Birmingham City Council (BCC) is nearly bankrupt, and a £100 million Oracle project is at least partially to blame.

BCC has had a controversial few years, settling a massive equal pay lawsuit that has taken a toll on Europe’s largest local authority. According to BBC News, the BCC admitted in June that “the £760m equal pay liability was not only equivalent to the entire annual spending on services but was growing each month.”

To make matters worse, the BCC has been in the midst of migrating from a custom SAP setup to one based on Oracle, to handle its HR and finance operations. Unfortunately, the cost of the project has skyrocketed to £100 million from the initial £20 million it was supposed to cost.

According to BirminghamLive, new city council leader John Cotton says Oracle is not to blame, instead blaming poor implementation for the massive cost overrun:

But we do know that there is an issue with how the system is then tracking our financial transactions and HR transactions issues as well. That’s got to be fixed.

I’ve been really clear with the officers since coming in as leader that I expect them to be responsible for fixing this system and ensure it is properly implemented and be accountable for how they go about doing that. I’m also putting in strengthened governance arrangements to ensure accountability to myself as the leader and to the wider Cabinet team.

What we now know from the work that we’ve done is that this can and will be fixed, but there is a price tag that’s attached to that. We’ve been advised that could be up to £100 million to fix and fully implement the system.

I am clear that must not impact frontline services.

The BCC is providing a perfect example of how important it is to pick the right tool for the right job…something it clearly did not do.