Somerset council review criticises Southwest One Somerset county council has gone public with criticisms of its Southwest One joint venture with IBM, following a review that led to the conclusion that it "could do better". Among the criticisms in a report (6-page PDF/52.2KB) on the shared service is that some savings targets were not met; there had been problems with the …
IIRC this provider was mentioned a few times some years ago. Something to do with being run in some way by the wife of a senior police officer who had some responsibility for contracts from his force to this company, or similar alleged shennanigans.
The local MP has a rather lenghy blog about Southwest one - in it, he makes the very point that you refer to viz. that the wife of Colin Port (Chief Constable of A & S police) was the primary consultant on the project.
http://www.liddellgrainger.org.uk/ian/MOGGTHEBLOG.html
Some other quite astonishing items were revealed over the last couple of years. I feel really sorry for the poor buggers that have been trying to make this turkey fly and the unfortunate residents of Somerset that are paying through the nose for something that was overhyped from the beginning.
to write something like 'Somerset Council writes reasonably balanced review' would it? You could even have written 'Somerset Council praises Southwest One' - all are perfectly valid. Unfortunately the 'review' is so bland and missing any degree of statistical analysis as to be completely worthless.
Only if it cost > savings over life of contract its a complete waste of money.
One *obvious* possibility is if *other* bodies within the County Council area (or even neighboring areas) start to use them as well. Presumably there are various other local government bodies within the Somerset County area.
This *might* work provided *all* bodies move toward common ways of doing things to eliminate umpteen different procedures to say book a holiday.
Note I remain *highly* suspicious about *any* cost savings whenever some council "partners" itself with one of the "usual suspects."
BTW AC@10:30 Nice use of the word "alleged."
The most galling thing about this contract is that the chair of SW1 is Colin Port who just happens to be Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset council(http://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/information/foi/classes_of_information/whos_who/cc_port.aspx)...... Any conflict of interest?
Sue Barnes(http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080326/halltext/80326h0005.htm) who is Colin Ports wife also helped broker the deal
That's what business cases are for : to state clearly the benefits vs cost, over time period x.
Hopefully there would have been one of these. Whether it is accurate, or underwent any formal challenge is the real question, but if you take at face value the tracking of benefits statements, I am presuming it would have.
I fear I have mis communicated.
I meant *actual* costs now the thing has been set up for real and is doing *real* work, *not* the hypothetical-most-optimistic-set-I-could-pull-out-my-a** set likely to originate in some con-tractors tender document.
Although a comparison of costs against planned costs would also be interesting.
OTOH It would seem *large* parts of the savings will remain hypothetical for some while yet.
I hope this makes things a little bit clearer.
Some problems with SAP can be very clearly laid at the door of the SI - they promise to provide highly skilled staff for which they charge £1,000 per day, but they actually give you someone that has zero experience in SAP who they will pay £300 per day (or even less).
It also has to be said that they generally do a very poor job of managing expectations - they promise much, but fail to deliver, then blame the customer on not understanding how the product works.
for a while it looked like various pre-configured versions (for real drop in work pre-configured on a brand new server in the SI's offices then bought in and swapped over) were going to make all those SAP horror stories a thing of the past.
This sounds likes like a real old school SI f***up.
It's a *gross* stereotype but I always had trouble shaking the impression that it's a bit authoritarian in its approach. It was *very* easy to imagine someone like SVP (are they still around?) introducing their work as...
"We haf studied your industry und identified the most efficient methods used, as vell as your firms veeknesses. Now you vil implement the superior methods. Resistance will not be tolerated."
OTOH at least they didn't go with a *totally* bespoke solution because *our* local authority back offices services are *totally* unlike every other local authorities in the *world*.
And before anyone starts I *am* aware that (in theory) SAP *is* highly configurable through its internal language.
*Provided* you have developers who know what they are doing.
And how the various functions interact.
And *document* the changes
And maintain proper change management.
Etc..
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