Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

Services supplier CSC in the UK has given a series of creditable responses to Computer Weekly on our questions about its finances and high-level departures.

The company says, for example, that more than 1,000 staff have left the business, either through early retirement or voluntary redundancy.

Within the context of an organisation of over 9,000 [in the UK], “this has necessarily included some senior executives leaving the business", it says.

Congratulations to Martyn Thomas, a leading campaigner for an independent review of the NHS’s £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT], who has been made a CBE in the New Year Honours List. His honour will not be welcomed by everyone.

With this excellent proverb in mind Robin Guenier has written a comment for this blog on the NHS's £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT]. Guenier is chairman of Medix, an online market researcher which has carried out several surveys of doctors on their views of the NPfIT.

For this blog, Robin Guenier has written a response to a paper by the British Computer Society's Health Informatics Forum which suggests a way forward for the NHS's £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT]. Guenier's credentials and the context of his comments are mentioned separately on this blog - here. Guenier's remarks follow.

Lord Hunt’s return to the Department of Health, where he will replace Lord Warner who had responsibility for the NHS’s National Programme for IT [NPfIT], has advantages and disadvantages.

A powerful critic of aspects of the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT] is to join BT Health, one of the main suppliers to the programme. That probably means one less public critic of the NPfIT.

On 15 January 2007, Dr Barry Monk, a consultant dermatologist, received an e-mail inviting him to a major national conference on 1 February 2007 on the NHS’s £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT].

Says Dr Monk on his blog: “There is only one small problem, which is that consultants are not allowed to cancel clinical work with less than six weeks notice, so no one who actually sees patients will be able to go.”

The conference is organised by Connecting for Health, a government agency that is responsible for the NPfIT programme. The event is entitled: “NHS Engagement - What's in I.T. for me?”

From Dr Monk’s point of view, not a lot so far.

Bernard Herdan, Executive Director of Service Delivery for the Identity and Passport Service, has explained why he has taken the unusual step – probably unprecedented in government – of publishing a report on the lessons learned and mistakes made on his agency's key IT projects.

The Guardian has published an article today on whether the NHS is paying much more for technology under the £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT] than would be the case if the initiative did not exist.

The Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust paper shines a spotlight, albeit a small one, on the role of NHS IT contractual relationships and in particular is thought provoking about the Local Service Provider role.

Tom Brooks, a well-informed and long-standing member of the Parliamentary IT Committee, who for several years has helped members of parliament with their scrutiny of NHS IT development, has written an opinion piece on what contribution local service providers make to NHS IT - here.

On 22 November 2005 HM Revenue and Customs announced that it had reached a £71.25m settlement with EDS over tax credits problems. The government later claimed that this was the largest settlement ever reached between a central department and an IT supplier.

These public statements gave the impression that EDS was handing over £71.25 in cash, cheque or direct credit to the government. The reality may be more complicated.

The public relations magazine PR Week has published an analysis on the NHS’s National Programme for IT [NPfIT] which mentions the loss of its Director of External Affairs James Herbert.

The article refers to the challenge facing Connecting for Health, which runs the £12.4bn programme, as it tries and sell the NPfIT to the NHS.

“As PR challenges go, “says the article, “Connecting for Health appears up there with Jade Goody and Heather Mills-McCartney.”

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If NHS security breaches, for practical reasons, occur when there is a database of health records on 50 million people in England, how much trust can be put in the integrity of new national systems?

Or perhaps top notch security is less important than making it easy for doctors to access a reliable electronic health record quickly.

Martyn Thomas, one of the 23 computer scientists who have called for an independent review of the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT], has questioned how one part of the health service has ended up with smartcard sharing.