Somerset's Lottery

Like our legal system, SAP in Somerset is something of a lottery. And it seems you don’t even need to buy a ticket!

A couple of winners were celebrating in the D&D last night, buying drinks all round, after finally being paid.

OK, so they had to wait 4 months, but to compensate them, SAP paid twice. Apparently this made up for all the extra administrative charges and interest they had incurred in the struggle to get paid at all.

Halfway through the evening, another yokel rolled in with an even broader grin on his face. He had also been paid, and, wait for it, hadn’t even sent in an invoice! Drinks all round once again.

Now if I tell you that all this merriment and drunken revelry was taking place at the North end of the bar … then perhaps you can guess what happened next?

Because down at the South end, sullen losers whose payments are four months overdue were still drowning their SAP sorrows, and hearing that someone had won the SAP Lottery without even buying a ticket, their mood turned even uglier than usual.

According to Daffer, the ensuing fracas, and the landlord's panic stricken 999 call to the Police ("no-one in the area, sorry", needless to say), were instrumental in helping Jonesy to finally admit that the game was up.

So he's given a paltry 2 weeks notice, and after this month's payday will leave us a memorable legacy:

Chaos;
Confusionism;
Jonesian Mathematics (aka x+y=200 million);
Discredited Local Democracy; and
The SAP about to hit the fan!

It's hard to believe they're all being so polite about it. Consensus down at the D&D is

Good Riddance!

:-)

We also think it would be nice if he could take some of his noodly appendages with him. Or is that just being greedy?

Still Sapping Somerset

If Bullying is the hallmark of Excellence in Somerset, then surely SAP must be its pinnacle. An enterprise-wide solution (aka "a Problem in Disguise") costing tens of millions of pounds, being managed by a foreign body, is held up as the ultimate achievement of the Excellence Years (2003-2009).

So it was a bit of a disappointment to be joined by someone claiming to be a "School Bursar" when we were discussing it down at the Dog & Duck last night.

A growing number of regulars work for organisations who are owed money by SAP but have not been paid, ("it's getting silly!" is the sort of facile statement we are having to put up with from ignorant yokels who do contracting or whatever for the Council).

'You think you've got problems,' said the Bursar, 'schools haven't been able to reconcile SIMS to SAP since the beginning of the year!'

'Huh?' chorused the ignorant yokels.

'What's that got to do with how I'm supposed to pay my wages tomorrow?' yelled some lout from the bar.

'What's a SIM?' asked Daffer.

'SIMS' the Bursar corrected him. 'It's the schools' management system, what we do our accounts on.'

Now, if Albert Einstein were still with us, he would have understood immediately. But for the rest of us, this poor Bursar chappie had to spell it out before we would allow him to go back to drowning his sorrows at the bar.

It seems that the County spends most of our money (hundreds of millions a year, in fact) through schools, and the schools all do their own budgeting. Now, due to the SAP débâcle, none of them can check that they've got it right this year, and if they haven't .... well they won't find out about it until it's too late anyway.

None of which will explain how SAP's creditors are supposed to pay their wages this week ... :-(

What the SAP ...

... is all this about?

Blaming computers for staff stress and political change in Somerset?

And can't any of these techies speak English?

More gobbly-gook here.

SAP it?

We’re having trouble understanding why everyone is getting their knickers in a twist about the SAP.

It’s only a computer system, after all, and the Council’s computer systems seem to be up and down like a tart’s … er, well … a lot anyway. Every time you ‘phone one of those infamous 0845 numbers about anything these days, they always seem to say ‘sorry love, the computers are down’, before explaining that in any case they can’t do anything for anyone about anything, because even though they’ve recorded everything about everyone, they haven’t yet been told anything about anything.

OK, so maybe SAP doesn’t have a great track record elsewhere, but nowhere else is “the best on the planet”, is it?

Also, no-one else can boast the resourcing that “the best on the planet” is able to provide. Take the Council Tax. It went up by 2.7%, against inflation of 0.5%. Even in Albert Einstein’s (hopefully temporary) absence, we can still work out that this means an extra £4,294,114 to spend on SAP (190,000 taxpayers, average tax of £1,027.30, 2.2% margin over inflation).

