Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

The board of HM Revenue and Customs discussed a "PR offensive" in December 2007 to counter negative publicity weeks after two CDs went missing containing details on 25 million people, we've learned.

At a conference on spin, PR and government press officers last week, I was asked to speak briefly (a challenge).

I said I had noted over about five years an increasingly aggressive approach on the part of some government communications directors - with some honourable exceptions.

I said: "We often get supplied incorrect information. We know ministers are given incorrect information...the Prime Minister has even been given incorrect information about the NHS computer system". This is not usually the fault of press officers but is sometimes the responsibility of senior civil servants or advisers who brief ministers - or who brief press officers. 

Are poor communications contributing to Whitehall's IT failures?

Members of the House of Lords' Communications Committee took an interest today [16 July] in the quality of the Department of Health's communications over the NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT].

I was among several journalists who gave evidence to the committee on whether there has been any improvement in openness and trust between the media and government since the recommendations in a review report on government communications by Bob Phillis, former Chief Executive of the Guardian newspaper group. It's known as the Phillis Review.

The journalists questioned by the committee this morning included Nick Robinson, Chief Political Editor at the BBC; his equivalent at ITV Tom Bradby; Adam Boulton, Political Editor at Sky News; Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor at The Times; and Frank Gardner, Security Correspondent at the BBC.

But assurances to Parliament contrast with new uncertainties at NHS trusts

NHS staff at Bath were unable to answer 25% of phone calls for Choose and Book appointments within 5 minutes partly because they were training to use the Cerner Millennium system.  The Cerner go-live was later cancelled. 

The termination of Fujitsu's contract on the £12.7bn NHS IT scheme is a sign of the programme's strength, says a government minister.

The comments of the minister Baroness Thornton show that the departure of Fujitsu as a major supplier to the National Programme for IT [NPIT] has left unchanged the government's official line that the scheme is a success - although a report of the National Audit Office in May found that the core NPfIT software, a Care Records Service, will finish rolling out at least four years later than first planned.

And what was left out of UCL report on the Summary Care Record

Comment/analysis

A senior executive working for the NHS says that, for the National Programme for IT [NPfIT], the new health CIO Christine Connelly could be what cold water is to a man dying of thirst.

But her success will depend on her freedom of action and the frankness of the briefings she's given.

Serious problems cannot be tackled if they're not officially acknowledged to be serious; so one hopes that Connelly will be given the unadorned facts, and be allowed to acknowledge them publicly. This honesty at the top would be good for the NPfIT.

A virus has caused a "major incident" at Barts and The London NHS Trust where some networks were still unavailable today [Wednesday 19 November], nearly two days after the problem was discovered.

Computer Weekly has learned that a virus caused a plethora of spurious messages to overload the trust's network. Barts and The London said the virus had caused a "major incident".