Birmingham City Council’s SAP-to-Oracle project is set to cost £144.4 million – more than seven times earlier estimates – as it waits for a fully functioning system five years after its planned go-live date.

Keen readers will know the sorry saga of the ERP disaster at Europe’s largest local authority. For the uninitiated, highlights include going live with a system unfit to manage the council’s £3 billion in taxpayer revenue and multibillion-pound spending budget; a decision to turn off audits for fraud detection for more than 18 months; allocating £2 billion in transactions to the wrong year; and multiple delays and overspending.

Pertaining to the last item on this list of shame, Birmingham City Council has released new figures. In a written response published with its council meeting this week, officials said the total forecast cost of the program up to the 2027/28 financial year is £144.4 million, up from an initial estimate of £19 million with a £1 million contingency. In 2024, the total budget approved across financial years 2018/19 to 2025/26 was £131 million.

The project began in 2018, when the council planned to move away from its legacy R/3 SAP system to more modern software. Having picked Oracle Fusion, it initially planned to go live in December 2020 for finance and procurement, and in February 2021 for HR and payroll. According to a 2021 business case, this was re-planned with a revised launch in April 2022 for both functions.

Having hit the project milestone, things went from bad to worse. Although the council had planned to implement Oracle “out-of-the-box,” it created several customisations including a banking reconciliation system that failed to function properly. The council struggled to understand its cash position and was unable to produce auditable accounts. It has spent more than £5 million on manual workaround labour.

The Oracle implementation – along with poor management of equal pay cases – led to the council becoming effectively bankrupt in 2023.

The council has now bought a third-party solution to cover the banking reconciliation function, and is reimplementing Oracle from scratch, a project that was due to go live in April, and has now been delayed by several months.

The mushrooming cost of the project also needs to take into account the fact that schools have been removed from its scope, a move that might have led to reduced costs.

Nor does ballooning spending reflect how much the authority might be out of pocket in total. The initial project had banked expected savings in the millions from the 2022 go-live date. Anticipated savings of £69 million in 2023/24 were written off. In 2024, investigators put the total money lost at £216.5 million, which might climb by £10 million or so, given the new cost projection.

At around £225 million, the money lost equates to about £200 per person within the council’s boundaries.

The Bank of England has trebled the amount it is spending on its Oracle systems integrator amid efforts to migrate business applications to the cloud.

The UK’s central bank has planned the move since 2020, and a recent procurement note revealed it has increased financial outlay with Oracle implementation partner Version 1 to £21.5 million after initially tendering the contract for £7 million.

Version 1 was hired to “support the implementation of technical and change management aspects of the Oracle Cloud implementation and business change program,” according to the official documents.

The latest increase is due to an amendment to the Bank’s Application Management Service contract, including the “need for additional works, services or supplies” that “were not included in the initial procurement,” the notice says.

Another supplier could not meet these requirements for “economic or technical reasons such as requirements of interchangeability or interoperability with existing equipment, services or installations.” Any change in supplier might also “cause significant inconvenience or substantial duplication of costs,” it adds.

The latest increase is the second time the 330-year-old institution has upped the contract value. The procurement was first advertised for £7 million in 2022, and, after a competition, it was awarded to Version 1 for £8.7 million in September 2023.

In February last year, that figure was inflated to £13.8 million, with the bulk of the increase attributed to “amended implementation methodology, from a two-phase approach, to a multiple-phase approach with Oracle Modules going live based on the Bank’s priorities.”

At the time, a spokesperson said: “The Bank is implementing Oracle Cloud to consolidate several different systems which will help the Bank fulfil its mission. We aim to achieve value for money in all our procurement.”

The Bank of England is a public body that raises money regulating institutions, printing banknotes, banking services, management fees charged to government agencies, and investments built up over 300 years. It generates more income than it spends and contributes millions of pounds to the UK Treasury.

