The physique that runs New Zealand’s public well being system makes use of a single Excel spreadsheet as the first supply of knowledge to handle its funds, which aren’t in nice form maybe as a result of sheet’s shortcomings.

The spreadsheet-using company is Well being New Zealand (HNZ) which was established in 2022 to switch 20 district well being boards within the expectation it will be less expensive and ship extra constant companies. The org has a finances of $NZ28 billion ($16 billion) and suggested lawmakers it will keep inside it for FY 23.24.

That prediction was incorrect and HNZ blew its finances, resulting in a evaluation of its funds that final week delivered a damming report [PDF] that discovered the org misplaced “management of the essential levers that drive monetary outcomes” and had an “incapacity to determine and reply to the disconnect between expenditure and income.”

The Deloitte-penned report additionally discovered an Excel spreadsheet was the “major information file utilized by HNZ to handle its monetary efficiency” and was used for “consolidation, journals, business-critical reporting, and evaluation.”

The report additionally famous 5 huge issues with the sheet used at HNZ:

  • Monetary data was typically ‘hard-coded,’ making it tough to hint to the supply or have up to date information circulate via.
  • Errors comparable to incorrectly releasing accruals or double-up releases weren’t picked up till following durations.
  • Modifications to prior durations and FTE errors in district monetary reporting Excel submissions, wouldn’t circulate via to consolidated file.
  • The spreadsheet may be straightforward to govern data as there’s restricted monitoring to supply data the place data is just not flowing straight from accounting techniques.
  • It’s extremely vulnerable to human error, comparable to unintentional typing of a quantity or omission of a zero.

Counting on the spreadsheet additionally meant Well being NZ moved slowly: The report discovered “month-to-month monetary reporting often took 12-15 days to consolidate and 5 days to analyse.”

The report means that’s a good distance in need of the place Well being NZ must be.

“Using an Excel spreadsheet file to trace and report monetary efficiency for a NZ$28bn expenditure organisation raises vital issues, notably when different extra acceptable techniques are current on the IT panorama,” the report states.

It will get worse: Well being Minister Simeon Brown final week delivered a speech wherein he stated HNZ operates “an estimated 6,000 functions and 100 digital networks” – or roughly one software for each employees member.

He additionally stated HNZ’s Senior Management Crew members “have solely simply begun weekly in-person conferences, and have continued to function from completely different workplaces, regardless of the bulk residing in Auckland and the group being two and a half years previous.” Most work in numerous buildings.

Nevertheless the Minister doesn’t have a plan to get off Excel, or repair HNZ’s tech management woes.

In his speech, Simeon promised to research “making a separate Well being Infrastructure Entity below Well being New Zealand, to handle and ship bodily and digital property.” However there’s no phrase on when that investigation would possibly conclude

Reg writers who study of organizations that use Excel broadly and ponder ERP because the repair for an unruly property of legacy apps know they’re an opportunity of spending years chronicling the ensuing mess. So good luck, HNZ, you would possibly in the future want for the unhealthy previous days of Excel. ®


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