Council to overspend by £80m on IT system

Credit: Birmingham City Council

The new leader of Birmingham City Council has revealed the council expects to overspend by £80m on its new IT system Oracle.

The Oracle system, which is designed to streamline payments and HR operations, was expected to cost around £20m and meant to be rolled out in 2020.

Instead, there has been a three year delay with Cllr Cotton expecting the total cost to run to £100m in total.

In an interview with Politics Midlands, Cllr John Cotton said he has sent a message to his council officers that they, “are responsible and accountable for ensuring that this situation is sorted out”.

Cllr Cotton has been in post just over a week and promised the people of Birmingham that he will be, “open and transparent about where these challenges are”.

According to Politics Midlands, the rising costs and delays are to do with the customisation with that the council wanted on the new system and we an issues with moving information over from previous system.

It was also reported that the switch is wreaking havoc from schools with one school governor Nigel Smith, claiming that his staff sometimes are not paid on time and have to deal with bailiffs coming.

The Birmingham primary school with a £2m budget, has had bailiffs come to recover leased items which are taken out of the budget of the school, but paid for by the council.

Smith says usually these payments have never been made or have been lost in the system.

The Council said in a statement to Politics Midlands that: “We accept the implementation of Oracle has resulted in reduced functionality of day to day operational services

“We understand that this has had and may potentially continue to negatively impact some schools til such time the issues are resolved. Correcting the issues is of paramount importance to us all”.

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