Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

Cabinet office minister Pat McFadden said in a speech in January 2007: “If things go wrong with government IT we should hold our hands up, fix the problem or learn the lessons.”

But nobody does. The opposite is more likely.

Our interview with Bernard Herdan on what went wrong with the EPA2 electronic passport application system and the lessons learned are downloadable here.

1) Should we soldier on? - Download file
2) Problems appeared only when volumes built up - Download file
3) What we should have done - Download file
4) What went wrong - Download file
5) What went wrong part 2 - Download file
6) Why EPA2 was taken out of service - Download file
7) Computer Weekly's challenge to Passport Service to publish lessons - Download file
8) The importance of sharing lessons even if it means admitting mistakes - Download file
9) Why some online passport applications got stuck in the system - Download file

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

In a rare if unprecedented step, the Identity and Passport Service has published the lessons learned from its key IT projects implemented in 2006 - including the lessons from the failure of its EPA2 electronic passport application system.

Computer Weekly's articles on EPA2 are here, here here and here.

The main lessons are summarised here.

MP3 files of Computer Weekly's interview in January 2007 with Bernard Herdan, Executive Director, Service Delivery, Identity and Passport Service, are here. In these audio files Herdan says why some online passport applications got stuck in the system. He also explains the difficult decision to take the system out of service, and issues a challenge to other government departments to publish the lessons learned from their key IT projects

A key lesson not specifically included in the passport service's "lessons learned" report but mentioned by Herdan in his interview with Computer Weekly:

“The user acceptance testing proved functionality and proved that all the various functions of the system worked OK but it did not prove the rate of throughput in volume. So once we started putting volumes of cases through, it [the system] worked fine to begin with but once the volume of cases began to build up then the performance began to degrade.”

This is a lesson that may apply particularly to those planning and implementing systems under the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT].

Summarised lessons from the report of the Identity and Passport Service on the main IT projects implemented last year follow.

There are many reports on the lessons learned from failed and successful IT projects. Here are some of the more important reports. Most of the examples are from the public sector but many of the lessons apply also to private sector projects.

Underestimating complexity and the genetically similar "being too optimistic about what can be achieved in a reasonable time period" - or in some cases any time period - feature heavily as common contributory causes in IT-related projects and programmes that fail to meet expectations.

Those who routinely read reports and board minutes on failures, may also find it disconcerting to note how regularly new IT-based change programmes are started without anyone in authority answering diligently the basic question: If we thought through the full effect of planned changes on staff, working practices and the business would we really go ahead with this?"

At a conference on the NHS’s National Programme for IT [NPfIT] Robin Guenier concluded in a speech that the success of the programme is at risk even if it is technically sound.

Guenier’s speech at the 4th annual Successful Implementation of NPfIT 2007 conference in Kensington on 6 February 2007 was well received among enthusiasts as well as sceptics of the NPfIT.

Guenier is the chairman of the Medicine and Health Panel of the Information Technologists Company, formerly the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. He is also chairman of Medix UK, an online market researcher, which has conducted several surveys on the views of doctors on the NPfIT. He was giving a personal view on the NPfIT.

His speech contained some astute observations on the common causes of IT failure. His slides – here - are on the wiki of the 23 academics who have called for an independent review of the NPfIT.

The Health Committee of the House of Commons has announced details of its inquiry into the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT]. The inquiry is the result of a campaign by 23 academics, Computer Weekly and by certain members of the committee - here.

Not all members of the committee are fiery supporters of the inquiry. The chairman Kevin Barron, for example, seems not to have thrown up his hands with glee at the idea of an inquiry, and the terms of reference are carefully worded. There is no mention of the question: will it work?

The following is a longer version of the article in Computer Weekly.

A senior executive at services supplier Fujitsu, a primary supplier to the NHS’s £12.4bn National Programme for IT (NPfIT), has questioned whether key aspects of the scheme are working – or are going to work.

The comments of Andrew Rollerson, healthcare consultancy practice lead at Fujitsu, gained general acceptance at a conference last week entitled “Successful implementation of NPfIT 2007”.

Twenty-three senior academics and, separately, the British Computer Society, have also raised fundamental concerns about the scheme.

Rollerson, who is responsible for the delivery of Fujitsu’s healthcare professional services, said there was a “gradual coming apart of what we are doing on the ground because we are desperate to get something in and make it work, versus what the programme really ought to be trying to achieve”.

He added, “The more pressure we come under, both as suppliers and on the NHS side, the more we are reverting to a very sort of narrowly focused IT-oriented behaviour. This is not a good sign for the programme.”

