
- tempaway64457 2y ago
  So actually top level planning/reporting is done by everything flowing into one big spreadsheet - as crappy as that is, thats pretty common. Thats not the same as "managed finances with single Excel spreadsheet". Like, they do have other systems.
kleiba 2y ago
Just out of curiosity, what are some professional tools to handle finance information of that magnitude?
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  Bespoke ERPs implemented by external contractors on top of enterprise-grade database/cloud etc.
  - franktankbank 2y ago
    > enterprise-grade What is this?
    - rubenvanwyk 2y ago
      Good question! Feel this is just a vague way of referring to formal compliance requirements for software rather than technical functionality supporting large scale operations.
    - ivan_gammel 2y ago
      Sufficiently secure, scalable and reliable for a large organization. Usually implies that vendor can offer SLA for support and security updates, training etc. See for example the difference between RHEL and Fedora. In context of bespoke ERP it means that there are at least 2 tiers of vendors: top tier is responsible for building the integrated solution, underlying tiers are providing individual components for it.
      - jpc0 2y ago
        I was looking for the \s in there... How does something like SAP solve this problem? I would have loved to just drive by but actually let's have a discussion about it. Even Odoo or something more "move fast". How would I sell the product to someone who runs their excel spreadsheets and is price concious so will actually balk at the pricetag to replace the thing that works fine and passes audits.
frontfor 2y ago
Perhaps this is telling us that the financial losses and inefficiencies incurred from these supposedly error-prone processes are small enough (relative speaking at least most of the time) that there’s no real consequences to the stakeholders (politicians or bureaucrats in this instance) or the survival of the organisation (this org isn’t for-profit after all). So from the stakeholders’ POV it just doesn’t justify putting the investment upfront into proper software systems. Without greater accountability and real stake in the org from the politicians and bureaucrats, headlines like this will continue to appear in the decades to come.
- jl6 2y ago
  It's all about risk. Maybe you can run Finance on a spreadsheet and get away with it, and maybe you can survive driving without wearing a seatbelt too.
- tibbetts 2y ago
  Headlines like this are more pleasant than headlines about how the $100M project to implement SAP is five years behind schedule, how Deloitte has consumed tens of millions of dollars that could have gone to patient care, or that the new ERP system has lead to a total lack of accountability for patient outcomes.
- tgv 2y ago
  Perhaps it means that the reorganization was unnecessary, and badly executed. Things seemed to go well before.
jl6 2y ago
Excel is an incredible swiss army knife that can be used to do a lot, but it has a mean-time-to-catastrophe. You can keep spreadsheet risk (==cost) under control for a long time, which can make it seem like the risk is negligible, but it's a ticking time bomb.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ExoticPearTree 2y ago
The world runs on Excel. Contrary to popular belief that ERPs and what not is what companies use. Big companies use Excel to verify the ERP data and reports. There was an article shared here on HN sometime in the middle of last year that broke down how versatile Excel is and how different companies are trying to steal just a niche use of Excel (I remember reading about Airtable doing the automation bit much easier than in Excel, some company doing charts easier than Excel and so on). I wish I could find it again.
- rubenvanwyk 2y ago
  Why do you think have we not been able to evolve beyond this in the enterprise world?
  - ExoticPearTree 2y ago
    In simple terms: because it is a tool everyone uses and knows to some degree. It has all the bells and whistles to do pretty much what you want with it. And, I guess one overlooked fact: the data is portable, everyone* in the world has Excel. My view is that if you switch companies, and at the last you used SAP and the new one you have to use Oracle, it is going to be a learning curve with very little added value for you (except the fact that now you know to proprietary systems). With Excel, well, it is going to be the same Excel, just different data.
    - tomatocracy 2y ago
      The fact that it's already installed on almost everyone's computer in any given corporate environment also has a lot to do with why it's so widely used for these types of things I think - noone needs to ask permission to get a new app installed, or jump through hoops to pay for another new piece of software.
  - albrewer 2y ago
    For the same reason Python is so popular. It's not the best at anything (besides being really easy to use), but it's top 5 at all the things that matter. When your use case outgrows Excel, then yeah, invest in a specialized system... when budget allows (which is never).
rimbo789 2y ago
Is there another budget tool other than excel? It’s the only one I’ve seen working in forecasting and budgeting in private and public sector
