Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

The NPfIT, as discussed at Downing Street in February 2002, at a seminar chaired by the then PM Tony Blair, was for a three year project.

Three years in total.

This was made clear in a speech by Sir John Pattison, the NPfIT's first senior responsible owner who gave a very short presentation on the programme at the Downing Street seminar. About a month later, at Healthcare Computing 2002, Pattison spoke about what had happened at the Downing Street seminar:

"The core commitments from now will be around those four key elements [e-health record, national broadband, e-prescriptions and appoint booking system].

"We have given our colleagues on the other side of Whitehall [Downing Street] the vision and our proposals have been well received.

"There was only one question which I thought was rather tricky and that was 'how long will this take?' I swallowed hard because I knew I had to get the answer right for the purposes of the audience in which I was standing, and I said three years. The answer was that is too long; how about two years? But in the end we got two years and nine months, starting from April 2003."

So the DH's argument that the £2.3bn allocated to the NPfIT was for an initial three years is misleading. 

Even if one accepts the Department of Health's argument that £2.3bn was only ever the initial cost of the NPfIT, how does the Department reconcile its confidential estimate in 2002 of the whole-life project costs of the NPfIT at £5bn with today's £12.7bn estimate?

This was the confidential Project Profile Model estimate in 2002:




























It says: "Total [whole life] Project Costs:  £5bn."

Some time after the Downing Street meeting - we don't know when or how - the three-year NPfIT became a 10-year programme; and at some point £2.3bn turned into £6.2bn. Much later the NAO put the total cost at £12.7bn which includes an estimate for local costs.
 
DH misinformation has dogged the NPfIT and made people more cynical about government and politics.  More's the pity.

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ZDNet has a good account of the differences between the Department of Health and the Taxpayers' Alliance over the NPfIT costs.

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In its response to the Taxpayers' Alliance, NHS Connecting for Health says that it has underspent against schedule, because suppliers are paid only when they deliver.

This is a fair point (although suppliers do receive advance payments).  What CfH has never made clear is that the total spend on the NPfIT is likely by the middle of next year to be about £5bn - the total original whole-life costs of the programme, as estimated in the Project Profile Model (above). Yet the programme, by the end of next year, will be at least five years away from completion.  

Links:

Response of NHS Connecting for Health to Taxpayers' Alliance - NHS CfH website

Proof that £13bn NPfIT was supposed to cost £5bn - IT Projects blog

NPfIT neither triumph nor disaster - Smarthealthcare gets answers to questions it put to the BCS Health Informatics Forum head Matthew Swindells

Taxpayers' Alliance criticises £10bn NPfIT overspend - Taxpayers' Alliance

Interview with Gary Cohen of iSoft about Lorenzo