The £2.3bn plan to modernise NHS IT systems is "risky and
ambitious" but it has sufficient safeguards in place to ensure it
does not repeat the mistakes of previous large-scale public sector
IT projects, according to the chief executive of the Office of
Government Commerce, Peter Gershon.
Gershon made the assurance when quizzed by MPs on the Commons
Public Accounts Committee at the end of October. "If projects fail
in the future they will do so for novel reasons and not the old
familiar reasons," he said.
The committee members suggested to Gershon that the NHS IT
programme risked failing to achieve its aims because it had ignored
advice from the National Audit Office and others on how to manage
large IT projects.
"There are shelf-loads of advice that very big projects should be
cut into smaller chunks," said committee member Richard Bacon.
Gershon said the NHS IT programme would be broken down into smaller
projects, adding that the electronic patient record system would
not introduced in a "big bang" implementation.
He admitted that the NHS IT programme was challenging but added
that procedures such as the government's Gateway review process -
designed to prevent project failures - would help keep it on track.