- rubenvanwyk 2y ago
  There are many, like mosaic.tech or causal.app
  - oldjim69 2y ago
    But does anyone use them? Everyone org I've worked for and with - large government departments, publicly traded entities, small PE owned entities use excel. As others say in this thread, the world runs on Excel.
rubenvanwyk 2y ago
Blows my mind that these things are still happening despite many large scale ERP implementations being the norm?
priced_in 2y ago
laughs in hedge fund manager voice
notorandit 2y ago
Interesting fact: Deloitte reports the use of the Excel file at page 42. Where all of the answers go.
whalesalad 2y ago
Excel runs the world, literally.
feverzsj 2y ago
Unbelievable. They should at least manage the excel in git.
- emeril 2y ago
  I generally try to have staff time stamp their files with date/time and mark them read only - I suppose that's easier than git though not as good...
vanderZwan 2y ago
And once again Felienne Hermans is proven right about the world running on spreadsheets and that we should take them a lot more seriously for that reason alone. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yKf8TrLUOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yKf8TrLUOw
dwighttk 2y ago
Hopefully better than ol’ SBF did
lenerdenator 2y ago
If we simply implemented my benevolent dictatorship for life, we'd have a system under which installing Microsoft Excel became a capital crime.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Computers with Microsoft Excel already installed on them before your edict would skyrocket in value. :)
- Spooky23 2y ago
  Yes, a benevolent dictator would want to make financial reporting as difficult as possible as they rob the treasury before the "aviator sunglasses" phase. I worked in a line of business leadership role for a multi-billion dollar organization. The ledger/financial ops stuff for super high-level reporting and payments were done by old mainframe apps. Everything else was done on a series of Excel spreadsheets hosted on a fileserver somewhere. All sorts of complex stuff was done in there. Finance guys are good at finance and frankly, stuff worked. They eventually transitioned to a modern at the time Peoplesoft system. The spreadsheet system was better in almost every way to the business units. The ERP was better for the financial ops teams. The shortfalls of the various ERP modules meant that the excel work was pushed down to the lines of business -- we probably had exponentially more spreadsheets, made by idiots who had no idea what they were doing. It also worked, but it was slower and certainly alot more expensive. The tools available for things like budgeting were primitive and ineffective - I literally used a P-Card to buy quickbooks and a built my own little finance shop.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    > Peoplesoft Yep, yep. There's yer trouble. Larry found another app to stack on his DB and he knows he's got the finance guys by the balls with vendor lock-in, so it doesn't matter how crap it is. Fortunately under my BDFL rule he's going to Devil's Island. > before the "aviator sunglasses" phase Before? Already there. Got the combination cap too. Been practicing the smile I'll use for the portrait mural that every large building has to have painted on the side.
1970-01-01 2y ago
1. Buy a state of the art supercomputer. 2. name it 'prod' 3. Move ALL infra onto it 4. ????
commandlinefan 2y ago
Probably better than people with an "enterprise" tools did, too.
- forinti 2y ago
  Sometimes those enterprise tools are used mostly as glorified spreadsheets. I see a lot of BI tools that are really being used to make big spreadsheets.
  - commandlinefan 2y ago
    The first feature I've ever seen anybody go looking for in any of them is the "export to Excel" (or CSV) function.
jppope 2y ago
Sounds like the missing technology here is double entry accounting, not the persistence layer.
akpa1 2y ago
This makes me think of a system that just got replaced where I work - multiple hundreds of temporary workers being tracked through their setup and onboarding processes through one massive Excel spreadsheet, saved on a shared Teams group that everyone edited at once. It was held together with prayers, fickle filters, custom views and loose validation rules and I hated it the whole time it was active. We'd frequently have to make sure to remove rows from it and put them in an archive spreadsheet to keep the main one performant enough to function - but that split made it difficult to sift through data when someone had an issue. Not to mention that records routinely went missing or got overlooked. It's now a SharePoint database - I don't know what I think of that, but at least it was built for the job and has some solid integrations with other systems in it that make life easier.
- 4b11b4 2y ago
  This makes me feel better about a current situation, briefly.
tokyovigilante 2y ago
Ah Excel, the second-best tool for everything.
LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
https://metacpan.org/search?p=1&q=excel&size=500 https://metacpan.org/search?p=1&q=excel&size=500
cab404 2y ago
What a truly powerful tool!

