This is faulty logic. Human error isn't an exceptional thing, it's extremely common and expected. There's an entire field of study dedicated to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_reliability
In many scenarios the right thing to do is just accept the error risk - as humans, we often don't need perfect execution but i don't think this is one of those.
The person quoted in the article gets it right: "We need senior management that know what they're doing, who realize that this is not, and never was, the way to run an HR system"
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
The spreadsheets being in different formats and lacking additional sheets that’d automatically reformat the data the way the next step needs is something I’d criticise, but I undertstand how that might be nonobvious if you aren’t lazy enough to think about automating everything you possibly can.
This is true. Sounds like they have cobbled together a system using Excel because thats why you have to do when processes change all the time.
The alternative is to find a 'proper' HR system to handle all the weird custom processes which is a massive three year project that costs tens of millions and then probably fails to deliver.
IT people complain about people cobbling things together in Excel but in the short and medium term thats usually the only way for people to get shit done
But yes management dropped the ball and should have had some checks and balances. No-one realised that every candidate from Wales got rejected? Thats a clanger.
This is true, and why I think it's a shame we never got a real replacement for Microsoft Access (not necessarily the functionality of Access but its intended purpose).
I agree the practices described don't sound strange - they sound normal, but so does the resulting errors that occurred - also par for the course.
I broadly agree with this, but there are ways to make the process effective and ways to make it incredibly error prone, like not having checks to ensure you paste into the correct columns. Obviously there are no such checks here.
This sounds pretty standard to me. Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the Copy Paste technician has a little bit of nous. I don't think it makes sense to get the individual involved in trouble, but it isn't intellectually honest to pretend this is that strange or unreasonable. Offices are full of people who make things work in inefficient ways. Such is life. Improve the system if it fails, but there isn't any call to act surprised that the process is awkward.
I expect there is a lot of politics at play here.