Spreadsheets can risky, 16,000 UK residents unaware of COVID exposure!

In my time I've encountered some risky spreadsheets. 

Spreadsheets have much user-friendly functionality; a feature that is both a blessing and a curse. Spreadsheets are a blessing that they can be customised rapidly, and spreadsheets are a curse in that they are often used to provide a solution when a better system solution is available.  

As a curse, spreadsheets are often built, and utilised, to a breaking-point. A point where functionality is hindered by size or distance. At the breaking-point you need someone to wisely recognises that it is time to retire the spreadsheet. You need that person to identify a way of data transfer to a customised solution. And, you need them to act quickly.

The riskiest spreadsheet I've witnessed was a multi-user contract database. It was a contract database that had eight different functional user groups, numbering a total of 110 people, across multiple locations. On analysis of the spreadsheet's deployment there was neither a central 'super user' nor any development control. While the spreadsheet was on a common drive and subject to daily back-up, there was no audit trail to support any investigation. The lack of audit trail meant that a internal rogue user could commit harm; free of the response of disciplinary action.

Source: pexels.com

Audit trails, and development controls, are perhaps the two most common reasons that will drive you to abandon spreadsheets in favour of a formalised solution.

Oracle record twelve of the biggest spreadsheet fails of history. Many of the fails - including at the London Olympics - may have been avoided if a proper system was in use. 

I write this on learning of a very simple spreadsheet error this week. In the UK 16,000 coronavirus cases went unreported in England. 

It was an error that had ramifications:

"Thousands of people were blissfully unaware they've been exposed to Covid, potentially spreading this deadly virus at a time when hospital admissions are increasing," Labour's shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth told the House of Commons."

The reason for the error: inadequate transfer of data due to limitations in rows of data. One can't imagine why the UK Government is using spreadsheets at all during a pandemic - data is critical and a system that has all the right sensitivities should be deployed.

A spreadsheet that fails to allow for full and timely communication during a pandemic is a risky spreadsheet indeed.

Regards,