164 points by indy 2y ago

FirmwareBurner 2y ago

Plot twist: this actually serves as more positive advertising for Microsoft Excel.

EdwardDiego 2y ago
Honestly, I'm surprised that they didn't pay a foreign IT company $100 million to for software less functional than a spreadsheet like our government departments usually do.
- tokyovigilante 2y ago
  Don’t worry, we have definitely also done that.
ivan_gammel 2y ago
How so? Apparently, the conclusion is that Excel is the wrong tool for such tasks, so it should be used less, not more.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  >How so? The healthcare system of a country was run in Excel. Didn't you read the title? > so it should be used less, not more I never said it should be used more, I said the fact that it could be used for that, makes it an impresive achievement for the app.
  - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - spacebanana7 2y ago
    I suppose it's kind of like a billion DAU app using a single SQLite file for their DB. Certainly the wrong tool for the job, but nevertheless impressive for both the technology and the operators if it somehow works.
    - theonewolf 2y ago
      If it creates long term value, is it truly the wrong tool? Perhaps we should re-evaluate how and when we use things when presented with evidence that others are getting massive value out of tools we typically would have been biased against.
      - spacebanana7 2y ago
        I think so. Using SQLite for an application of that scale would require lots of additional work around caching and queuing at the very least. Much of that could be reduced by using Postgres or some other database designed for that workflow. Still, if many successful enterprises started SQLite for things of this scale, I should probably reach out to them to see whether there's anything missing from my analysis.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    >The healthcare system of a country was run in Excel. Didn't you read the title? Obviously I have read not just the title, but also the article. >I said the fact that it could be used for that, makes it an impresive achievement for the app You can try to use a fork to dig a tunnel, but it is hardly an impressive achievement of the fork that it can be used this way, neither you could possibly dig anything big with it. It would be an impressive achievement for Excel, if it actually worked, but the article mentions that there were problems with accounting done this way. Excel is a powerful tool that can handle massive amounts of data, no doubt. However its feature set is not enough for this kind of tasks. As @zimpenfish said in another comment in this thread, the problem was both in Excel and in processes. Task-appropriate tools help to build good processes around them.
- zimpenfish 2y ago
  > Excel is the wrong tool for such tasks From what little information there is in the article, it sounds like lack of process was equally to blame as using Excel. (Not that I would suggest using Excel, personally - I'd go with a small database and a simple web UI but then I'm not a Corporate Consultant looking to charge ££££ per day to faff around for 5 years and then abandon the project.)
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    >I'd go with a small database and a simple web UI There's nothing simple in running accounting in a healthcare system with 16B budget. A small database with simple web UI would have the same problems as Excel spreadsheet. The list of requirements for software automation of such thing would be on four digit number of pages scale. It does require a proper ERP.
Hamuko 2y ago
This article proves that a) Excel is not the right tool for everything b) people will (over)use Excel even without being advertised to.

bell-cot 2y ago

> The report found “monthly financial reporting usually took 12-15 days to consolidate and five days to analyse.” > It gets worse: Health Minister Simeon Brown last week delivered a speech in which he said HNZ operates “an estimated 6,000 applications and 100 digital networks” – or roughly one application for every 16 staff members. > He also said HNZ’s Senior Leadership Team members “have only just begun weekly in-person meetings, and have continued to operate from different offices, despite the majority living in Auckland and the organization being two and a half years old.” Most work in different buildings. > However the Minister doesn’t have a plan to get off Excel, or fix HNZ’s tech leadership woes. HNZ's Senior Leadership should be reassigned to clearing fatbergs from sewer mains, and some competent grownups brought in. And probably similar, further up in the NZ government. Two and a half years is how long it took for the 1940's USA to go from Pearl Harbor to D-Day.

