Computer Weekly has won the publishing world's "Oscar"
for campaigning journalism in recognition of our fight for
anindependent and published review of the NHS's £12.4bn
National Programme for IT.
It is the first time a magazine has won such an award twice for
the same subject - in this case, the NPfIT.
In 2004 the award citation said we had campaigned for a proper
review of the NPfIT and had "battled against a strong climate of
secrecy and suppression of dissent". That battle continues.
There is still a minimalist approach to accountability - what
the British Computer Society described as political pressure for
officialdom to "deny problems and defend the indefensible".
At the same time, the government wants everyone to applaud it
for the achievements to come. But that would mean ignoring IT
management in the health service, the BCS, leading academics, the
NHS Confederation and several Royal Colleges. All have expressed
profound misgivings about important elements of the programme.
To this criticism the government has responded in the way we
warned it would. In 2002, when the programme was launched, we
accepted that it was announced with the best of intentions.
But we questioned whether it was feasible and warned that the
government would react to troubles by trying to head off
perceptions of failure with statistics on the high numbers of
transactions and registered system users.
That is exactly what has happened.
The government can
stop our run of success in NHS campaigning. It can commission
what the programme urgently needs: a genuinely independent review
that is published in full and it can be open and honest about
mistakes.
Tony Collins'
IT projects blog >>
Against the current: exploring the challenges of complex IT
projects
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