According to training provider Fudgelearn, the Bank of England is implementing Oracle Cloud SaaS Fusion Applications, including Finance, Procurement, Projects, Expenses, EPM, and Reporting.

The contract is “intended to deliver a step change in the capabilities and value delivered by the finance, procurement and recruitment functions in the Bank, leveraging the existing Oracle Cloud tool set to drive sustainable business change.”

Last week, the bank also awarded Oracle a £13 million contract to provide technical support for Oracle SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

In June 2025, the BoE said it would increase the maximum spending of a framework deal for a raft of services, including support for its complex configuration of SAP, “in particular Business Warehouse” and interoperability between multi-cloud environments and on-prem and shared datacenters. The maximum value of the arrangement was set at £60 million when it was awarded in September 2024. It was then increased to £86.7 million in a non-competitive award.

Birmingham City Council’s doom laden Oracle finance and IT project – now four years behind schedule – has been delayed to at least the summer, it has been revealed.

The project, supposed to provide the council with a gold-standard finance, procurement and IT service fit for the 21st century, has been dogged with huge delays and soaring costs.

It was a critical cause of the council going bust, after costs rocketed in the wake of a catastrophic failed first attempt at ‘go live’ in 2022.

Now the council has had to confirm it faces another major delay. It says it needs more time to carry out testing and ensure the suite of services is fully functioning before it goes live.

Staff have been told the hoped for new go-live is end of July, but that it could be the autumn. Insiders have said the continued delays and obfuscation were troubling, especially given the huge focus being put on it.

The project has had a dedicated, £1,100 a day commissioner overseeing it for more than two years, Myron Hyrck, who was brought in specifically because of his prior knowledge of Oracle projects like it, while more than 90 external consultants were said to be working on the scheme – yet it was still facing significant problems. The project is currently managed by Philip Macpherson.

Originally said to cost less than £20 million and trigger millions in savings a year by being more ‘efficient’, the project has rocketed exponentially in cost and is now said to have run up bills to date of £171 million. The council had not confirmed that at the time of writing.

The council also claimed the delay would not cost more as a contingency budget – agreed last year of £40m – was already in place and had sufficient funds to meet costs.

In September, it was reported that a vital component of the project – the income management system that ensures that the thousands of payments in and out of the council every week match up with bank records – had been delayed three times. Whistleblowers said that the whole project was ‘a mess’.

As a result, the council called an extraordinary meeting to discuss the failed project. It did not at that time say the go-live of April was in jeopardy.

Sources have said that the mental health impact on staff working in the finance and digital teams had been considerable because of pressures linked to the delayed project. Repeated delays had further damaged morale, especially given the rapid turnover of staff involved in it. The continued failure to have clear deadlines was causing additional stress, they said.

In a statement the council said: “Following a review as part of the ongoing programme management it has been decided to continue on with testing of the reimplementation of the Oracle system. The council’s HR, finance and procurement programme, known as Brindley, will now have a go live date later on in 2026 and not as originally anticipated in April.”

Cllr Saima Suleman, Labour Cabinet Member for Digital, Culture, Heritage and Tourism, has previously been criticised for not having the technical expertise to properly hold the project leaders to account.

She backed the delay saying: “This decision reflects the council’s focus on ensuring that the reimplementation goes smoothly and the programme is successful – prioritising readiness and stability over fixed dates. There is no impact on the running of the current system and services will continue to function as they are now, with colleagues and suppliers still being paid.

“The Brindley programme’s budget included a contingency to accommodate for eventualities such as this. Therefore, this is not adding further cost into the existing budget.

“The council is taking a staged approach to the reimplementation, with independent assurance at agreed checkpoints. We will continue to test whether we are progressing as expected and meeting all the milestones required, as we recognise the importance of getting this programme right.”

Council opposition leader Cllr Robert Alden, Cons, Erdington, said: “Once again, the council’s botched IT rollout is having to be delayed.

Microsoft have said that it will increase the prices of Office productivity software subscriptions for commercial and government clients on July 1.