lostlogin 2y ago
It’s not going well. But keep in mind that running down the public sector and privatising it is their aim. Simeon Brown is a terrible choice for minister and takes some pretty shitty positions for someone in his position. Also see ‘the financial black hole’ that ACC was supposedly in when John Key came along. It’s the playbook being played. Don’t look to the US for guidance though, that healthcare system and that political direction is going to be fascinating to look at in two and a half years.
newsclues 2y ago
Good intentions without a good plan and leadership to execute? Or invent bureaucratic incompetence?
EdwardDiego 2y ago
Don't accept anything Simeon Brown says without a healthy dose of skepticism, he's talking shit up for political reasons, like some people in the USA are doing right now. And if you do choose to accept it as unvarnished truth, welp, that's an ideological choice, not a rational choice. The current government would dearly like to bring in more private providers to our healthcare systems, so are following the classic neoliberal playbook. 1) Underfund public services 2) Point out how poorly they're performing 3) Bring in private companies to do it "more efficiently" 4) Pay them the money that you refused to pay the public service. And then some more. 5) Private companies make bank 6) Services further worsen. 7) But hey, shareholder value was great. If you want an example of this, just research the history of our railway system. Or, you know, the last National government when the Minister of Health directed funding for surgery from the public system to the private system. And then resigned to become the CEO of a private healthcare company. Which is why when NZ comes in the top 3 of "least corrupt" countries, I painfully point out that we're in the top 3 of _perceived to be_ least corrupt countries. Once again, The debacle that was NZRail -> TranzRail -> Toll -> KiwiRail is illustrative. Toll, an Australian company, ran down our rail network even harder than TranzRail did, and then forced the government to buy it off them at a massive premium by threatening to just shutter our entire rail system. And we gave fucking knighthoods to the two merchant bankers who advised the government to sell NZ Rail... _and then bought it_ in a consortium with an American company which asset stripped it and then chose not to maintain the railway lines because it provided them a significant tax write-off in it the US on accounts of depreciation or similar. And of course, Sir Fay and Sir Richwhite now reside in overseas tax havens, although IIRC one of them still owns an entire island here. Oh, and the NZ government had to pay for the release of one of their children when they were detained driving through Iran for their Instagram account about how everyone is kind. Ah, neoliberalism. (As you can tell, I have some strong feelings on this. Because I lived through it. Was it all bad? No. It gave us one of the most efficient agricultural sectors in the world. Was it mostly bad? Well, inequality surged upwards in conjunction with neoliberal policies. So, yes.)

alpaca128 2y ago

> The spreadsheet-using agency is Health New Zealand (HNZ) which was established in 2022 to replace 20 district health boards in the expectation it would be more cost-effective and deliver more consistent services. Austria did the same with their national health insurance, to reduce costs and organisational overhead. It massively increased costs and organisational overhead.

_ink_ 2y ago
Interesting, as a German annoyed by having 100+ insurances I always thought Austria is doing the right thing. Do you have a link for that? I am interested in understanding why the costs increased.
- alpaca128 2y ago
  https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000137202435/krankenversicherung-erwartet-zusaetzliches-budgetloch-von-jaehrlich111-millionen-euro-ab-2023?ref=rss https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000137202435/krankenversic... tl;dr: they promised savings of one billion Euros but it instead cost over 200 million.
  - _ink_ 2y ago
    Ok, the costs saving was promised by the populists Kurz and Strache. No further questions. Thanks for the link, tho! I am not saying Germany should merge all insurances into one, but I still think 100+ is one order of magnitude too much.
    - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
      Doesn't 100+ insurances mean more competition leading to better prices? OR so I'm told capitalism works.
      - _ink_ 2y ago
        I am only talking about the statutory health insurance providers not the private ones. For the private ones you might be correct. The statutory ones, they have a catalogue of services, which they are required to pay for. While there are some minor differences between the providers, they all offer the same benefits essentially.

aquir 2y ago

Not surprised...I am implementing ERP system for 20 years now and Excel is the most popular ERP system :( Related story when NHS England copied-pasted stuff for COVID stats but most of the data got lost because they are using an old version and there was a 65k line limit...

ode 2y ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988

olavgg 2y ago

I've seen several multi billions companies running big processes in Excel. No automation, just put more human workers on the spreadsheets. I understand the decision though, because investing in a IT system is so friggin expensive, require 10x more people and there is a huge lack of talent to deliver something on time, that works, and actually saves money.

