The Sunday Times: NPfIT is bleeding money
The Sunday Times published an article on 2 November 2008 on the NHS’s National Programme for IT.
Said the article: “It’s bleeding money and there’s no cure in sight. In May the National Audit Office said the project was feasible – but that was before the Fujitsu debacle and the bailout of banks hit by the credit crisis. Could or should the project be cancelled to save money? The government believes the political and financial costs of scrapping the vast contracts are too high. The Conservatives support the principle of the IT system but are committed to conducting a full review. Doctors have mixed feelings. Nagpaul [Dr Chaand Nagpaul, a British Medical Association spokesman on IT] said: “We support it in broad terms but we have a wealth of issues around confidentiality, patient consent, technical issues and data security.” The upshot: Blair’s plan is likely to cost even more – and is not likely to be ready until well into the next decade.”
Link:
Sunday Times article – 2 November 2008
Corners are being cut and I have some personal evidence of this at http://tinyurl.com/6e2fsz
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone because I wrote about this very risk in an article for the Computer Weekly website back in October 2004 (the article was called Kissing Frogs).
Has anyone looked at the quality statistics for the NHSpfIT roll-out?
The publication of re-work, faults and query stats might be interesting and drive the programme towards improvement. Or, to be fair, they may demonstrate that the programme quality is being properly managed.