Explanatory Note:
Grant Thornton are the external auditors of bent Labour Sandwell Council and recently prepared an explosive report into some of the chain of disasters the comrades have inflicted upon the benighted Borough.
This is one of a short series of vignettes dealing with these Labour sh*tshows.
Part Three: Oracle Non-Fusion
Anyone remember the BT contract? Bent but boastful Labour Sandwell Council bragged that its tech-tie in with the telecom giant was "world-beating". But right from the off there were allegations surrounding a "missing" £15m (yes, fifteen MILLION) arising from corruption. Within a short space of time the whole thing collapsed. As ever with a Sandwell Labour contract disaster, the comrades claimed it was the other party which had failed to deliver and promised to "take action" to recover the losses. These were very substantial in the BT meltdown but, as usual, Labour were bullsh*tting and us taxpayers picked up the tab - again! (The £22m loss on the Providence Place Building - see link below for full details - was a hangover from the BT disaster.
The fact is that, as stated many times in the blog, Labour have packed the corrupt paid service with cronies and Labour Party deadbeats who are simply not capable of running an efficient operation. You would imagine that after the BT fiasco these clowns would have been more careful in contractual dealings but not a bit of it - just look at the £22m fraud surrounding the SEND taxi contracts very recently.
Bent Sandwell used software called Oracle E-Business Suite to run various administrative support systems but decided in 2019 to move to a "cloud-based" system called Oracle Fusion - the original "go-live" date being October, 2019. This was a multi-million pound deal - what could possibly go wrong ...
I have not yet researched how the contract was awarded to Oracle and whether this was subject to competitive process but bent Labour picked Oracle to provide the service and also decided an intermediary should be appointed as part of the project called Inoapps, a "platinum implementation partner to Oracle".
The "socialists" initially agreed payment on a "time and materials basis" - a recipe for an unscrupulous counterparty to drag its feet. And guess what happened? The October, 2019 launch date was postponed to April, 2020, but along came Covid in March, 2020 and the start date was again postponed to October, 2020.
It should be said here that many tech firms worked pretty much normally after the initial Covid shock and that employees in Sandwell's corrupt paid service were "working from home" - or so we were told. Thus it is difficult to understand why the go-live date has still not occurred. To be fair, it is not just a case of switching the system on, since staff need some training to master the tech, and it appears that this has been problematic with so many still not going back to work in Council offices.
And so Sandwell pottered along using the old E-business system. But in the background all was not well with, as Grant Thornton report, "ineffective engagement from across directorates and services". With things going wrong Sandwell and Inoapps switched to a fixed price for the job with Inoapps shouldering greater commercial risk. But there were "increasing tensions" between the bent paid service and Inoapps leading to an "us and them culture" in what was meant to be a joint team effort. The relationship broke down and Sandwell terminated the contact.
As ever, bent Labour boasted that it "would take the necessary steps to recover the Council's losses" from alleged breaches of contract. It also stated that it would find a new partner to replace Inoapp via the "G-Cloud procurement framework" although I cannot trace whether this "partner" has yet been found.
Meanwhile Labour raided the Covid-19 emergency fund for £650k to pay towards their incompetence together with Council reserves but, as we will see below, the tragedy continues to unfold. At the end of last year the Cabinet earmarked and EXTRA £4.3m on top of the original contract to finally get the system working. FOUR MILLION + POUNDS EXTRA!
Another problem arose due to the gross delay. Bent Labour Sandwell were still using the old Oracle system and were going to have to continue for the foreseeable future since, if it did not, the security patches would become unavailable and the software at risk from hackers etc. At the end of last year the Cabinet agreed to extend the licences. So Oracle is raking in the dosh under the old system whilst failing to implement the new one! Double bubble!
In its Value for Money Review (a major factor in the Government placing bent Labour into "special measures), Grant Thornton urged Sandwell to urgently resolve their issues with Inoapps but, as above, the comrades decided to sack them instead.
Grant Thornton urged Sandwell Labour to get a grip and get this mess sorted. And in a stinging rebuke of the way Labour has failed time and time again, urged them to "ensure for future major projects a full business case is developed and approved". You might imagine that any diligent organisation would not need to be told this, and it is a stunning indictment that the auditors had to say this.
At the time of writing the Labour fiasco continues. On 13th April, 2022 the Cabinet agreed to extend the original Oracle licences to - wait for it - 30th April, 2023! The first proposed start date was October, 2019 and so it looks like it is not envisaged that the new system will be fully operational until THREE AND A HALF YEARS after that date. Oh, and Labour agreed to pay Oracle a further £330.730 or OUR money to extend the old-system licences.
Once again, this is AT BEST, yet another example of Labour incompetence on a grand scale and it has cost taxpayers very dear.
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