consp 2y ago
I highly doubt the assessment that it would take 10x more people. If you let a consultancy do it, sure. Any normal medium sized IT company no. The problem with the assessment is invested time, since the invested manhours and failures over all the years of dodgy excel sheets is simply unmeasurable.
- semi-extrinsic 2y ago
  The typical problem is that the organisation simply does not have the competence at the correct level to actually order the correct thing from the medium-sized IT company. In the past, the organisation has probably tried (maybe even several times) to replace the Excel mess with an IT system, only to receive something that costs them a lot of money and solves the wrong problem..
  - netsharc 2y ago
    Interesting gap in the market there, someone who can solve that can probably make a lot of money. With the help of AI, of course! /s I guess the solution is to have an intermediary that can be the in-between, but don't have them be from the IT systems supplier, because they'll bone you (including promising you everything you want without checking with their developers if any of it is possible; with a good 3rd party they'd be able to ask the devs if it's possible and to see a proof-of-concept).
  - olavgg 2y ago
    I have seen projects being implemented in SAP, by 20 people, that a single junior software developer could do better solo in the same time frame.

datadeft 2y ago

The amount of issues I have seen in the last ~20 years caused by "off by one" type of errors in Excel is insane. Few examples: - incorrect schedule for the electricity grid for an entire country - incorrect assessment of an airport use for an airline (causing few millions USD loss in revenue) - incorrect financial position assessment for a mine (resulting incorrect deciosion to optimize the wrong business process, not sure about how much they lost) Making illegal states unrepresentable is a concept that benefits programming langues and business processes alike.

jessekv 2y ago
IMO unit tests are roughly the software equivalent of double-entry bookkeeping.
- jbaber 2y ago
  This is a very good analogy. I will steal it.
pjc50 2y ago
Don't forget Reinhart-Rogoff, which ties into the other thread on academic fraud/nonreproduction, and arguably did huge amounts of economic damage: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
rco8786 2y ago
Imagine how many errors occurred before we had digital spreadsheet technology. That said, I’ve always thought there was a product that sits somewhere in between Excel and full blown custom software that provides some of the controls we need while still being and build able by someone with low/average technical skills
- netsharc 2y ago

slovenskykanak 2y ago

They did not want to go with "premature abstraction"

rubenvanwyk 2y ago
This is hilarious.

kleiba 2y ago

Excerpt from the actual review document (Health NZ Financial Management Review, [0]): Notably, one major issue was through a significant reliance on the use of an Excel file to manage the consolidated financials of the organisation. This spreadsheet was the primary data file used by HNZ to manage its financial performance. It consolidated files from each district into a single spreadsheet, and key reports, such as the monthly finance report, were produced from it. The use of an Excel spreadsheet file to track and report financial performance for a $28bn expenditure organisation raises significant concerns, particularly when other more appropriate systems are present on the IT landscape. This Excel file is flawed in that: • Financial information was often 'hard-coded,' making it difficult to trace to the source or have updated data flow through. • Errors such as incorrectly releasing accruals or double-up releases were not picked up until following periods. • Changes to prior periods and FTE errors in district financial reporting Excel submissions, would not flow through to consolidated file. • The spreadsheet can be easy to manipulate information as there is limited tracking to source information where information is not flowing directly from accounting systems. • It is highly prone to human error, such as accidental typing of a number or omission of a zero. -- [0] https://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/HNZ-Financial-Review-Report.pdf https://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/HNZ-Financial-...

