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A reader to this blog, GP Mary Hawking, makes some good points about whether gateway reviews are a waste of money if those who are involved in carrying out their recommendations have no automatic right to see the review reports.
Her comments and my responses are in the "comments" section under the entry
Civil servants told to destroy internal reports on billions of pounds of risky IT projects
Officials at the Treasury's Office of Government Commerce [OGC] are ordering the destruction of "gateway review" reports into the progress or otherwise of billions of pounds worth of risky government IT projects to cut the risk of leaks.
An OGC paper tells civil servants that, in the context of the Freedom of Information Act, they should "securely dispose" immediately of final reports of gateway reviews - which are internal assessments of projects such as the £5.3bn ID cards scheme and the NHS's £12.4bn National Programme for IT.
The paper also tells civil servants they must securely dispose immediately after delivery of the final gateway report "all supporting documents".
An article in the Daily Telegraph, across the top of page two, follows up our disclosure that the Office of Government Commerce is ordering the destruction of "gateway review" final reports.
Continue reading "Shredding of gateway reviews - Daily Telegraph article" »
Comment
The Office of Government Commerce - which oversees IT in government - is to have a new Chief Executive, Nigel Smith, 52, who is not a career civil servant. Smith has been President of Invensys Rail Systems since 2003.
He replaces John Oughton who is retiring. The articulate, amiable and intelligent John Oughton was the archetypal senior civil servant. If Treasury rules forbade the disclosure of the brand of tea used in the Treasury, John Oughton could be trusted not to mention it to anyone.
Guy Hains, President, Europe Group, Computer Sciences Corporation, has spoken of the causes and lessons learned from a crash at the company's Maidstone data centre.
Computer Weekly has proposed to Connecting for Health, which runs the National Programme for IT [NPfIT], that we visit three of the sites that have installed the Care Record Service system - at Weston, Nuffield in Oxford and the Milton Keynes General Hospital.
Comment
It's good for the NHS's National Programme for IT that the NHS Chief Executive's David Nicholson and the NHS IT Director General Richard Granger have been willing to visit Milton Keynes General Hospital to hear first-hand the concerns of staff and doctors over the shortcomings in a Cerner Millennium system installed earlier this year.
Seventy nine staff including doctors at Milton Keynes General Hospital had signed a letter complaining about a Care Records Service system installed under the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT].
An aim of NHS Connecting for Health, which runs the NPfIT, is to provide integrated Care Records Service systems containing electronic health records on 50 million people in England.
It's understood that, at Milton Keynes, Nicholson and Granger listened to some sharp criticisms of the systems from staff and doctors. The trust says the visit was "primarily to look at the introduction of the new patient records computer system".
The 11-strong Health Committee of the House of Commons has been to Nashville in the USA and Canada's capital Ottawa to learn more about electronic patient record systems, as part of their inquiry in aspects of the NHS's £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT].
Continue reading "Health committee MPs visit US to see patient record systems" »
The Health Committee is recalling Richard Granger, Director General of NHS IT, to its final hearing on the National Programme for IT [NPfIT].
Richard Granger and Harry Cayton, National Director for the Patients and the Public, Department of Health, gave evidence on the benefits of the programme to the Health Committee on 26 April 2007. Later members heard from other witnesses who expressed concerns about aspects of the scheme.
Continue reading "Health Committee recalls Richard Granger, NHS IT chief" »
1. You are the project manager, so don't spend your time doing non-management tasks. Your job is to steer the ship, not stoke the engine
2. Use the "honeymoon period". When you are first assigned/offered a project, take time in the first few days to understand everything about it
3. You own the plan. Always have a current plan which you believe in
4 Communicate, communicate, and then communicate some more
This month [2 June 2007] marks the anniversary of a notorious crash of a Chinook helicopter on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland in 1994 - a crash that had many possible causes, including faulty software design, but for which the two dead piloits were blamed .
It's one the most grievous miscarriages of justice in memory.
Shortly Computer Weekly and this blog will report on the disclosures by a former senior RAF officer who has never given a media interview.
Patients are more likely to miss out on outpatient appointments if they are left to book themselves in under Choose and Book than under the conventional referral system, according to Pulse Magazine [requires registration].
It's not good news for the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT] that Richard Granger, Director General of NHS IT and head of the technology part of the scheme, is to leave.
Continue reading "The departure of Richard Granger, head of NHS IT" »
Comment
Health minister Lord Hunt who is currently a government spokesman for the National Programme for IT [NPfIT], has revealed in an unnoticed Parliamentary reply that the scheme has no end date.
A reader of this blog has raised some pertinent questions following the announcement that Richard Granger, Director General of NHS IT, is to quit as head of Connecting for Health, which runs the NHS's National Programme for IT.
