Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

GP Mary Hawking has commented on an important point made in the Channel 4 "Dispatches" programme about the murky "clearance" process by which the public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, agrees its reports with the department or agency whose work it has scrutinized.

Ostensibly the clearance process is not murky at all. It allows MPs who sit on the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee to question civil servants on reports of the National Audit Office [NAO] without arguments over the facts.

But the clearance process also allows a minister or the head of a department to stop an NAO report being published: they simply refuse to sign it.

Systems at HM Revenue and Customs have issued up to 14,000 unjustified penalty notices, each of £400, to employers that had correctly filed their annual returns by the deadline of 19 May 2007.

It’s the third year running the department’s systems have issued thousands of unjustified penalty notices to companies, more than one million of which file online. The Revenue owned up to the latest incident on 4 October 2007 only after being contacted by Computer Weekly and by complainants that included payroll agents.

If the US military accidentally destroyed some small buildings in Nevada it would be illogical if it countered critics by saying that its explosive experts successfully left thousands of other buildings in America untouched.

If Her Majesty’s Treasury managed to flush £300m in cash into London’s sewers it would be illogical if its defence for public relations purposes was that the money represented less than 0.1% of the government’s annual spend.

The HM Revenue and Customs [HMRC] is using the same peculiar logic – spin - to trivialise its mistake in issuing up to 14,000 incorrect penalty notices, of £400 a time, to companies that have filed annual returns on time. This is the third year running that HMRC has accidentally and automatically issued incorrect penalty notices.

HM Revenue and Customs [HMRC] said this afternoon [9 October 2007] it is cancelling incorrect penalty notices to employers centrally and is writing to companies to let them know.

It's also saying that the number of incorrect penalties is fewer than six per cent of the 202,000 notices issued on 24 September, so fewer than 12,120 companies are affected, it claims.

It's still investigating the cause and so it's unclear how HMRC knows how many companies are affected.

The Revenue has a reputation for playing down its mistakes and persuading the National Audit Office to do the same in its reports on the department's finances and administration. So we're not sure whether its assurances on the number of employers that have received incorrect penalty notices are based on fact, extrapolation from samples of incorrect penalties or wishful speculation.

After being contacted by Computer Weekly HM Revenue and Customs confirmed on its website that it has issued incorrect penalty notices. Thousands of employers are affected. I then asked its press office: “How did it happen? Will HMRC be publishing a full report on how it happened and the lessons learned to assure employers it won’t happen again?

HMRC replied with commendable speed.

In a letter to the Financial Times Martyn Thomas, one of the 23 leading IT academics who has signed open letters calling for an independent review of the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT], calls for an end to the "cycle of insufficient consultation with the users, poor specification and planning, failing projects and the delays and wastage that result".

Health Minister Professor the Lord Darzi opens the introduction to his interim review of the NHS by saying he is a doctor not a politician.

But in his comments about the National Programme for IT [NPfIT] Lord Darzi knows he needs to be the quintessential politician. He is a consultant in the field of robot-assisted, minimally-invasive surgery; and when he mentions the NPfIT in his interim report he manoeuvres delicately over the thin skins of ministers and officials at Whitehall who do not want to read any criticism of the scheme, particularly by public figures.

MP Richard Bacon, a member of the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee, says that new passport holders will still have to pay for an ID card, even though the new passport will carry broadly similar data.

E-health Insider has organised an excellent awards scheme for the brightest and best in healthcare IT. Voting finishes on 22 October 2007. There are several categores. This is the "Healthcare ICT Champion" shortlist and biographies by E-Health Insider:

HM Revenue and Customs [HMRC] says it will sue US-based services supplier EDS unless the supplier steps up compensation payments for failures in its IT support for tax credits, which led to tens of millions of pounds in incorrect payments to claimants.

The Revenue’s chairman Paul Gray says his officials have carefully archived “millions of relevant documents” in preparation for a court case he hopes will not happen.

The tension between the two sides comes after they signed a unique deal in November 2005 in which EDS agreed to compensate HMRC over tax credits by paying £71.25m with £26.5m of this contingent on EDS winning new UK government contracts.

By the end of 2006 EDS had paid less than £250,000 of the £26.5m – and at that rate it would have taken more than 100 years to pay off the full amount.