Springtime 2y ago
These same bullet points and half the first paragraph are quoted in the OP article fwiw.
- kleiba 2y ago
  I think the important part that's not clearly portrayed in the OP article is that the "one Excel file" is actually not a single file used across the whole organisation, but rather a sort of master overview file that "consolidated files from each district into a single spreadsheet". I don't think that fact is made very clear in the OP article.
tempaway64457 2y ago
So actually top level planning/reporting is done by everything flowing into one big spreadsheet - as crappy as that is, thats pretty common. Thats not the same as "managed finances with single Excel spreadsheet". Like, they do have other systems.

kleiba 2y ago

Just out of curiosity, what are some professional tools to handle finance information of that magnitude?

ivan_gammel 2y ago
Bespoke ERPs implemented by external contractors on top of enterprise-grade database/cloud etc.
- franktankbank 2y ago
  > enterprise-grade What is this?
  - rubenvanwyk 2y ago
    Good question! Feel this is just a vague way of referring to formal compliance requirements for software rather than technical functionality supporting large scale operations.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    Sufficiently secure, scalable and reliable for a large organization. Usually implies that vendor can offer SLA for support and security updates, training etc. See for example the difference between RHEL and Fedora. In context of bespoke ERP it means that there are at least 2 tiers of vendors: top tier is responsible for building the integrated solution, underlying tiers are providing individual components for it.
    - jpc0 2y ago
      I was looking for the \s in there... How does something like SAP solve this problem? I would have loved to just drive by but actually let's have a discussion about it. Even Odoo or something more "move fast". How would I sell the product to someone who runs their excel spreadsheets and is price concious so will actually balk at the pricetag to replace the thing that works fine and passes audits.

frontfor 2y ago

Perhaps this is telling us that the financial losses and inefficiencies incurred from these supposedly error-prone processes are small enough (relative speaking at least most of the time) that there’s no real consequences to the stakeholders (politicians or bureaucrats in this instance) or the survival of the organisation (this org isn’t for-profit after all). So from the stakeholders’ POV it just doesn’t justify putting the investment upfront into proper software systems. Without greater accountability and real stake in the org from the politicians and bureaucrats, headlines like this will continue to appear in the decades to come.

jl6 2y ago
It's all about risk. Maybe you can run Finance on a spreadsheet and get away with it, and maybe you can survive driving without wearing a seatbelt too.
tibbetts 2y ago
Headlines like this are more pleasant than headlines about how the $100M project to implement SAP is five years behind schedule, how Deloitte has consumed tens of millions of dollars that could have gone to patient care, or that the new ERP system has lead to a total lack of accountability for patient outcomes.
tgv 2y ago
Perhaps it means that the reorganization was unnecessary, and badly executed. Things seemed to go well before.

jl6 2y ago

Excel is an incredible swiss army knife that can be used to do a lot, but it has a mean-time-to-catastrophe. You can keep spreadsheet risk (==cost) under control for a long time, which can make it seem like the risk is negligible, but it's a ticking time bomb.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ExoticPearTree 2y ago

The world runs on Excel. Contrary to popular belief that ERPs and what not is what companies use. Big companies use Excel to verify the ERP data and reports. There was an article shared here on HN sometime in the middle of last year that broke down how versatile Excel is and how different companies are trying to steal just a niche use of Excel (I remember reading about Airtable doing the automation bit much easier than in Excel, some company doing charts easier than Excel and so on). I wish I could find it again.

rubenvanwyk 2y ago
Why do you think have we not been able to evolve beyond this in the enterprise world?
- ExoticPearTree 2y ago
  In simple terms: because it is a tool everyone uses and knows to some degree. It has all the bells and whistles to do pretty much what you want with it. And, I guess one overlooked fact: the data is portable, everyone* in the world has Excel. My view is that if you switch companies, and at the last you used SAP and the new one you have to use Oracle, it is going to be a learning curve with very little added value for you (except the fact that now you know to proprietary systems). With Excel, well, it is going to be the same Excel, just different data.
  - tomatocracy 2y ago
    The fact that it's already installed on almost everyone's computer in any given corporate environment also has a lot to do with why it's so widely used for these types of things I think - noone needs to ask permission to get a new app installed, or jump through hoops to pay for another new piece of software.
- albrewer 2y ago
  For the same reason Python is so popular. It's not the best at anything (besides being really easy to use), but it's top 5 at all the things that matter. When your use case outgrows Excel, then yeah, invest in a specialized system... when budget allows (which is never).

rimbo789 2y ago

Is there another budget tool other than excel? It’s the only one I’ve seen working in forecasting and budgeting in private and public sector

rubenvanwyk 2y ago
There are many, like mosaic.tech or causal.app
- oldjim69 2y ago
  But does anyone use them? Everyone org I've worked for and with - large government departments, publicly traded entities, small PE owned entities use excel. As others say in this thread, the world runs on Excel.

