The second attempt by Europe’s largest local authority to implement an Oracle finance and HR system – after the first left it unable to produce auditable accounts – remains on an “Amber-Red” risk rating less than nine months before it is expected to go live.

According to an independent review of the project in May 2025, published this week, the delivery confidence assessment of the Oracle reimplementation was “Amber-Red” for a system expected to manage billions of pounds in spending.

It highlighted ongoing risks due to pressure on project resources. A combination of Oracle Consulting, council staff, and other contractors is trying to reimplement Oracle Fusion as well as “support of an extant inadequate live service,” all while they cope with the “significant changes” involved in an organisational restructure.

Investigators were also concerned that “data ownership and the risk that resolving data issues is seen as a program, Oracle, or ICT issue rather than a business issue.”

Seven years ago, Birmingham City Council planned to replace its ageing but functional SAP system with Oracle Fusion, and expected to go live in 2021. In April 2022, the system went live with disastrous consequences. The system responsible for managing spending of around £3 billion ($3.98 billion) was posting errors in cash transactions within weeks, and by autumn 2023, Birmingham City Council was effectively bankrupt, in part because of the new software. It has since spent millions on manual workarounds and plans to reimplement Oracle by April 2026, along with third-party cash management software.

The project suffered from a lack of in-house expertise, coupled with poor governance and risk controls.

The total budget approved for the program across financial years 2018/19 to 2025/26 is £131 million, although the council hopes that might come down to £108 million. The original budget was around £20 million, including implementing the system for schools, which have now been taken out of scope.

Earlier this week, Jamie Scott, a council audit committee member, challenged council officers on the overall risk rating, given the detailed risk register, not available to the public.

“You gave it a red-amber overall. But after you look at the risk register, it’s mostly red with some ambers, and I think one yellow. It just should be red, not red-amber,” he said.

Scott also voiced concern that risk ratings were not falling after mitigation strategies were put in place.

Carol Culley, council executive director of finance, responded that allocating risk scores “isn’t a fully mature process yet” and the dashboards would be updated with the risk management outcomes in the next iteration. “I do agree we need to be identifying the actions that shift the risk profile. That is something that we are working on very much in the board to report up at the moment, being transparent, there are a significant number of risks associated with the project.”

Culley added: “It would be very unusual for an ERP program to be at a green [risk rating] at this stage, but I am not diminishing the fact that it is currently on amber-red and there is a lot of work to do in terms of making sure we’re in the best position possible for go-live.”