Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

iSoft has announced in Australia -where it's based - that its latest version of Lorenzo, as installed at NHS Bury, "takes the efficient provision of healthcare in England to a new level".

The go-live more than doubles the number of Lorenzo users in England. NHS Bury and iSoft say that the go-live supports "almost" 600 users.

Version RC 1.9 is the first patient administration system under the Lorenzo banner.

Below is iSoft's announcement - which three times mentions the supplier's support for CSC, the NPfIT local service provider for England except the south.

It's conceivable that there is a little tension between CSC and iSoft and over iSoft's decision to sell Lorenzo directly to trusts in the south. Elsewhere in England, Lorenzo is sold through CSC.

Continue reading "iSoft says Bury Lorenzo go-live takes healthcare to "new level" " »

... according to Jack Wallen of TechRepublic. [I don't agree with all of them - there were 119 comments on the article at last count

Windows Vista
NeXT
BeOS
Cobalt Qube
Y2K
MP3
Richard Stallman
WordPerfect
IPv6
Mesh networks


Full article

Below are key parts of  today's Public Accounts Committee report on the C-Nomis report. Much the same could be said of other big IT-based change programmes such as the NPfIT.

Some will say plus ça change but some IT disasters are exposing near anarchy, and potentially worse, in some corners of government administration.


How not to develop a project

"We have taken evidence on cases of poor decision taking and weak project management on many occasions. The same lessons have still not been learnt, making the management by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) of C-Nomis a prime example of how not to develop a project."

Beware US software which needs much rework for the UK

"From the outset those responsible failed to identify the modifications required to the
software to meet NOMS' needs. The Home Office assessed it as broadly meeting the needs of the prison service, but as a North American product the software needed to be adapted for UK legislation.

"In respect of probation, there was a serious failure to understand the magnitude and cost of the changes which would be needed, even though the Home Office recognised at the start that the software met only 29% of the needs of the Probation Service.  The estimated cost of developing the C-NOMIS application rose from £99m in 2005 to £254m by July 2007 due to customisation."

Did senior civil service managers bend the truth?

"The programme team running C-NOMIS reported that the programme was delivering on time and to budget, when it was not."

"In May 2005, as part of the C-NOMIS project approval process, the Home Office's
Programme and Project Management Support Unit certified the C-NOMIS project as not suffering from the eight common causes of project failure. Subsequent analysis of the underlying causes of the costs increases and delay by the National Audit Office indicated that C-NOMIS suffered from four of the eight common causes of project failure in full and three in part."

Over-optimism and the culture of good news

"Planning for the C-NOMIS project was unrealistic, in part because of an over
optimistic 'good news' culture which was not challenged with sufficient rigour by
senior management with in-depth knowledge of the business."

"The first Senior Responsible Owner and other senior people involved with C-NOMIS demonstrated a remarkable lack of insight and rigour, coupled with naivety and over-optimism."

Continue reading "Anatomy of an IT disaster" »

The NPfIT minister Mike O'Brien revealed in a Parliamentary reply yesterday that there are 174 regular users of the Lorenzo 1 system at five NHS trusts.

The Lorenzo system is supplied by services company CSC and software supplier iSoft under the National Programme for IT [NPfIT].

This number of users will increase when NHS Bury goes live with Lorenzo next month. But MPs are still likely to consider the number very low given the cost to taxpayers of the system.

Taking O'Brien's figure of 174 together with £2m as a conservative figure for the cost per site of installing the Lorenzo system, the cost per user of the system is about £57,000.

If you take the cost per concurrent user - 19 according to the minister - the cost per user rises to about £526,000.  

It may also be worth bearing in mind that two of the five trusts have been live with Lorenzo for more than a year.

About £4bn in total has been spent centrally on the NPfIT and ministers have trumpeted the Care Records Service as the main aim of the programme.

Lorenzo is one of two main NPfIT Care Records Service products to be delivered to trusts in England, the other being Cerner's Millennium.

Lorenzo was due to have been delivered several years ago under the NPfIT. A typical NHS trust has about 1,000 to 5,000 users of its hospital administration system.