And if you add the £4,000,000 they’ve saved by cuts to libraries, roads, achievement, care, the PMC, etc., then that is WELL OVER £8,000,000 to spend on flying in armies of Bangalori analysts and programmers to work furiously in Taunton basements.

All this, of course, is in addition to the efforts of the “SuperUsers”, who swoop up and down the corridors of County Hall, capes swirling, fingers gliding over keyboards and elsewhere, soothing digital distress.

And as if that were not enough, there are all those key managers wandering around monitoring progress, logging disasters and having meetings in a place they call the War Room, about keys and other essential “issues around” security and data and stuff like that. Meetings have a proven track record of coming up with evidence of Excellence in the face of reality, and we are confident that the keys are being well managed.

Remember also that these guys are used to managing on the brink of chaos – according to Jonesy’s presentations around the world, they’ve been doing it for years.

So there may be a bit more confusion around than usual, but luckily we are dealing with committed partners here, so where’s the problem?

Best on the Planet?

Many thanks to the CHUM agent who sent us a link to this story about some place called “Bratislava” in a country called “Slovakia”.

Hearing the word “Bratislava” (trans. “Best on the Planet” Ed.), the ignorant yokels thought that we were talking about a primary school built on the side of a Volcano! How about that for proving their Council is right, and that they are only fit for local jobs? At best.

Luckily, the Dog & Duck core team is rather more cosmopolitan, and was able to look up “Slovakia” on Google, discovering that it is in fact a place right in the middle of Europe (formerly linked to another place once referred to as “a far away place”).

‘Einstein territory …’ Pat observed, prompting a moment’s silence to respect the memory of the sanity of our friend and former Excellence Analyst, Albert.

‘That’s not a proper country,’ announced Daffer, ‘it hasn’t even got a coastline!’

Anyway, whoever these strange foreigners are, it seems that someone claiming to be our Jonesy was helping them to deal with something called “the Global Fiscal Crisis” last week.

We eventually concluded that it had to be an imposter, since Jonesy has been far too busy at the SAP helpdesk to go swanning off up the Danube (with or without a paddle).

Also, the slideshow purporting to be his was far too sober (no colour for example), and devoid of the Excellence Delusion.

But there is an intriguing reference to “Managing on the edge of chaos” …. that certainly rang a bell! (Yes! He's back! But for how long this time?)

Somerset Bull in America

The SAP is rising.

We know this to be the case (despite the efforts of certain other SomerBloggers) as one of the regulars cut down a birch tree this week, and the stuff was glugging out of the stump like one of Jonesy's [CENSORED].

However, even if the forest bureaucrats' idiotic 5 tonnes per quarter rule didn't mean that people are forced to cut down trees at the wrong time of the year, we would still be quietly confident that the SAP was rising all around us.

And nowhere more so than in Taunton. Even if it is costing hundreds of PMCs.

We know this from an American visitor to the Dog & Duck, who was asking about Organisational Terrorists and Institutional Chauvinists and the Spirit of Partnership being weaker than the Spirit of Independence.

We were gobsmacked, I can tell you! But it seems that Bull is a two-way street, and that Jonesy delivered Somerset's revenge to a bewildered audience in Washington DC only last month!

Anyway, apart from repeating all our old favourites about his war on Terror and Chauvinistic neighbours and uncooperative Districts, Jonesy also told the Yanks that the SAP would definitely rise on time this year.

Sort of like King Canute in reverse.

Unbelievably, he also provided us with YET ANOTHER figure for savings from the SouthWest One adventure!!! This time it is £191,000,000 (still over £1,000 per taxpayer, but still not adding up to £17,000,000 + 140,000,000).

There was also the usual world class torrent of transformation and reframing, and even the question "what's beyond excellence?" Apparantly, at this point some guy yelled out from the back of the Hall, "It's the Dog & Duck blog, Stupid, everyone knows that!"

See the complete Washington DC show here.

[NB if the Forces of Excellence get to it before you and have the thing removed from public view (like they did with 'American Bull in Somerset'), then email the Dog and Duck for a copy. Free of Charge as ever!]