The company’s Office applications, which include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, have been facing increased competition in recent years from Google.

“We are continuously investing and innovating our platform for the future,” Nicole Herskowitz, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365 and Copilot, wrote in a blog post. “In the last year, we released more than 1,100 features across Microsoft 365, Security, Copilot, and SharePoint.” The new features have added value to the suites, she wrote.

Price hikes for commercial Office subscriptions have been infrequent. In 2022, Microsoft raised prices of its productivity bundles for the first time since launching the original Office 365 subscriptions in 2011. Microsoft changed the name of Office 365 to Microsoft 365 in 2020. In January, Microsoft announced a price hike for consumer Office bundles.

Microsoft offers Office 365 subscriptions for commercial use that include access to its productivity applications, along with higher-priced Microsoft 365 subscriptions that also include Windows operating system updates.

Here’s a breakdown of the commercial price changes:

A bill that would overhaul how the federal US government purchases software has found itself in a familiar place: moving forward in the House while awaiting Senate consideration with just a few weeks left in the congressional calendar.

The Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets (SAMOSA) Act advanced out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday, teeing it up for a vote in the full chamber.

The SAMOSA Act, which would direct federal agencies to assess their software licensing practices and streamline future IT buying decisions to avoid duplicative purchases, was reintroduced in the House in September following the Senate’s move to do the same in July.

The bill passed the House a year ago but stalled out in the upper chamber, despite backing from a host of software and IT trade groups, including the Computer & Communications Industry Association, the Alliance for Digital Innovation, NetChoice, OpenPolicy and the Software Information Industry Association.

Ryan Triplette, executive director of the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing, said in a statement Tuesday that the bill would bring “much-needed transparency to federal spending and software management.”

Congress has been trying to move forward with the SAMOSA Act since at least 2022. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., noted during Tuesday’s markup that the current iteration of the SAMOSA Act is “identical” to what passed the chamber last year.

“This bill improves government software purchasing without unduly limiting the procurement options of federal agencies,” Comer said. “It requires each agency to better manage software and develop a plan for addressing any costly unnecessary licenses. This will reduce wasteful spending and improve government efficiency.”

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the committee’s ranking member, said that having agencies send their software reviews to Congress, the General Services Administration, the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Management and Budget will ensure that lawmakers and regulators will be able to “keep a closer eye on software contracts and spending,” resulting in improved planning for software management.

The bill is co-sponsored by Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, Pat Fallon, R-Texas, and April McClain Delaney, D-Md. Mace, who chairs House Oversight’s cybersecurity subcommittee, compared agencies’ current software-buying practices to “someone paying for two Netflix or Spotify accounts.”

“This bill would not prescribe what software agencies should buy, but rather what agencies … procure and keep track of the software they procure. This is intentional,” Mace said. “We understand as technology continues to develop, the software needs of agencies change, and we need to allow them to remain agile, but agencies can remain agile in a way that is fiscally responsible, where taxpayers aren’t on the hook for duplicative, unnecessary software.”

Brown, ranking member of House Oversight’s cyber panel, said the bill offers “a straightforward solution” for agencies that will prevent “overspending” and instil better accountability in software buying.

“In other words, this bill will cut waste, allow agencies to negotiate better contracts and spot vulnerabilities quickly. That means fewer headaches, better security and real savings for taxpayers, nearly $5 billion every year, according to one Senate committee,” Brown said. “This is the kind of commonsense work people sent us here to do. It’s not flashy and it’s not partisan, but it is good government and it is real government efficiency.”

A fifth of software budgets is being wasted on unnecessary business complexity, which could be haemorrhaging 7% of annual revenue, new research has claimed.

More than half (53%) of the 700+ IT, CX, finance and operations professionals surveyed by Freshworks failed to achieve their expected software ROI, with 43% noting that projects ran over budget and 32% criticising vendor support.

As a result, $1 in every $5 is considered ‘wasted’ due to failed implementations, underused tools and hidden costs.