rubenvanwyk 2y ago

Blows my mind that these things are still happening despite many large scale ERP implementations being the norm?

priced_in 2y ago

laughs in hedge fund manager voice

notorandit 2y ago

Interesting fact: Deloitte reports the use of the Excel file at page 42. Where all of the answers go.

whalesalad 2y ago

Excel runs the world, literally.

feverzsj 2y ago

Unbelievable. They should at least manage the excel in git.

emeril 2y ago
I generally try to have staff time stamp their files with date/time and mark them read only - I suppose that's easier than git though not as good...

vanderZwan 2y ago

And once again Felienne Hermans is proven right about the world running on spreadsheets and that we should take them a lot more seriously for that reason alone. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yKf8TrLUOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yKf8TrLUOw

dwighttk 2y ago

Hopefully better than ol’ SBF did

lenerdenator 2y ago

If we simply implemented my benevolent dictatorship for life, we'd have a system under which installing Microsoft Excel became a capital crime.

actionfromafar 2y ago
Computers with Microsoft Excel already installed on them before your edict would skyrocket in value. :)
Spooky23 2y ago
Yes, a benevolent dictator would want to make financial reporting as difficult as possible as they rob the treasury before the "aviator sunglasses" phase. I worked in a line of business leadership role for a multi-billion dollar organization. The ledger/financial ops stuff for super high-level reporting and payments were done by old mainframe apps. Everything else was done on a series of Excel spreadsheets hosted on a fileserver somewhere. All sorts of complex stuff was done in there. Finance guys are good at finance and frankly, stuff worked. They eventually transitioned to a modern at the time Peoplesoft system. The spreadsheet system was better in almost every way to the business units. The ERP was better for the financial ops teams. The shortfalls of the various ERP modules meant that the excel work was pushed down to the lines of business -- we probably had exponentially more spreadsheets, made by idiots who had no idea what they were doing. It also worked, but it was slower and certainly alot more expensive. The tools available for things like budgeting were primitive and ineffective - I literally used a P-Card to buy quickbooks and a built my own little finance shop.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  > Peoplesoft Yep, yep. There's yer trouble. Larry found another app to stack on his DB and he knows he's got the finance guys by the balls with vendor lock-in, so it doesn't matter how crap it is. Fortunately under my BDFL rule he's going to Devil's Island. > before the "aviator sunglasses" phase Before? Already there. Got the combination cap too. Been practicing the smile I'll use for the portrait mural that every large building has to have painted on the side.

1970-01-01 2y ago

1. Buy a state of the art supercomputer. 2. name it 'prod' 3. Move ALL infra onto it 4. ????

commandlinefan 2y ago

Probably better than people with an "enterprise" tools did, too.

forinti 2y ago
Sometimes those enterprise tools are used mostly as glorified spreadsheets. I see a lot of BI tools that are really being used to make big spreadsheets.
- commandlinefan 2y ago
  The first feature I've ever seen anybody go looking for in any of them is the "export to Excel" (or CSV) function.

jppope 2y ago

Sounds like the missing technology here is double entry accounting, not the persistence layer.

akpa1 2y ago

This makes me think of a system that just got replaced where I work - multiple hundreds of temporary workers being tracked through their setup and onboarding processes through one massive Excel spreadsheet, saved on a shared Teams group that everyone edited at once. It was held together with prayers, fickle filters, custom views and loose validation rules and I hated it the whole time it was active. We'd frequently have to make sure to remove rows from it and put them in an archive spreadsheet to keep the main one performant enough to function - but that split made it difficult to sift through data when someone had an issue. Not to mention that records routinely went missing or got overlooked. It's now a SharePoint database - I don't know what I think of that, but at least it was built for the job and has some solid integrations with other systems in it that make life easier.

4b11b4 2y ago
This makes me feel better about a current situation, briefly.

tokyovigilante 2y ago

Ah Excel, the second-best tool for everything.

LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago

https://metacpan.org/search?p=1&q=excel&size=500 https://metacpan.org/search?p=1&q=excel&size=500

cab404 2y ago

What a truly powerful tool!