A tribunal ruling under the Freedom of Information Act means that public sector contracts may have to be disclosed in some circumstances no matter how confidential the content.

It’s interesting that a number of rulings of the Information Tribunal put the public interest in disclosure above the arguments of public authorities against disclosure.

The Information Tribunal says:

“We are aware that the effect of our conclusion is that the whole of any contract with a public authority may be available to the public, no matter how confidential the content or how clearly expressed the confidentiality provisions incorporated in it, unless another exemption applies (most probably, that one or both parties to the contract could show that its disclosure would be likely to prejudice its commercial interests, so as to bring section 43 into play). “

Full details of the Tribunal decision are (see Derry City Council v Information Commissioner) here.

The future? - well worth watching, here
You may need to turn up your computer's volume.

Connecting for Health, which runs the £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT], has responded to some of the unflattering publicity over the programme by arguing, in part, that the scheme’s aims and objectives are well supported.

If large numbers of people were stuck in the Channel Tunnel, not all would be reassured by a voice over the loudspeaker system which said repeatedly: Please do not be alarmed – the aims and objectives of the Channel Tunnel have strong support.

The NHS’s National Programme for IT [NPfIT] will be the subject of an eight-page special report by the magazine Private Eye, published on Tuesday 27 February 2007.

The NPfIT will also be featured in a Channel Four “Dispatches” documentary broadcast on Monday 26 February 2007.

Comment

Connecting for Health, which runs the National Programme for IT, has again referred to its "evidence base" as a response to bad news about the NHS's National Programme for IT.

This evidence base contains information that justifies the aims of the NPfIT. It does not answer specific questions about whether the programme can be a success without the enthusiastic support of most doctors and nurses.

CfH's reaction to the bad news raises the question, once more, of whether you can credibly defend specific difficulties on a large and troubled IT-based project by arguing that there is support for its aims.

The author George Orwell, a campaigner for clear English, would have been brought to tears by this gruesome headline in a recent document published by HM Treasury:

DELIVERING THE PROCUREMENT VISION

A main definition of a vision in the full version of the Oxford English Dictionary is a "revelation, supernaturally presented to the mind either in sleep or in an abnormal state". Those who aspire to power are required to have visions.

It's better to be a visionary - perhaps.

The first two definitions of "visionary" in the Oxford English Dictionary (full version) are:

1) Accustomed to see visions; capable of receiving impressions, or obtaining knowledge, by means of visions.

2) Given to fanciful and unpractical views; having little regard to what is actual or possible; speculative, dreamy.

If you've had a vision, isn't that something to keep quiet about?

Orwell said in his excellent essay Politics and the English Language that "slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the NHS, has written to about 80 people who attended a one-day seminar on 26 January 2007 on the future of the £12.4bn National Programme for IT.

The seminar was entitled "facing rthe issues, making progress".

This is the Channel Four press release for a documentary that is due to broadcast on 26 February. The film includes interviews with clinicians and others on the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT]

Dispatches
NHS: Where did all the money go?
Channel 4, 26th February 2007. 8pm

The Government has spent billions of extra pounds on the NHS. So why are hospitals and primary care trusts across the country now facing multi-million pound deficits? Why are patients being told the NHS is on "go-slow"? Why are increasing numbers of NHS-trained doctors and nurses unable to get jobs? Over the last five years, the amount of taxpayers' money being spent on the NHS has almost tripled. In this edition of Dispatches, award-winning journalist and economist Liam Halligan asks: "Where has all the money gone?"

Senior Tories have had a meeting to discuss their strategy over the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT]. It's understood that among the topics discussed was the question of whether the Tories should take a radical stance, or simply renew their call for a review of the scheme.

They decided to renew the call for a review.

Comment by Tim Holyoake, senior consultant, Software AG:

"The National Programme for IT [NPfIT] is yet another example of Government modernisation being criticised in the press, despite all attempts to bring better services to the public. In theory it's a good idea to upgrade the NHS and link all GPs to the main database for a more efficient and faster service, but ripping and replacing existing systems is not how it should be done.

"As seen with the shelved Benefits Reprocessing Payments Programme, at a cost of £141m to the taxpayer despite not being fully implemented, an upgrade is costly, and not immune to long delays or even being scrapped altogether. Ripping out existing infrastructures to replace them with costly new ones that don't necessarily interact with each other can also lead to lengthy staff downtime, and of course, project delays.

Don Touhig Labour Co-op Member of Parliament for Islwyn:

"Forgive me, but I am always wary of experts. An old friend once said to me "Beware of experts, they built the Titanic; ordinary folk like thee and me, we built the Ark".