EDS, under threat of legal action by HM Revenue and Customs, is being sued by BSkyB in a case that began this week in London's Technology and Construction Court.

EDS is accused of making a “deliberate, cynical and dishonest” sales pitch for a multi-million-pound contract to build a customer service system. EDS will vigorously refute the allegations. The case is expected to last six months. The Financial Times is covering it.

Links:

FT article on BSkyB legal action

EDS countersues BSkyB in £60m contract row

Tax credits: HMRC threatens new legal action against EDS

Gordon Brown faces a question on EDS over tax credits systems at his first Prime Minister's questions

HM Revenue and Customs [HMRC] gives the impression it would enjoy its work more if it could avoid communicating with the world outside.

The problem is not its people. The senior civil servants at HMRC I have met have been genial and intelligent. But beneath the feet of HMRC’s finest runs a thick sediment that keeps them from advancing. Worse, they accept the organisation's reputation for poor communications as an orthodoxy that shouldn't be opposed.

This is an example.

The National Audit Office in a report on the NHS's IT strategies of 1992 and 1998 made the worthwhile points that:

- the "objectives and targets should be made specific and measurable if they are to be useful in monitoring expenditure and achievements"

- there should be clearer plans for evaluation of the Strategy.

In 2002 there was a third IT strategy, the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT]. The same mistakes have been repeated: no clear objectives and targets which are specific and measurable and no clear plans for evaluating the strategy.

Plus ca change.

A blog reader has taken issue with comments made by Richard Granger, the Director General of NHS IT, who compared the initial distrust by physicians of the stethoscope with the anxiety of some in the NHS over adopting new technology as part of the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT].

Richard Granger's comments had been published in the blog entry "In 200 years people will look back on this [the NHS's National Programme for IT] and wonder what the fuss was about - Richard Granger, head of NHS IT."

BBC Radio 4 at 8pm on 25 October 2007 is broadcasting a half-hour documentary on the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT]. It will examine the successes and failures of an undertaking which has received much media attention.

It tells the story of the national programme from its beginnings, says a BBC press release. The presenter Sue Nelson will ask why the project has been criticised in the British media.

As there are two new blog entries on the summary care record - part of the NHS's National Programme for IT - I've provided (below) further context by publishing the findings of MPs on the Labour-dominated Health Committee.

Bolton Primary Care Trust – the first in England to test the summary care record as part of the NHS’s National Programme for IT [NPfIT] – has reported “excellent progress”, though the scheme has met some strong local resistance.

Dozens of GPs in the Bolton area where the first trials are continuing of the summary care record - a central part of the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT] - have indicated that they are against proceeding with the scheme.

Their reservations - five years into the NPfIT - raise further questions about how ministers and the Department of Health were able in early 2002 to launch the programme before there was widespread support for its general principles from its main potential users - doctors.

It was announced in April 2007 that Bolton Primary Care Trust had been chosen as the first early adopter in England of the national summary care record. An aim of the scheme is to provide a database of allergies, medication and other important information that would be accessible to doctors out of hours or when a patient goes into hospital unexpectedly.

Sir John Bourn, head of the government's spending watchdog the National Audit Office, is to retire on 31 January 2008 after coming under pressure to quit.

The Liberal Democrats earlier this month called for his resignation after he ran up large bills for foreign travel and some meals.

The combined legal costs of a dispute between British Sky Broadcasting and EDS over a customer relationship management system are expected to approach £45m – almost as much as the orginal £48m price for the project.

Whitehall officials are making no commitment to replacing Richard Granger, Director General of NHS IT and Chief Executive of NHS Connecting for Health, which runs part of the £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT].

Richard Granger will remain in post until the end of this year. When asked whether he will be replaced an official, when pressed, replied: "Sometimes the simplest questions are the most difficult to answer." He gave an answer, however.

Analysis

A former Whitehall official has revealed that he and his colleagues were given 10 minutes to make the case to the Prime Minister over what became the world’s biggest civil IT-based modernisation programme.

The disclosure was made by Sir John Pattison who was headquarters director of research and e-champion at the Department of Health. He was speaking on BBC Radio 4’s “Wiring the NHS” documentary on the £12.4bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT], to which Computer Weekly contributed.