The commentator wants to remain anonymous. He points out how difficult it will be for ministers and Whitehall officials to find a replacement for Richard Granger in the time available. He says:
"Mr Granger has done the NHS a favour by telegraphing his leaving in enough time to allow a dignified and productive handover - but there are various challenging activities to start to set in motion now :
"1. Identify a charismatic individual (or top team) with excellent communications skills, domain knowledge, respected by clinicians and ready to hit the deck running in order to help select the positive parts of NPfIT and migrate them into a context for local managers and professionals to deliver.
Comment
Home Office minister Liam Byrne says in a speech "A 21st Century Public Good" that ID cards will become another great British institution. Perhaps the ID Cards scheme will follow the NHS's National Programme for IT[NPfIT] in that respect.
Continue reading "ID cards - minister's speech highlights the scheme's vague objectives" »
An extraordinary story reaches me which pushes back the boundary of what is acceptable in government communications - what some call spin.
Not even Orwell in 1984 had thought of this one.
In recent weeks there was a meeting in London where the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT] was discussed. A record of what was said by the main speakers was kept by a reporter who worked for the meeting's organisers.
As part of an Enterprise Agreement deal struck by the beneficent Microsoft and the NHS, 100,000 NHS staff have acquired Microsoft Office 2007 for less than £20. It normally sells for about £370.
On 20 June 2007, an entry on the blog was entitled "Government spin - a worrying precedent". It told the story of how the Department of Health had suggested changes to a speaker's comments after a meeting in London.
Continue reading "Government spin precedent - UK Liberty comment" »
It is a pity Richard Granger, director general of NHS IT, is to leave as head of Connecting for Health, the agency that is running the National Programme for IT (NPfIT).
The decision was his - he was not asked to leave. Indeed, officials at the Department of Health may soon recognise that they are losing the NPfIT's most valuable asset.
Without Richard Granger the NPfIT is at risk of falling apart, for he has given the programme a credibility it would not otherwise have had.
An open letter to the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown calls on him to take actions which, it says, could transform the NHS £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT].
The letter is from Robin Guenier who is chairman of the Medicine and Health Panel of the livery company, the Information Technologists' Company. The letter expresses his personal view on the NPfIT.
He calls for:
- A full-time "senior responsible owner " who has responsibility for the entire project.
He says that full-time responsibility is "divided between various people who can blame each other for any problems".
- An independent review - to be published - of the business case for NPfIT in the light of progress and experience so far.
- A major exercise to engage NHS staff, especially clinicians. He says: "Consultation with and engagement of end-users is a basic commonplace of project management - yet this project has been running for over four years and clinicians still feel neglected. Their initial enthusiasm is evaporating."
This is the open letter:
Continue reading "An open letter to Gordon Brown on the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT]" »
An article on this blog about a worrying precedent in government spin has caused a very minor ripple in the blogosphere.
On 20 June 2007, an entry on the blog, entitled "Government spin - a worrying precedent" told the story of how the Department of Health had suggested changes to the draft public record of a speaker's comments after a meeting in London.
A posting on the site of Tim Worstall, a popular UK blogger, says:
We'd asked Connecting for Health, which runs major parts of the NHS's £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT], whether we could visit some of its NHS sites that have begun to use the Care Records Service based on the "Millennium" software from US supplier Cerner.
Sarah Burnett of the Bulter Group has some worthy views on how to tackle government IT-related failures, even if her coinage of "proof-win" threatens to burden the IT industry with more jargon.
Continue reading "One view on how to tackle government IT-related failures" »
Gordon Brown has made a good decision in appointing Alan Johnson as Secretary of State for Health. He's independently minded and so is likely to see the £12.4bn NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT] in the round.
When Johnson was in charge of the Child Support Agency, he did not try to play down the problems with systems, management and anarchic working practices. It's unlikely he will follow his predecessor Patricia Hewitt in regarding all criticism of the NPfIT as corrosive.
Before Johnson's appointment, Gordon Brown is said to have told a colleague that the existing political health team could cost him the next election. Johnson has gumption, experience at the sharp end of government and a taste for openness. He would make a refreshing change.
We hope he will not accept all of his Whitehall briefings at face value.
In 2004 the then Health Secretary John Reid announced that a "ground-breaking" and "landmark" deal had been struck with Microsoft after talks with Bill Gates and the supplier's Steve Ballmer.
The deal would, said the press release, "improve patient safety and value for money" for the NHS - but thereafter secrecy descended on the arrangements made.
In July 2002, shortly after the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT] was announced, Computer Weekly published a comment piece on the risks and lack of debate.
The article was by Robin Guenier who is now chairman of the Medicine and Health Panel of the livery company, the Information Technologists' Company. The article expressed his personal view.
With hindsight it's possible to see that most of its (unheeded) warnings have materialised. He warned for example of the potential disruption - and some boards of directors of NHS trusts have issued apologies to patients after troubled go-lives of new national systems.
Continue reading "Warnings in 2002 on the NHS's National Programme for IT were prescient" »