This is O'Brien's reply in full, based on a question by Conservative MP Richard Bacon, a member of the Public Accounts Committee:

Continue reading "NPfIT Lorenzo - £57,500 per user so far" »

Junior Treasury minister Sarah McCarthy-Fry, the Exchequer Secretary, has affirmed her Government's faith in iSoft's Lorenzo and the Cerner Millennium software, though she added that "challenges remain".

She was responding to MP Richard Bacon during a debate in the House of Commons on the work of the Public Accounts Committee. Bacon had expressed his concerns about the lateness of Lorenzo and the "havoc" caused by the Cerner systems at some hospitals.

Continue reading "Minister renews faith in Cerner and Lorenzo - but "challenges remain"" »

MP Richard Bacon, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, is, any day now, expecting answers to his Parliamentary questions on the number of Lorenzo users at five "early" adopter trusts.

He asked for the number of users at these trusts: Five Boroughs Partnership, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay, Hereford Hospitals and South Birmingham.

The cost per user may be high, Bacon warned the House of Commons during a debate on the work of the Public Accounts Committee last week.

Lorenzo is supplied by services company CSC in England [north of Oxford], and by iSoft directly in the south. 

Continue reading "NPfIT Lorenzo - is the cost per user frightening? " »

Labour MP Austin Mitchell has many times attended a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee to hear civil servants try and defend their handling of an IT-based change programme which is late, over-budget by tens or hundreds of millions of pounds, or is not meeting expectations. 

In summing up his views at a debate in the House of Commons on the work of his committee, he recommended that some IT suppliers be blacklisted.

He also spoke of the propensity of senior civil servants to buy "expensive" reports from consultants as a way of "anointing and sanctifying particular projects". This is a point made by Ian Watmore, once Government CIO.

Continue reading "Labour MP: blacklist some IT suppliers" »

Since 1986 reports of the National Audit Office have been subject to a "clearance process" in which their factual content is agreed with departments and agencies before publication.

It's a good system in theory.  The departments "sign off" NAO reports to show that, even if they don't agree with some NAO comments, they agree the figures and factual statements.

This cosy agreement stops the NAO and the department contesting factual points at hearings of the Public Accounts Committee, when civil servants are questioned by MPs over the contents of NAO reports.  

But some departments take advantage of the clearance process. They can refuse to agree a report until the NAO tones down criticisms or changes its figures.

If departments keep on refusing to sign off a report, they know the NAO will eventually give in to get its report published.

Otherwise delays could go on for years - which is what happened when the Department of Health refused to clear a draft NAO report on the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT].

The NAO's first report on the NPfIT was delayed by more than a year. And when it was finally published in 2006, it was so devoid of criticism that an MP, Greg Clark, called it "gushing".

Defra refuses to sign off NAO report

Last week a precedent appears to have been set. Computer Weekly has learned that the NAO published a report earlier this month on the Rural Payments Agency's IT-based Single Payment Scheme without any sign off by Defra, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or its agency, the Rural Payments Agency.

Continue reading "Reports of the NAO on risky IT projects - has a precedent been set?" »

On a panel I'm chairing today on making the web more inclusive are Stephen Hilton of Bristol City Council, John Shewell of Brighton and Hove City Council and Anthony Zacharzewski of the Democratic Society.

It's at 3pm - 4.15 pm. There's a live stream of the conference (registration required).

Government 2010

[This editorial is in the hard copy of Computer Weekly this week]

Hours after the National Audit Office published an unusually critical report - its third - on the IT-based Single Payment Scheme, which is run by the Rural Payments Agency, a minister went on BBC's "Today" programme to give the government line.
 
Nothing changes. When a department gets covered with opprobrium by an NAO report, the relevant minister goes on BBC's Today programme with what could be a yellowing script.

The routine is to disparage, in measured tones, the NAO's figures, and then say that good progress is has been made, ideally topped with a generous helping of statistics.

Continue reading "National Audit Office hits brick wall over Defra agency's IT failure" »